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Historic Rallying should be fun and whilst the element of competition is one ingredient, the social aspect should not be overlooked. The taking part and the challenge of completing the course may be sufficient for many competitors. If high speed performance is perceived to be the sole criteria by which achievement is judged and rewarded, those drivers with older and perhaps more exotic vehicles may be discouraged from entering; this would certainly be to the detriment of the sport. A wide range of cars is much more likely to attract paying spectators to a stage rally. From the public relations standpoint residents along the route of a road event are happier to accept the spectacle of a variety of vehicles, particularly if some of them are a little older or unusual, than a limited selection of the quicker more familiar cars of the late sixties. Nevertheless those running Historic Rallies should pay just as much attention to organisation and public relations as those organising modern events.
Readers of this Guideline should also look at Guideline 26 as much of the detail relevant to rallies for more modern cars is equally applicable to rallies for historic cars.
It is important that a Clerk of the Course judges the right spirit for an Historic Rally and keeps in mind that some competitors may be new to the sport so regulations and instructions should be crystal clear.
The Secretary should be involved in the signing-on' of competitors and usually becomes involved to some extent in the results of the rally. They must have a working knowledge of the penalty system and it can be helpful if they have had some input into the design of the documentation (particularly the time cards) as it is this paperwork that must be interpreted correctly to establish the winner.
The Chief Marshal should have sight of the route at an early stage, perhaps three or four months prior to the rally; he should have at least a provisional time schedule together with the locations of the controls and, ideally, could act as overall co-ordinator of the public relations effort with perhaps sector marshals undertaking the 'leg work'. He will be, in this way, aware of any reroutes; that may be, necessary and any special requirements such as, 'no' boards at certain junctions, arrows, quiet boards and/or marshals agreed during the course of the PR work. Keep in mind that the PR work for an Historic rally should be just as thorough as for any other.
The Chief Marshal needs to be the equipment officer and an inventory of the equipment required on the event should be drawn up and maintained. It will be necessary to move considerable quantities of tackle - control boards, stakes, bollards, banners, cones, etc during the course of the rally and a van or trailer is a must for any Chief Marshal.
The allocation of controls to the troops is the task of the Chief Marshal who should establish the experience of people at his disposal to ensure that the more knowledgeable are allocated the potentially demanding duties. Convince those who insist that they are available for only a limited period - usually the early part of a night event that they should actually man a slightly later control, thus enabling the stalwarts to 'doubleup' taking one control early and one late in the event.
Remember that as Chief Marshal it will be expected that you will be first on the scene to set up the Scrutineering, the start area, the special tests, etc, and that you will be dismantling and checking in equipment when the other organisers are already in the bar!
A list of Scrutineers and Timekeepers together with their grade appears in Section EE of the Blue Book and Section FF of the Red Book respectively and it is the organiser's responsibility to contact suitable people for the relevant duties. With Historic rallying it may be desirable, if not altogether essential, to appoint an Eligibility Scrutineer; if your event is part of a championship, the championship organisers may have such a person for all the qualifying rounds. This is particularly useful as he or she will have seen many of the competing cars on other events.
With the exception of Clubman Road Rallies there must be three Stewards of an event. One of these may be the MSA Steward should they decide to appoint one. The responsibilities and duties of the Stewards are detailed in Section C2 and U of the Blue Book. A Steward is a little like a referee at a football match - if you know he is there it is a poor game or a poor referee.
Remember, sponsorship decals used to be limited to 55 sq inches in the 1960s - state restrictions clearly in the regulations to avoid arguments. Many successful historic events deliberately restrict advertising to enhance period authenticity.
Sponsorship is not, in the opinion of some Historic rally organisers, always worth having the cost of setting up and printing extra pages in the regulations, multi coloured covers and special rally plates together with the extra work involved in giving the sponsor value for money, can be more than you are actually getting. This can actually put up entry fees which cannot be the object of the exercise.
Help in kind may often be of greater benefit than hard cash. Materials, equipment, assistance with printing, free or subsidised accommodation, use of venues, etc, can be equally valuable and may be much easier to obtain.
Local authorities can be very helpful and an approach to the appropriate department costs nothing; after all it is one of their duties to provide recreation and leisure facilities. Local Councils own a considerable amount of land and they may be prepared to make available parkland, industrial sites, car parks, etc, at little or no cost. They also have considerable influence and their involvement can lend a very desirable air of legitimacy and respectability to the proceedings. The presence of the Mayor or Chairman of the Council flagging away competitors at the start or presenting the awards at the finish may help not only the image of the event but please any other sponsor by virtually guaranteeing press coverage, at least at a local level. In addition the policy may be more amenable to the idea of assisting with traffic control if the 'Chairman of the Police Commission' is beaming down from the start ramp. Any approach to a Local Authority must be made in good time, the committee system may take forever.
A sponsorship deal must be arranged well beforehand to achieve the maximum benefit for all parties. This means at least six months before the date of the rally. The sponsor will almost certainly want the company name on the Supplementary Regulations for the event (SRs) and all the event stationery. Similarly all pre-event publicity should include a mention of the sponsor. Make sure that any agreement is confirmed in writing. It is far better to spend a little time sorting things out properly at the outset than to have misunderstanding, embarrassment and possible acrimony later.
Always keep the sponsor up to date with progress throughout the preparations for the rally. Invite them to planning meetings and let them, if they wish, get involved. You may well find that the original arrangement is supplemented by other benefits if the sponsor appreciates your needs and is aware of the effort that you are putting in to their event.
Ensure that the sponsor gets an invitation to the start of the event and the prize giving. Give them details of the route and information about the cars and competitors. If they are interested enough to put up their money and lay the company reputation on the line they may well wish to spectate and take friends to see the action.
Finally, after the event a letter of thanks will not go amiss. You may want a sponsor next year.
In order to have a date in the rally calendar (prerequisite for obtaining permission to hold the rally) the type of event, the maps at 1 to 50,000 scale, and the date which it will take place should be submitted to the MSA via a Regional Association. This must be done in the late spring for inclusion in the Fixture List published in December to cover the following year. If you miss the deadline you may apply direct to the MSA a minimum of two months before your event. You could be planning for an event for up to eighteen months before the date it is to run.
Choosing the date for your rally is of the utmost importance. Submitting the date and other details through the Regional Association should ensure that clashes with other motoring events do not occur but it is equally important to be aware of other activities being held on the same day and taking the necessary steps to avoid them. Carnivals, Rag Day Parades and even Bank Holiday traffic can seriously disrupt your rally and you and your motor club could be crossed off the Mayor's Christmas Card list if your route meets that of the civic procession head on.
Historic rallying has in the past few years been the fastest growing branch of motorsport. In order to cater for the increasing band of potential competitors there has been a corresponding development in events. At this point in time saturation point may have been reached and there are possibly too many rallies chasing too few competitors. Only those offering something different and good value are likely to attract a significant number of entrants. It is necessary to identify a particular niche for your event in a competitive market. To this end it is important to consider in some detail what you intend to run and who you are trying to attract.
Remember when compiling the 'regs' to concentrate on making them clear and unambiguous. If you are running a road event give details of how many tests, how much regularity (miles and controls), how many road miles and the nature of the navigation. If you are proposing a stage event explain how many stages there will be, what the mileage (stage and road) will be and a genuine description of the surface of the stages.
Producing the 'regs' always takes longer than you imagined it was going to, so allow plenty of time. Aim to publish them ten to twelve weeks before the rally, six should be an absolute minimum. If you leave things too late you will not get the entries you need for a successful event.
It will be necessary to print between seven hundred to a thousand sets of the SRs if you hope to attract up to ninety competitors. The ratio of ten to one seems a waste when you consider the fate of ninety per cent of the documents but there is little alternative. Regrettably you must speculate to accumulate.
An emphasis on smoother stages is important because of the value and fragility of many of the cars involved. Although there have now been a number of successful forestry events, in general terms the most successful stage events are all on sealed surface.
A number of modern events
have run successful 'tag-on' events for historic cars. While these
are seen as a successful method of boosting income and interest in a situation
of dwindling fields, they are not the most popular amongst historic competitors
who see themselves as a poor relation on these events. Under these
circumstances a separate permit must be obtained and the events must be
at least in some part different (eg, miss out a couple of rough stages)
as they are seen as different events in the eyes of the MSA.
Even an A40 Somerset can comfortably average 30 mph down most B roads so the more challenging yellows must be selected, and it is recommended that you search hard for the most intricate and complicated route (B) you can find within the territory available and which does not include public relations problem spots.
Without detailed 'local knowledge' it is not always possible to choose a route from the map. It is necessary to spend some time driving around the yellow roads in your chosen area to see which are straight and wide and which are narrow and challenging. In this survey it is also important to seek out 'tricky slots' and 'not as map' junctions, and include them in your overall route wherever possible. The odd ford (as long as it isn't too deep) always adds a bit of spice, as does the 'impossible' hairpin, and rain also helps to make it more difficult to average 30 mph and thereby 'clean' your route.
If you are in an area where there are no tight metalled roads and where it is very easy to achieve 30 mph, you have to resort to 'plot and bash', including some of the traditional time consuming methods of navigation, such as spot heights, herringbones, km squares, tulips or even map references out of order. Tread carefully however, because a good proportion of your entry will be novice or at least inexperienced navigators, and you don't want them to get completelylost, thereby causing further PR problems as they traverse roads with dwellings which have not been visited. Also, this way they get bored and don't enjoy the event. Your skill as an organiser is in making your event difficult enough so that the most expert crews feel challenged, while the out and out novice can have a good time and understands what is required of him even though he cannot keep to the schedule.
It is more logical (and
safer) to run your traditional road navigation during the hours of darkness
and a pattern of these events has developed whereby they commence with
a daylight run of tests and regularity and then after a halt for a meal
the rally recommences with the traditional road navigation.
Once you have found the sites you have to design the tests, so that no one can average more than 30 mph over the length of the test. There are various ways of doing this and you will have your own ideas, but a few pertinent points are noted below.
The old adage that competitors make the best organisers applies to regularity sections more than any other aspect of rallying except, perhaps, the choice of route for night sections or autotests. Organisers must constantly bear in mind two main principles:
Accuracy
Take one example:
At 20 mph one mile takes 3 minutes or 180 seconds.
Or to put it another way -
If a competitor is out by more than 10 yards he is a second early or late. Unlike stages or test, any inaccuracy by the organiser is not 'the same for all crews'. There is only one correct time and that is spot on. Both earliness and lateness are penalised. Thus if an organiser's mileages are wrong the perfect crew is penalised, while the crew who gets it wrong can, gain.Complete accuracy is gained in a number of ways:
Choosing Average Speeds
This comes down to common sense. Take into account whether your event is run in the daylight or dark. 30 mph on narrow roads in the daytime is dangerous and crews who experience that will not enter your event a second time. Likewise an average speed much less than 30 mph on main roads is equally dangerous. Pick the average speed and road so that they are ideally matched and there is no need to 'press on' while it is not so slow to annoy other road users. Try running consistently at 20 mph or less to find out how really slow it is.
30mph......2 minutes per mile
24mph......2.5 minutes per mile
20mph......3 minutes per mile
17.2mph... 3.5 minutes per mile
15mph.......4minutes per mileThe slower you go the longer and longer it takes! Lorries and other road users do not appreciate rally cars going steadily at 20 mph on wide roads! If you wish to make your event more challenging require competitors to change their average speeds. This point need not be identified in the ground and there need not be an intermediate control at the change of speed point.
Controls and Route
Plan your intermediate controls where there is a maximum element of surprise - it is no use having one a competitor can see half a mile away as they have ample time to adjust their speed.Bear in mind that time controls on public roads in the UK must be at least 2 miles apart.
Consider also the form of route information for the regularity section and when it is to be handed out. Consider map references or tulips and whether to use difficult triangles or junctions. Be consistent how you drive these when measuring your route. If using the latter your mileages should accord with your regularity mileages.
Marshalling and Instructions
Never allow two cars to start a regularity section at the same time. Competitors will expect to start 'on the minute' and will appreciate a countdown 15-10-5-4-3-2-1-GO. If you do and those crews are good they should remain one yard from each other throughout the section! Regularities are not like stages or normal road sections when crews go at different speeds. Because of this you should not penalise crews for lateness at the start of regularities or you should brief Marshals to give an 'in' and 'out' time; with a delay allowance for crews who are held up through no fault of their own.
The Marshal at a timing point (IRTC) needs to be very experienced. He must either time crews on sight, when they pass an exact given spot, or when they stop on your line. You must instruct the Marshals and also let competitors know which method you are using. Bear in mind 10 yards can be one second! Your instructions to the Marshal as to the exact point of timing cars is vital to you organising a good event. Also let competitors know which method you are using. The Marshal should also give the crew a slip of paper showing the exact measured distance and correct time to his point. If there are a series of IRTCs this should be from the last IRTC and the start of the regularity section (should the previous IRTC be missing, etc).
The regulations for your event should give a 1 or 2 second or whatever penalty free 'window' at an IRTC. This will iron out any very minor discrepancy in marshalling or measuring distances which are bound to arise. The exact window is at your discretion and can reflect your confidence in people good at arithmetic. your organisational ability to get it as right as possible.
Timing to the Minute or Second
Timing a regularity to the minute is not an easy solution when you have a series of IRTCS! Read K 17.8 and K 17.5.1 in particular, i.e. 9 minutes 59 seconds is recorded as 09 minutes. Now read K 15.4 which states 'the time of arrival at any Intermediate Time Control ... with the time of arrival at the immediate preceding Time Control'. The theory behind this is that it prevents crews speeding to make up lost time. Once time is lost it cannot be recovered under the Statutory Regulations (the law) covering rallying. What this means is that if you are timing a regularity to the full minute you must place your controls at the exact point where competitors are due on a full minute. Failure to organise your event in this way can result in two things. Firstly competitors must speed to immediately recover the amount they are into the minute (59 seconds in the case of K 17.5.1). This makes the event technically illegal. Or it becomes a lottery every time the accumulated seconds add up to an extra minute.
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