Thanks for your assistance in making the record-breaking 2011 Rally of the Tall Pines a great success. Reord number of entries; record number of workers and first live telecast of a North American rally event, which by the way you can see on Flatovercrest -
www.flatovercrest.com With 59 entries it was amazing that we never fell seriously behind schedule.
On Thursday and Friday over 90 of you helped with event preparation, competitor recce and Shakedown. Saturday saw 232! Thanks especially to the dozen who helped clean up today in the rain. Special thanks also to Ian Wright who took over the role of event Coordinator.
With the unseasonably warm weather, the roads were soft and became deeply rutted in places, making for an extreme challenge to cars and competitors. In fact I have just arranged to have a local logging company begin grading all the roads early tomorrow morning.
In an effort to provide more real-time scoring on the internet, we tried an experiment in calling in all start/finish times from the stages car by car. While we were successful in the scoring effort, it imposed a challenge to the regular operational communications. We will be looking at alternatives to that for next year.
There were a number of epic battles amongst the competitors. With L’Estage/Richard, Richard/Ockwell, Crazy Leo/Brady and Higgins/Drew all determined to grab 1st Overall, it was a great contest in the early stages until mechanical issues took out two of those teams and flat tires impacted as well. In the end Leo Urlichich/Martin Brady edged out Higgins/Drew for their first-ever National win. An equally intense battle saw Nick & Kelly Mathew win the OPRC portion, thus clinching the OPRC championship. Antoine and Nathlaie had already locked up the CRC championship at the Pacific Forest Rally in October. You can check out the full Results at
http://www.rallyscoring.com/results/2011/TallPines/index.htm Your comments and constructive criticism of ways to improve the event are always welcome. I am particularly interested in hearing from those of you who worked directly with the new electronic timing clocks – whether you worked Starts or Finishes and any comments about your experience.
See you on November 23-24, 2012. Please mark it on your calendar now.
Thanks again.
Ross Wood, Clerk of the Course