Sports Car - November 2011

Mike Bennett (left), Detroit Region’s RoadRally school lead instructor, Mark Henderson (center), event chairman, and John Fishbeck (right), the school’s practice events rallymaster.

changes. The rally school half-hour registration period began at 10 a.m., followed by the first classroom session. Although the paper handouts gave way to transparencies quite a few years ago, Fishbeck provided the latest technology update to a PowerPoint presentation run on a flat-panel television.

Attendance at the school has varied from 15 to 40 students with a record 65 showing up at Sterling Heights one year. This year’s 15 students started with the traditional “What is a TSD car RoadRally and how to do it,” notes Henderson. Nearly all students who have attended the school over the years had never run a RoadRally.

Following the initial classroom session, students made their first run on the rally route trying to just follow the course. Henderson noticed a new, red “Mini Cooper on steroids” driven by Jill Raymer. “It sat well off the ground with rally lights up front and rally tires, to boot!” She attended without a navigator, but David Harkcom offered to ride along on the practice rally.

Henderson explained that the rally
was less than an hour long. Even
though it was a course following run,
in keeping with rally tradition, cars
were sent out at one-minute intervals.
Students returned with lots of
conversations and questions. “A quick
debriefing and [question and answer]
session ended with lunch.”
The afternoon began with
instructors explaining how to keep the
car on time while running a RoadRally.
That hour of instruction ended with a
second trip over the practice rally route,
this time attempting to stay on course
and on time. More experienced “rally
regulars were at the out markers to
answer questions from the students,”
adds Henderson. After returning to the
event headquarters, the event was
discussed, participant questions
answered, scoring completed and the
informal results obtained. The event
concluded before 4 p.m.

ON RALLYING
ROADRALLY BY RICK BEA T TIE
CONTINUING
EDUCATION

Not many SCCA regions can claim an annual event that has been staged continuously for 30 years. Detroit Region’s RoadRally program can claim an unexpected one. For at least 20 years, and the total may be closer to 30, the region has presented an annual rally school. While the stated purpose is teaching people the sport of RoadRallying, its durability has much to do with it being an event for all the region’s RoadRally competitors.

The school is a midday event of classroom instruction and driving time on a practice RoadRally. For the past three years, the location of the event headquarters necessitated running the practice rally in an area of high traffic congestion and metropolitan buildup. Also, the paved roads and multiple traffic lights were not typical of Detroit Region events.

Mark Henderson has nearly 40 years of experience as an Equipped Class competitor. He took over the chairmanship for this year’s March 26 event in the traditional way; he brought these location issues to the attention of the organizers who then offered him the job. Ken Wiedbusch, the region rally director, and Mike Bennett, the rally school chairman, “both politely asked me if I would be interested in taking the rally school in a new direction,” relates Henderson. John Fishbeck agreed to write the rally and Bennett agreed to continue as chief instructor.

Henderson knew that “the rally school, like all RoadRally events, required significant time and effort preparing materials, promoting the event, pre-running the rally route and meeting various deadlines.” Promotion alone required flyers to be sent out and postings made to numerous websites and message forums. Through the committee’s contacts with local colleges, flyers were sent to campus sports car and racing clubs for posting on their websites.

The event has had its headquarters all over southeast Michigan. Moving the venue from Sterling Heights, Mich., to a restaurant north of Ann Arbor allowed Fishbeck to write the rally for typical TSD rally roads in the Pinckney State Recreation Area.