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2005
Thunderbird Rally
February
19/20, 2005
34th
Thunderbird Rally -- February 19-20,
2005
Merritt - Kelowna - Merritt
Round 1 of the 2005 BC TSD Rally Championship
Hosted by the West Coast Rally Association |
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The
Vancouver Sun |
DRIVING |
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A UBC photo
collection inspired Paul Westwick to get a beloved
event back on the road |
Isabel Nanton
Special to the Sun |
Friday, February 18, 2005 |
It isn't often that a club
scrapbook revives a dormant sporting event but
this is just what happened when Paul Westwick
opened the University of B.C. Rally Club photo
album and started reading. |
While studying computer science
at UBC, Westwick had joined the UBC sports car club
in 1986 at a time when it was basically a solo club,
whose members drove their sports cars through cones
in parking lots. |
"However they were rapidly
running out of parking lots on campus where they
could hold their events, which was pretty depressing.
Then, in the midst of all this, I came across the
old club scrapbook which contains all these photos
and stories from Thunderbird rallies of the '60s,
and it just looked way, way too much fun." |
Since its inception in 1957,
Thunderbird (no relation to the Ford, but rather
one of the UBC sporting mascots) had been B.C.'s
premier winter driver's rally until it died in the
mid-'70s. |
Fired up by the photos and
memories, Westwick attended a Washington State rally
that fall, mentioned he was thinking of reviving
Thunderbird and "immediately all these stories
came out, because half the people in that rally
had entered TBird rallies in the '60s and '70s --
and were still talking about them." |
TBird is that kind of event. |
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With
more than 50 teams entered for this year's
course, which runs this weekend from Merritt-Kelowna-Meritt,
utilizing mainly backcountry snowy forest
and ranch access roads, TBird 34 is round
one of the seven-event 2005 B.C. TSD (Time
Speed Distance) Rally Championships |
And the Americans
are still coming on up to share in this classic
example of cross-border rally camaraderie.
They come from as far away as Sacramento and
as close as the father-driver, daughter- (aged
14) navigator team who haul in from Bainbridge
Island off Seattle. |
William McRae and David
Harms lead Mike Palm and Garth Hales, Totem
Rally,
November 2004. Paul Westwick/Special
to the Sun |
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"One of the great characters
who enters year after year," says Westwick,
"is Satch Carlson, formerly of Alaska, now
of Oregon. A couple of years ago he was entered
in an early '70s Saab Sonett, which is a tiny plastic
two-seater. He ended up second that year and he
blamed it on the fact that his navigator took two
pushes to get him out of the snowbank, instead of
one! Because they really were that close to the
win." |
Good
humour is the order of the day and though
the TBird spirit is competitive, teams participate
to achieve their own personal bests, rather
than attempting to crush the competition. |
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Divided into five classes (unlimited,
calculator, paper, novice and historic), competitors
take on the mainly snow-packed roads in a
variety of vehicles ranging from VW Beetles
to cars like the 1988 BMW 325ix that Satch
Carlson will pilot this year and the 1988
Mazda 323 GTX driven and navigated by father-son
team Peter Ryce and Tim Ryce (who also navigated
the successful sole Canadian entry in the
2003 East African Classic Safari rally.) |
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Satch Carlson and Russ Kraushaar in Saab
Sonett in front of McRae and Harms in Martini
Club de Paris Type 1 VW Beetle, Tbird 2003 |
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TSD rallies,
as opposed to mainstream rallies, have much more
to do with the timing and the math, than the car.
While it helps to have a capable car (all recent
wins have been in 4X4 vehicles; the last time a
two-wheel-drive car won was in 1992) -- TSD rallies
hinge on navigator competence, as well as driver
skill. |
Timing is to the second on
the "regularities" (timed sections of
the course) -- teams are penalized equally for being
seconds over or seconds under the designated time.
Typically the fastest speed on a straight open section
of a regularity is 72 km/h. Often in the unlimited
class, 10 to 15 points (seconds) can separate the
top competitors over a 500-km route. The best part
of this type of rally is that losing a bunch of
time in a snowbank only counts for that regularity. |
Once the checkpoint is passed
and points deducted for ditch time, the team starts
with a clean slate for the next regularity. |
Navigational equipment decides
which class a TBird team will compete in. The top
teams sport specialized rally computers in the unlimited
class while calculator class typically use hand
calculators to do what the computer is doing for
unlimited competitors. |
Historic category drivers
can either use period calculation equipment or hand
calculators, while the paper category teams are
not allowed any sort of calculation equipment, relying
solely on paper calculations to do the timing. |
Novice class is for teams
who have not competed in more than three TSDs, while
another category, introduced in 1993, encourages
folk to compete in pre-1974 vehicles. These have
included old 850 two-stroke Saabs, old Cortinas,
original VW Beetles and, this year, a 1967 Mini
Cooper. |
Rules and categories aside,
TBird remains what it has always claimed to be,
a premier winter driving event that pits crews against
themselves to better their personal bests. Navigators
must display grace under pressure, keeping their
minds straight while the car is bouncing around,
concentrating on their job at the same time as the
driver is working to keep the car pointed in the
same direction on the snow-packed roads. |
Camaraderie is key. Volunteers
time the regularities. Two sweeper cars travel at
the rear of the field to help extricate those who
might have skidded into a snowbank. |
"We did have one corner
two or three years ago," says Westwick, "where
I think 10 per cent of the field ended up in the
snowbank, but most used their shovels and were out
in a couple of minutes. Sometimes they will help
each other out. If you are just nosed into the bank
and good to go and have got your tow strap hooked
up, in some cases the next car will stop, hook it
up, and whip you off." |
"DNFs (Did Not Finishes)
are rare," he adds, "typically everybody
drives their car home." A purse of $750 covers
the field. "Nobody does it for the money,"
quips Westwick, "the most anybody is going
to make is their entry fee back." |
Definitely not a sprint, but
a driving event that takes planning, maturity and
strategy, TBird, like all prime sporting events,
is also all about the stories. |
One classic yarn originated
with the first TBird event that Westwick mapped
when reviving the winter rally. |
"Maybe it was part of
the arrogance of youth, but we decided to rebuild
the course. We didn't have any of the old route
books, but just got out all the interior topographic
maps and started working through the roads. |
We went exploring and got
ourselves thoroughly stuck in the middle of the
forest several times, trying to find the roads
that would work," Westwick continues. |
"In the event, we
had a section of the road which mistakenly sent
several competitors down skidder tracks. |
"The mileage was exactly
right for the skidder track, and was completely
wrong for the road." |
"So an American team
got to the top of this road with this gap in the
trees. 'Turn now!' his navigator said. 'This isn't
a road,' said the driver. 'Oh, no, no, no' replied
the navigator, 'Canadians always do this, it will
be easy the whole way through and then, just near
the end, they give you a killer.' With that they
proceeded down the skidder road." |
Isabel
Nanton is a Vancouver freelance writer and rally
enthusiast. |
WHAT IS A RALLY?: |
Navigational rallying has
been practised in Canada since the early 1950s,
and tests both driver and navigator. Instead of
running flat out, navigational events use the Time-Speed-Distance
(TSD) formula. |
In a TSD section, a particular
average speed is listed and the teams must drive
as close as possible to that speed. Checkpoints
are placed at unknown locations in the TSD section
and teams are penalized for passing them early or
late. Average speeds are always within posted speed
limits, and the road is not closed to the public,
so teams must obey all traffic laws. |
The route usually follows
narrow winding forestry roads, ranch roads and the
like. Route finding is generally not difficult,
but the navigator has a lot of work to do to keep
the driver on time. |
Source:
Paul Westwick, Thunderbird Rally coordinator |
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