RBC -

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

Photos	William	Dennis 1	Dennis 2	August 1
	August 2

Stories	Vancouver Sun Story	Ron Sorem

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The Vancouver Sun

DRIVING

www.driving.ca

Scrapbook revived TBird rally

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.

	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

"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.
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.)
	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

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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