"Touring" Rallies

[daffyflyer]

Wondering if anyone had done any "Touring" Rallies, e.g the Targa Tour, or the Adelaide Hills Thoroughbred Challenge

The broad concept seems to be non-competitive, closed roads, typically speed limited to around 140kph and with an average speed limit/target time.

This kind of things looks like exactly what I'd like to do, given all that I really want is a chance to drive some nice roads at a quick pace with the road to myself, I'm not bothered about competition really, and I'm in no way game to attack those sort of roads at race pace!

The ones I have spotted so far are:

Various Victorian ones run by http://www.mountainmotorsports.com.au/ - All look good, but they're shocking at updating the website - some places suggest the Baw Baw sprint is cancelled, and yet there is no mention of it on that website, so I wonder if they even still exist!

The Targa Tassie Tour - Looks great but realistically a $7k+ proposition

Adelaide Hills Thoroughbred Challenge - Looks awesome, paticularly with the "not too slow, not too fast" scoring system so there actually is some competition.


Can any one recommend anything else of this nature, or has anyone here done one of these events?

[daffyflyer]

Hmm no reply to my email to the mountainmotorsports guys - I suspect they may not actually exist anymore..

[deviant]

I think that in this day and age of insurance and risk assesments and countless laws, rules and regulations concerning closing roads and having officials and medical people and...and...and...there are very few touring rallies outisde of the touring classes in official Targa and Dutton events now, it's just to hard to set up.

They say non-competitive but they can be anything but. You have to have an absolute whip of a maths brain in the passenger seat and you have to know your car incredibly well to 'know' when you are close to your target average speeds. Despite not needing much safety gear and the max speed limit of 140KMH you still need to be fairly 'on it' to keep to hit the average speeds needed...put it this way...if you slow down for a corner you are lowering your average! If you get mid point to a stage and you are down on your target or if the clock is running out and you are still a couple of KMS off the end of the stage you need to make that speed up somehow!

[daffyflyer]

Yes, it is rather hard to run an event like that in this day and age I should think.


I'm sure they are fairly competitive, but they don't usually involve doing 200kph plus through trees, which is something I'd like to avoid!

Im in no way out to win anything, It'd just be great to have a chance to have a bit of a go at some closed roads

[psquire45]

we used to do things similar to these in the US on public roads late at night but they were called time, speed, distance rally's

it was all quite legal as the average speeds / timing never required that you would have to be driving over the posted speed limit. they were actually quite a bit of fun id love to get back into something like this in australia. but i think youd probably have to call it a navigational excersise or something as the term rally would probably get people off side on public roads

http://www.tsdroadrally.com/ itd be great to organise something similar here however im just not sure on the legalities

[Locutus]

i've wanted to check this one out for a while now, but haven't gotten around to it yet:
http://www.classicrallyclub.com.au

it's based in NSW though.