Lend us a hand?

All good things must come to an end, and so it is with our 2025 Atlantic Region Motor Sports (ARMS) road rally season. For the first time in recent memory, we conducted five events on various surfaces and using both traditional and Richta/GPS scoring methods. We welcomed a number of new novice crews (all of whom performed amazingly well) and enjoyed the company and competition from a number of experienced crews possessing long motorsport histories. I think I speak for the entire RRDG when I say we were overjoyed with this past season. But let’s talk about those RRDG founding members for a minute, shall we?

We assembled this group back in the late days of 2024 to try to rejuvenate the sport of road rally in the region. We’re all long-term road rally and performance rally enthusiasts, volunteers, and/or competitors. I could probably total the number of years of road rally experience extant within this group but I’d need an abacus to do so.

The gaining of all this experience and knowledge doesn’t happen overnight. If you look at the age of our members you’ll find all of us are sporting signs of grey, and a few of us are either in our 70s or knocking on the door. Speaking for myself, I’m not as spry as I used to be and my endurance, reflexes and ability to spend long hours in a car (in either seat) have deteriorated.

All this to say: we need younger blood. Looking forward to 2026, we’re not sure if we can maintain that five-rally series we had in 2025. Retirement does not equal bags of expendable time, a lesson you’ll all learn sooner or later, if you haven’t already. The number of rallies we held in 2025 was a good, manageable number but another couple would be welcome.

And so, we look for new rallymasters to coordinate and organize rallies, and to take some of the pressure off the shoulders of us “old guys.” It was ever thus. But as I look forward to how we want to sustain road rallying in the future and at my colleagues in the RRDG, it’s becoming more important with each passing year.

We would like nothing more than to pass on some of this knowledge to a new cadre of rallymasters who can take the sport to the next level. Online tools such as Google Maps and plotaroute.com have made preliminary route selection much easier. The advent of the Richta Rally system has simplified CP placement and has reduced (if not eliminated) the need to beat the bushes for volunteer CP crews. I submit that younger minds have creative solutions to the issue of making road rally more accessible and interesting to the general public.

So let’s keep a good thing going. Consider it a plea if you wish – whatever works is fine with me. If you’ve ever wondered how to give back to this sport we all love and would like more information on how to organize a road rally, reach out to us. We can walk you through the process step-by-step and provide all the support, contacts, and skid-greasing you need to conduct a successful rally. You’ll also join us old guys in the RRDG and be an integral part of our monthly Zoom calls and help shape the future of road rally in the ARMS region.

Give it some thought. We’d love to have you aboard. Send us a comment or email us at roadrallyatlantic@proton.me if you need more information.

As always – thanks for reading. We’ll return in the near future with a preview of the 2026 season to come and an update on the Rally of the Midwinter Moon.

Rally on!