Best Treatment for Rally Withdrawal? More RALLY.

With the 2010 Pacific Forest Rally in the history books, the Big White Rally Weekend will be the next rally fix in BC.  The call for volunteers will be out soon, followed by regulations.  We are looking especially for some 4×4 owners who can help with course closing and scrutineers to inspect the rally cars.

As a break from all the paperwork, the rally weekend organizers took to the air recently in search of new roads for the winter stage rally.  The Gem Lake stage, a favourite of the rally teams who came to the first annual event, looks as fantastic from the air as it does from behind the wheel of a rally car:

Gem Lake Stage Hairpins, Aerial View

Now all it needs is a lot of snow!  Are there any rally teams who might try to improve their pacenotes using this photo?  Volunteers and competitors should watch the site for more info in the next week.  We’d love to see 20 rally teams at the event this year.  Contact jennifer@rallybc.com with any questions regarding the Big White Rally Weekend.

2010 Big White Rally Planning Underway

Here we go!! Initial road scouting for the 2010 edition of the Big White Winter Rally has begun.  The rally is scheduled for the tentative opening weekend on the hill again this year, so everyone coming up for the first day will see the rally and snowX cars in action.  The Big White Winter Rally has been added as the final event in the Pacific Northwest Rally Championship, a US regional series.

More to come… soon!

World Rally Sport Big White Video

Another awesome compilation! Many thanks to World Rally Sport for coming out and putting this together. See it in HD on YouTube!

2009 Big White Rally Weekend Video

Compilation of photos & video from the Big White Rally Weekend – Dec 4-6, 2009 from in and around Big White Ski Resort, south of Kelowna, BC.

Photography & Videography by Louis Prussner, Matthew Bean, and Chris Martin.

Updated to HD version, Jan 13. Click here to view in HD.

Final Service Update

The rally cars are returning from the Gem Lake stage as dusk is falling.  The stage schedule has been shortened, eliminating the Ridge Rocket Stage entirely.  The Happy Valley Super Special has been postponed to the final stage, to give the teams as much daylight as possible for the final run of Gem.

Here are the updated, unofficial results up to the end of stage 8, with revisions in snowX times:

1. Schmidtke / Vokes 52:58.1

2. Tezcan / Neumann 53:10.5

3. Kertes / Fudalej 59:32.3

4. Ross / Norkus 1:07:53.5

5. MJB / Hall 1:15:18.3

6. Bruce / Monasch 1:31:45.1

7. Dahl / Burress 1:52:34.4

8. Morley / Parkerton 1:53:08.8

Snowy MidDay Service Update

The 2009 Big White Rally Weekend is in progress; the public snowX has been running all morning, and just resumed after a break to let the rally cars give the icy course a try.  The snow is falling again, and the course is being adapted to suit the conditions.

Here are the unofficial Big White Winter Regional Rally results to the end of stage five:

1. Schmidtke/Vokes 25:53.3

2. Tezcan / Neumann 26.12.3

3. Kertes / Fudalej 30:12.6

4. Ross / Norkus 39:33.4

5. MJB / Hall 46:47.7

Car 3, Grochowski / Junnila, suffered engine failure early in the event and DNF’d.  Car 4, Bruce / Monasch, and the two US teams spent so much time in the snowbanks during the morning section that they came into the first super special over the max late time.  The situation was evaluated by the event organizers and Stewards, who made the decision to establish an extended snow rally max late time of 1h, allowing the teams to continue.

Valley Mitsubishi SnowX Fastest Laps

1. Tony Penny Forester 85.448

2. James Aubert Impreza 89.700

3. Tim Liong Impreza 96.515

The spectator area is busy, and the event is turning out to be a fun, flexible, challenging pure winter snow rally.  Some of the stages are reported to be a bit icy, but in the next section the teams will be taking on the snowy Gem Lake stage, a 13km descent into the forest between snowbanks as high as the windows, with six hairpins at its centre.