Rallying in New England

Sports car rallying, as practiced in the northeastern US, was primarily a type referred to as TSD (for Time, Speed, Distance). It was a technical competition whereby the car followed a set of written instructions which determined the route - typically over public roads. The instructions also specified the speed to travel - always within speed limits. At points along the route were checkpoints whose positions were precisely measured and, given a specified speed, the time of arrival at a checkpoint could be calculated. The object for the rally team was to arrive neither early or late but precisely on time (to the nearest 100th of a minute). The challenge was that the checkpoint's position was not known to the rally team until they encountered it enroute so the team had to continuously calculate the time of arrival and drive to match.

Checkpoints were always a scene of feverish activity bordering on chaos as you can see in this photo of Mark Rerick (in the hat) and myself. (Date and event unknown.)

The photo below is from Cape Codders Courageous XXVI (April, 1976) where I was Chief of Controls. That's Marsha Frausel in the car keeping warm.