Rally cars rule rural back roads
For 46 years, small Ontario town has played host to pro racers
The small crowd assembled by the side of the snowy road is calm, murmuring softly to one another as if to preserve the quiet of the forest. It’s peaceful here, as if this blanket of snow deadens any noise.
But there is something more at play here: an underlying sense of anticipation, a buzz from the crowd. They’re excited, and they’re not here to birdwatch.
Then, a faint sound can be heard off in the distance, and one by one, the people turn their heads and crane their necks down the road. “Car!” someone yells. Then you see it, in all its fury. The white and blue Subaru, sideways at first, straightens out and picks up speed heading toward the assembled, its turbocharged flat-four-cylinder shattering the peace of the forest. The spitting scream also fuels the crowd, and as the car gets air under all four wheels as it sails over a hill, the spectators scream and cheer for a driver and co-driver who can’t possibly hear them.
Welcome to the Rally of the Tall Pines, in Bancroft, Ont. Held in late November, it’s the penultimate round of seven events with the Canadian Rally Championship, and it’s been a part of the rallying scene in this country for the past 46 years.
If you’ve never been to a car rally, imagine it’s like following your favourite golfer at a PGA event from hole to hole, only on a much grander scale — and a lot more exciting, with a lot more noise.
Here, there are 17 separate race stages where 38 different cars — at least, that’s how many started this race — will hurtle around corners, seeming to defy laws of physics to stay on the road. Not surprisingly, not everyone will be successful at this.
To do their best to help keep them on the road, race teams, from the giant Subaru Canada to the smallest private teams here, will have some adjustments to make on the cars come Saturday race day.
“It’s weather-dependent, right off the get-go,” says Gord Ryall in the Subaru Canada service area.
Ryall is with Rocket Racing, the Squamish, B.C.-based garage that builds and runs Subaru’s team, and today he’s the No. 1 technician at the rally for the team’s star driver, Antoine L’Estage. He’s looking at the temperature and road conditions for race day.
“Suspension settings, alignment settings are the two top things. Tire strategy is huge, too. We’ll bring something for every condition; we brought gravel tires, which we don’t need today. We have a cross between gravel and snow tires, and often for this event we’ll bring an ice tire.
“This is different than any year we’ve seen; there’s not a lot of snow, and it’s getting through to the gravel. So the gravel/snow combo really is the tire of the day.”
There are three service intervals during the day, where each car can have a maximum of 20 minutes’ worth of repairs, tire changes or adjustments by mechanics. Some of the cars could use a lot more time, considering the dings, broken wheels, lost bumpers and other battle scars that mark their rough rides, though taking that extra time will be penalized on the time sheet.
Ian Topping, from Virginia, is the driver for the No. 14 Subaru BRZ. Just a few yards from the finish line of the very first stage, his right rear wheel caught a large bump just off the road, sending the car careering into a tree and putting a v-notch right behind the right front wheel.
“I hope they can fix this,” he says dejectedly, standing in the snow. “It would be a shame to come all this way and finish like this.”
While it takes a few hours, his team does get the car back on the road. Others will have their event end early; of the 38 cars that started, 14 are sidelined before the last stage.
At the end, it’s Subaru Canada’s L’Estage, along with co-driver Darren Garrod, who beat the visiting Subaru U.S.A. team of Travis Pastrana and Robbie Durant for the overall title.
L’Estage also won the Big White Rally on Dec. 10 and 11, the last rally of the season, near Kelowna, B.C., making him the champion for the eighth time in his career.
In Bancroft, both nature and local residents have taken back these country roads, and the peace of the forest has once again returned.
Come next November — like every year since 1971 in this area — this sleepy little town of around 3,400 people will once again welcome the race cars amid its towering pines.