Rallying is a wide-ranging form of motorsport with various competitive motoring elements such as speed tests (sometimes called rally racing in the United States), navigation tests, or the ability to reach waypoints or a destination at a prescribed time or average speed. Rallies may be short in the form of trials at a single venue, or several thousand miles long in an cross-country rally.
Depending on the format, rallies may be organised on private or public roads, open or closed to traffic, or off-road in the form of cross country or rally-raid. Competitors can use production vehicles, which must be road-legal if being used on open roads, or specially built competition vehicles suited to crossing specific terrain.
In most cases rallying distinguishes itself from other forms of motorsport by not running directly against other competitors over laps of a circuit, but instead in a point-to-point format in which participants leave at regular intervals from one or more start points.
The FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) is an international rally championship which features notable events such as the Monte Carlo Rally, Rally Finland and Safari Rally. The Dakar Rally is the most notable featuring in the World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC), an off-road rally raid series.
Rally types Rallies generally fall under two categories, road rallies and cross-country (off-road) rallies. Rally types using a mix of categories also exist.
Road rallies Road rallies are the original form held on public highways open to traffic. In its annually published International Sporting Code, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) includes the following definition of rally:
Speed competitions
Road rallies must use special stages where speed is used to determine the classification of the rally's competitors; the quickest time to complete the special stages wins the rally. These are sections of road closed to traffic and authorised to be used for speed tests. Special stages are linked by open roads where navigation, timekeeping, and road traffic law rules must be followed. These open road sections are sometimes called transport stages, somewhat complementing special stages in the make-up of a stage rally.
These are the most common format of professional rallies and rally championships. The FIA organises the World Rally Championship, Regional Rally Championships, most notably the European Rally Championship; and many countries' motorsport governing bodies organise domestic rallying championships using speed competitions. The stages may vary from flat asphalt and mountain passes to rough forest tracks, from ice and snow to desert sand, each chosen to provide a challenge for the crew and a test of the car's performance and reliability. A single-venue rally takes place without the need for public road sections though the format and rules remain.
In the wake of the ever more advanced rally cars of the late 20th and 21st century is a trend towards historic rallying (also known as classic rallying), in which older cars can continue to rally.UK HRCR's Historic Road Rally Retrieved 13 August 2006Historic Rally Association (Australia) Retrieved 13 August 2006 Historic rallies are usually regularity rallies with no speed tests arranged. This discipline attracts some former professional drivers back into the sport. Other drivers started their competition careers in historic rallying.
Regularity rally In an exclusively regularity rally, the aim is to adhere to the itinerary by following the route and arriving and departing at checkpoints at the prescribed time, with penalties applied to entrants who arrive early, late or who deviate from the route. The entrants with the fewest penalties at the end of the rally are the winners. In trying to maintain the set average speed/s, the reliability of the vehicle, and the ability of the crew to drive, navigate and follow the itinerary is tested. Most non-regularity rally itineraries follow this base structure even where driving tests or special stages are used, however these would not then be described as a regularity rally.
Time-Speed-Distance (TSD rally) Similar to a regularity rally, the itinerary may advise a time and/or distance, or may only advise a target average speed with no indication where the checkpoints may be.
Navigational rally The ability of the crew to follow road signs or directions of varying depth of information is tested.
Gimmick rallies Gimmick rallies have less of a concern on timekeeping or driving ability and include other fun and games. Examples include:
Monte-Carlo styles (Monte Carlo, Pan Am, Pan Carlo, Continental) logic observation treasure hunts
These rallies are primarily amateur events.Stage rallying simply divides the route from the start to the finish of any rally into stages, not necessarily exclusively for speed tests on special stages. Each stage may have different targets or rules attached. In the FIA ecoRally Cup for example, energy performance is measured on regularity stages ran in conformity with the clock. A gimmick rally may have stages with varying difficulty of the puzzle element.
Cross-country rallies
Also commonly known by its types rally-raid or baja; cross-country rallies take place mostly off-road using similar competitive elements to road and special stage rallying competitions. When off-road, waypoints and markers are set using GPS systems, although competitors cannot use GPS for navigation. Crews must choose how best to cross the terrain to the next waypoint whilst respecting the navigational instructions provided in the roadbook. The challenge is mostly navigational and endurance. The World Rally-Raid Championship was inaugurated in 2022, including the annual Dakar Rally in its calendar, with joint sanctioning by the FIA and FIM.
Hill rally Hill rallies are a type of cross-country event found in the United Kingdom and defined and governed by Motorsport UK.
Touring assembly Assemblies of car enthusiasts and their vehicles may still colloquially be called rallies, even if they involve merely the task of getting to the location (often on a trailer). However, static assemblies that simply 'meet' (akin to a caravan or steam rally) are not considered a form of motorsport. A touring assembly may have an organised route and simple passage controls but not any form of competition held or prizes given. One example, the Gumball 3000, which calls itself a rally not a race', explicitly states in its terms that no form of competition between participants must take place. The FIA defined this activity under 'rally of the touring kind' at least until 2007, though have now separated the term 'Touring Assembly' without using the word rally in its definition.
Rally derivatives and relatives
Trials Hillclimbing: Though not a form of rally, hillclimbing could be described in related terms as one special stage that climbs a hill. Cars start at intervals from one start point to one finish point. This discipline allows for many types of vehicles including single-seaters and can be arranged at one venue. Autocross: Similar to hillclimbing, cars also start at intervals and are timed to complete a course, usually temporary and marked out with cones with the intent of demanding good car handling rather than speed. Cars can be single-seaters with roll cages used in crosskart racing. Rallysprint: Very condensed form of trials-type driving with no particular global definition. Usually run with touring cars at single venues or a single stage without road sections, co-drivers or itineraries, and competitors may even switch cars depending on the agreed rules of competition. Gymkhana/Autoslalom: Similar to autocross but with very precise and extravagant handling requirements such as donuts and drifting.
Racing Rallycross: Created for ITV's World of Sport in 1967, where rally drivers were allowed to directly compete in groups of four in short sprint races on a circuit. Rallycross has grown to have FIA World and European Championships with specifically developed cars that out-power standard rally cars. Formula Rally: Originating as part of the Bologna Motor Show in Italy, in December 1985, was a show race of rally drivers in an arena occupied by around 50,000 spectators, a "Mickey Mouse Course" had been created, on which two players (starting from different starting places) competed for the overall victory in the final through a knock-out system over preliminary rounds, quarter-finals and semi-finals. Formula Rally is practiced mostly in Italy and Germany. Ice racing: The ice races of the Andros Trophy, run in France, have their roots in rallying. As early as the 1970s, car ice races were contested in the French Maritime Alps in the winter sports centres of Chamonix (24h sur Glace de Chamonix) and Serre Chevalier with rally cars that were still relatively tame at the time. Later, the participants developed far more efficient vehicles for this purpose; for the Andros trophy almost exclusively very potent prototypes with all-wheel drive and synchronous steering of the front and rear wheels. Enduro: A similar, but not identical sporting form to rally for motorcycles.
History
Etymology The word 'rally' comes from the French verb rallier', meaning to reunite or regroup urgently during a battle. It has been in use at least since the seventeenth century, and continues to mean to synergise with haste for a purpose. By the time of the invention of the motor car, it was in use as a noun to define the organised mass gathering of people, not to protest or demonstrate, but to promote or celebrate a social, political or religious cause. Motor-car rallies were probably being arranged as motor clubs, and automobile associations were beginning to form shortly after the first motor cars were being produced.
Events called "auto rallies" were common in the USA in the early twentieth century for the purpose of political caucusing, but many of them were coincidentally aimed at motorists who could attend in convenient fashion rather than being motoring rallies. One early example of a true motor rally, the 1909 Auto Rally Day in Denison, Iowa, United States, gathered approximately 100 vehicles owned by local residents for no other real reason than to give rides to members of the public, using fuel paid for by local businessmen who hoped the event would help sell cars.
In the case of the 1910 Good Roads Rally held in Charleston, South Carolina, a rally was organised to publicise the need for better roads. The rally itself had no competition, and most vehicles were expected to be parked for its duration. The programme included a vehicle parade and a visit to some ongoing roadworks, with food, drink, dancing and music also arranged. However, the Automobile Club of Columbia, who had members attending the event, independently organised their own road competition to contest on the journey between the two cities. A prize of $10 was awarded to the motorist "approximating the most ideal schedule" between two secret points along the route and who had "the most nearly correct idea of a pleasant and sensible pleasure tour" between the two cities. This format of competition itself would later become known as a 'regularity rally'. It wasn't at the time, but the trophy and prize were awarded at the rally.