What is an historic regularity rally ?
The Princesses’ Rally is a “regularity” event
(focused on pacing and navigational skills)
It is listed on the French Motor Sport Federation’s official events calendar (FFSA - Fédération Française du Sport Automobile). Participants from France as well as those from all over the world are welcome. The event lasts 5 days – including 5 legs covering 300 to 350 km per day, mainly along small roads across the French countryside (major motorways are obviously of no interest for this type of event, except perhaps to get from one interesting area to another). Like most modern rallies, regularity events include connecting legs (liaisons), but also "special" legs called Regularity Sectors. Regularity means maintaining a given average speed set forth by the event’s organizers based on the age of your vehicle.Example
if you have a Triumph from the 1960s, your average speed will be set at 50 km/h. You will know where the starting line is, but not the finish, which will be kept secret to help make sure you keep to the set average speed of 50 km/h. You will follow the guidelines set forth in your road-book, keeping track with a stop watch and a “retro-trip” (mechanical tripmaster) which will enable you to know the partial and overall distances. The co-pilot plays a key role in this event since she’s the one to keep the driver on track, guiding her with feedback such as, “speed up here, we’re running behind; slow down now, we’re ahead of schedule; hold the pace here, we’re perfectly in synch with our set average”. The road-book is very precise. It indicates the partial « mileage » as well as the running total, a drawing of the box, and the ideal timing to hit for each mark.Go to: How to use your road-book ?
The recording system is specially designed for regularity rallies. The stop watch adapts to the computer chip in the log book which each controller beeps into at the established check points (or “time checks” TCs or CHs) or at each start and finish of a regularity sector (RS or SR). This procedure enables you to report your own times each noon and evening to the controlling steward who will download the data from the computer chip and print out your times and average speeds. This way, you will know each midday exactly what you’ve done in terms of timing and you can determine the seconds and eventual penalty points accrued (or not). Although this might seem a bit complex, it is in fact quite efficient and rather convenient for both the participants and the organizers as well.
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