A 50-year tradition continued on Friday evening, January 7, 2022. A group of rally enthusiasts, from all over the Southern California area, gathered in a chilly parking lot in Mission Hills, CA, near the north end of the San Fernando Valley for the latest edition of the First Friday Niter Road Rally.
The Rallymaster was Joe Akerman, who also ran the preview. Larry Scholnick ran sweep after handling Registration and Novice Orientation, and Jeanne English handled scoring and map watching on the Richta app to keep cars on course. Kudos again to Rich Bireta for his Richta GPS family of scoring apps and its handy map feature.
Having put the word out heavily on Motorsportsreg, posting on local marque club websites and Facebook pages, we were extremely pleased to have 14 cars turn out. It was the best attendance we’ve had in a while.
The rally was a modified Monte Carlo, with standard TSD instructions (although without assigned speeds) and time and mileage given to all checkpoints. The object, of course, was to cross the timing line at the time specified in the RIs.
Heading west from Start into Ventura County, the route covered some wonderful back roads and minimized time spent in town or on freeways. The rally was divided into five sections. Each section began with a CZT (Car Zero Time) Restart which was followed by two or three Checkpoints before ending that section with a free zone until the next Restart. The course covered about 75 miles and took two hours Start to Finish. There were 14 timed checkpoints, and the winning score was a 1!
Everyone made it to the Finish. It was really great to see all the happy faces sharing all their rally stories and tall tales, especially with so many first-timers.
See you out there next time!
Here are the standings from the First Friday Niter:
