The St. Louis Region opened its 2023 rally season on May 5 with the sixth edition of Jim Heine’s Tulips by Night (four Regionals and two Divisionals now since 2017, with a National in the early planning stages).
This year, Tulips was organized as a road rally social event that served as a Friday evening prologue to the Region’s St. Louis/Southern Illinois Gateway Sprints road-racing weekend, May 5-7, at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Ill. With a start at the racetrack, this edition of Tulips featured a Monte Carlo-style touring format with some 50 miles of evening route-following, Richta GPS controls, and at the end, good pizza at The Lucky Rooster Pub and Eatery in rural St. Jacob, Ill.
St. Louis Triumph Club members Creig Houghtaling and John Willerton challenged Tulips by Night in Houghtaling’s Triumph TR6. Photo courtesy Mark Morgan, Gateway Relay.
The field: 10 novice teams—all first-time rallyists in rides that ranged from Mercedes and Aston Martin to Triumph, Subaru, Mini, and Hyundai. At the end, along with the conversation and laughter, the most frequent question for the rallymaster was, “When can we do this again?”
The SCCA St. Louis Region’s next rally: Tulips Redux, on Aug. 19, of course.
