2009 First Frost Rally Results

Photo (C) by Jane and Bruce Leonard

Well, the inaugural First Frost Rally is in the books, with more than a few surprises for the competitors and organizers alike. The first surprise was a flash freeze and dusting of snow that fell overnight before the rally. Up until Friday afternoon, the conditions were predominantly muddy, but the overnight temperature drop froze the mud, and the light dusting of snow on top acted like a dusting of graphite powder to make the driving conditions far worse than if we just had 4" of snow. Reviews on that were mixed; some loved the extra driving challenge, some... not so much.

Surprise number two was the overwhelming interest in the rally bringing in 25 pre-registrations, and another 9 walk-ins for a total of 34 competitors. Thanks to your participation, this was the best-attended ORRC rally since the 2005 Ontario Winter Rally! Suddenly our CP windows got a lot tighter, and scoring became a much bigger job than anticipated.

We knew that the difficulty level of our novice instructions were over that of most ORRC events, and that's why we offered the "Oh Shoot!" Touring Instruction envelope with simple distance to named turn instructions. What impressed Trevor and I the most was how steadfastly determined all of those new rallyists were, and how they struggled with the Novice notes without wanting to open the touring envelope! If you struggled through these, you should know that we offered the exact same instructions to the Intermediate class as well. If you'd like to see the instructions, they're linked from this Instructions page.

Volunteers

The rally wouldn't have happened without the Registration and CheckPoint volunteers from SPDA, KWRC and MLRC. Our thanks go to Maxine and Maurizio as crew 1, (birthday girl) Christina and Gary as crew 2, Paul and Peter as crew 3, Allan and Cam as crew 4, Nuwan and Jonas as crew 5, brothers Tashko and Goni as crew 6, and Ivano and Melanie as crew 7. After we finished Leg C, our expert teams also chipped in to help manually score the rally, and we owe them our thanks as well. Fantastic rallying spirit that made the event enjoyable!

Class Winners

We weren't able to complete the scoring the night of the rally, but we are happy to announce the winners here! You can find the results in this final results page.  We are most pleased for our brand new Touring teams, and the new Novice teams who beat out the series regulars and are visiting the podium for the first (and certainly not the last) time! We will deliver the trophies for these positions to the January Jaunt, or you can make arrangements with us to get them to you.

1st place Touring: Walter Brooks, Pat Firby
2nd place Touring: Darren de Roos, Colton de Roos
3rd place Touring: Chantelle M Quan-Vie, Lauren Cheeseman

1st place Novice: Jeremy Norris, Marin Janakovic
2nd place Novice: Timothy Denton, Justin Alexander
3rd place Novice: Alex Oslopov, Andrei Bouiourov

1st place Intermediate: Emilie Gusé, Ryan Huber

1st place Expert: Paul Moore, Rita Moore
2nd place Expert: Roger Sanderson, Dennis Wharton
3rd place Expert: Jane Leonard, Bruce Leonard

The 2009 Cool Competitors

In the spirit of traditional rally "Pressed On Regardless", or the "Top Banana" awards, we'd like to acknowledge the achievements of the First Frost Rally "Cool Competitors". There were a lot of nominees for this prize, as we had so many new competitors come out and give it their all! A couple of experienced teams had some unwanted agricultural excursions as well in trying their hardest to win. However, we had to choose just one team.

Walter and Douglas Rivera competed in a red Subaru Outback Sport wagon. Like many competitors, they got lost after the first checkpoint, but managed to find every other checkpoint but A7 in Leg A... unfortunately beyond maximum late time. So their 45.7 points in Leg A turned into a 149.6 after maximum late penalties were added in. They were back out in Leg B, and only found two checkpoints, but made it back to Mylar and Loretta's to start Leg C, where they got lost before CP C6, but still made it back to the finish at SuperBurger. For their determination in the face of adversity, we have two engraved Victorinox "Driver" pocketknives for Water and Douglas to recognize their rallying spirit!

Door Prizes

We were a little pressed for time on the morning of the rally, and forgot to announce the door prizes! 

Talon Tire, a long time http://www.SPDA-online.ca sponsor, provided $100 in tire coupons.  Talon ships tires to us here in Ontario at phenomenal prices.  Their technical support in helping you select the ideal tire for your application and use is second to none.  We drew Car # 10, Vitali Mossounov and Taras Magun as the winners of the Talon coupons!

Stephen's company, Canadian Advanced Synthetic Lubricants also provided Discount Coupons for the highest quality Amsoil Synthetic lubricants.  This represents an approximate 45% discount versus the shelf prices you might find at Part Source or Canadian Tire and will protect your vehicle beyond the abilities of most synthetics.  The following teams each receive a one-time use coupon for driver and navigator:

Car #11, Matthew Tjoa and Adam Berry
Car #28, Ming Li and Jenny Chau
Car #17, Timothy Denton and Justin Alexander

Looking Forward

Once again, we want to thank you all for attending the 2009 First Frost Rally, and SuperBurger and Mylar & Loretta's who kindly hosted our group throughout the day.  Be sure to book December 6th, 2010 for the second running of First Frost Rally out of Halton Hills. We will again run four classes on challenging roads that Trevor finds, but the instructions are going to be significantly easier.

We would like to extend our offer of $5 off a new 2010 SPDA Membership to anyone who participated in the rally.  To score for the ORRC championship, you need a membership in ANY RSO affiliated club.  You can always sign up and enter any event without membership, though.  The discount makes individual membership $35, or family membership $45.  See our charter to know if you want to be a member of SPDA, and our membership sign-up page is listed as well.

SPDA Charter        SPDA Membership Sign-Up        Other RSO Member Clubs

The following RSO events are coming up fast! Keep an eye on the Rallysport Ontario Calendar for the next ORRC events. If you would like to hear about more rallies, please Email VP Navigational Rita Moore at vpnavigational@rallysport.on.ca and opt in to the list.

January 16th, 2010: January Jaunt ORRCt (Easier route notes than First Frost!! Road conditions... who knows?)

January 25th 2010: MLRC Mini rally (Different levels of notes, running out of Bradford in the evening)

February 20th-21st, 2010: Maple Leaf Winter Rally (Notes will be simple, drive might be equally or more challenging!)

See you next year!!

 

Trevor Hancher, Stephen Deneka