Roadbook Ramblings: Chapter 3 - Crafting a Rally

 

Alternative title: Confessions.

Creating a rally can be anything from a simple task to a rigorous undertaking. You slap a bunch of stages together with some services in between, split them into legs, and call it a day. People will drive it, and some will enjoy it. There will be competitors with their own goals, ranging from passing time to actually doing their best. It will be used for testing, either skills or simply a new setup. There's nothing wrong with a simple rally. They are the backbone of online racing; just sit down and drive.

Of course, here in Sim Rally Masters we don't do simple. Here in SRM we take pride in our receding hairlines, stress-induced ulcers, and burnouts. You haven't lived the life of a series organiser before finding a bunch of hair on the floor each time you shower, sucked to the drain like your free time.

Sounds fun, no?

If the answer was "Actually yes", we do accept volunteers. Just DM us your credentials and organ donor card, and we'll handle the rest.

But, joking aside (we do actually accept volunteers though), much like with anything in life there are ups and downs.

The creative process, for example, is mostly an up. Coming up with a calendar and the events themselves, proposing new ideas, revisiting old ones, and trying to image how you lot will react to whatever we've come up with this time. The excitement of a season release is as palpable for the organisers as it is to our competitors, and we too await each event with bated breath. Sometimes it's due to choices which no doubt will be controversial, at others it's due to possible issues. While we test every stage we run, some issues simply cannot be foreseen - or alternatively fly under our radar. One perk is our close ties to RSF staff, who are happy to help us with any problems we may have. They deserve a lot of credit in not only their assistance, but also keeping Sim Rally Masters alive. Doubt we'd do it in a platform that simply didn't care.

When I presented the idea of Finlandia Rally to rest of our organisers, I expected resistance. We do real events, after all. The whole point of Sim Rally Masters is to act as a love letter to those long rallies of old, as well as the unsung heroes. We didn't do 1000 Lakes in the inaugural season, nor did we do Monte Carlo. We still don't do the latter.

In their stead, a mix of events from WRC and ERC were grabbed. Tunturi? Absolutely. Tulpenrally? Sure. Later years saw some rallies removed and others added, and this year was no exception.

We receive a healthy dose of feedback, and rest assured, we try to read all of it. A frequent worry has been how SRM is so time-intensive, and even with two weeks of driving time in each event, it takes a significant commitment just to compete in, let alone practice for.

I agree. And yes, I see you there, pointing at Finlandia stage list with a questioning look.

Without giving too much away from the schedule, our approach to this season is considerably more flexible. We don't tie ourselves into making each rally a grand epic. If that means less kilometres or stages, so be it. No, this will not be a sprint series, far from it, yet it'll be more of a mix. It not only helps with fatigue over the season, but allows those grand spectacles to feel grand in comparison. A peak is only as impressive as its prominence. 

Don't think for a moment that these shorter events are any lesser either. While they may not be marathon rallies, they're not afterthoughts. Oftentimes the roadbooks which require fewer stages come out more healthy as a result, involving less of that proverbial filler - a problem I've ran into more than once myself, and not just with my rallies. See why this is titled "Roadbook Ramblings" yet?

So, onto Finlandia. What we've established so far is a dream born from a concept. To turn that dream into something tangible took, I admit, a lot more planning and work than I realised. I will also admit that I simply didn't have the time or resources to do everything I wanted to, though those plans were firmly on the list of bonus content anyway.

That said, there's a lot accomplished. Since the event is fictional, a lot of imagination combined with rally maps and local knowledge was used. I looked at Hankiralli stage lists to gain inspiration and used the ones I saw fit. There was a period of contemplation, too, seeing as the real Hankiralli moved away from roads surrounding Helsinki in the 70s, and this event is supposed to take place in the early 90's. How have the roads changed since then? What could be used in 1992, and what's a no-go? What establishments are there, where would the people go, and - most importantly for us - what have at least a decent match in RSF? 

The last bit created an issue, and forced me to veer from some original plans.

 

Firstly, I do think the event would've gone through Jyväskylä. So do we, don't worry. We simply cannot rally our way through Finland without taking on the roads this country's known for. There's just one teeny tiny, itsy bitsy problem:

There's no Ouninpohja winter in RSF. 

There's no Harju winter either. Or Laajavuori. Or Humalamäki.

To compensate, we had to use a mix of clever route planning and the power of imagination. Suspension of disbelief is a powerful tool, and it's used constantly in our line of work. We give you Kuri Bush and tell you it's in Finland, or pretty much every Finnish BTB gravel stage for South Swedish Rally. Mineshaft in Catalunya? Sure. Sipirkakim in Romania? Why not. Estonian rallysprint followed by Kenyan savanna? You may laugh, but it has happened. And those are just some examples of what we've resorted to, either due to lack of better options or simply because stages aren't just stages, they are locations along the route. In other words, we are telling you that Narva Kreenholmi Rahvasprint is not in Estonia but somewhere in Africa, and Sipirkakim is a stand-in for a Romanian location. We're creating an illusion; a story.

Similarly, the story here is that of a Finnish grand adventure. I hope this is where the stage list is starting to make some sense, especially when coupled with stage names. Take Lyon-Gerland for example. The location's right in the name: Lyon, France; a far cry from Finnish winter. But when named Töölö and us claiming it's located just outside the Helsinki Olympic stadium, we at least try to deveive you in order to improve your experience. Sure, that particular lie may be a little hard to stomach, not to mention how inconsequential the stage itself is, but at least there was an effort. More to the point, its existence isn't justified by the value it adds to the competition, but the lore.

Stop here. No, just stop. Read that last sentence again. Make sure you really understand it. The lore here is, to me, perhaps even more important than just creating a rally that's as good as possible. You may disagree, and you're perfectly entitled to your opinion. There are plenty of justification as to why crafting the best possible combination of stages should be the top priority of any event organiser. We're not actually rallying for real, so why bother with everything else?

If your answer was "to create an illusion", congratulations. You get it. If it was "to create a convenient excuse"? Uh, not exactly wrong either.

Regardless, the problem presents itself in various places. In real life, this event could very well be the "Greatest Hits" album of Finnish rally stages, taking place in beautiful winter conditions. A drive for the ages. In addition to the aforementioned quartet, we'd also have some local legends from various smaller rallies, stages that plenty of people know and love. It's just that, apart from few exceptions, we don't have those stages in RSF, or they haven't even been created. They're just names in a roadbook, or in the most famous cases, turned to road sections or bypassed altogether.

 

So, all in all, this wasn't an easy task. I couldn't look at an existing rally, because the event never came to fruition. All I had was some vague clues and a dream. After that, a lot of time was spent in crafting a fictional route of the event, trying to figure out what fits where and, for the sake of our lore, why?

 

(Concluded in Chapter 4!)