American Rally Association “100 Acre Wood Rally” 2019

Photos and article by: Gabe Reeser

03/15-16/2019

When one thinks of southern Missouri, small rural towns and a backwoods way of life should come to mind. However, for one weekend in March, the rural Washington county transforms entirely. The American Rally Association comes in and reinvents the surrounding area to cater to their needs. Town squares turn into staging areas, canoe rental campsites turn into fuel stops, and over 200 miles of public roads turn into a highly technical, expertly laid out race track for the weekend. Teams from around the world attend to put their cars to the test. I had the opportunity to get media access to have free reign of the pits, staging areas, and a plethora of places along the track to make for a truly eventful weekend. To grasp the scale of this race, I was staging out a photography spot. There was a creek and I was looking to get some shots of the cars coming through. To my left is Ken Block’s team from Hoonigan and to my right is Team Subaru looking at the best way to go about this section of the track.

The racers compete in 15 different timed stages mapped out across the wooded county with mandatory transit routes that connect the stages. The unique aspect to rally is that the drivers have to use public roads to get in between the different parts of the race. This requires cars that not only can run at 100% on the track, but must be drivable on the street. The score is simply the added time from the 15 stages. As the weekend progressed, the times stayed very competitive. However, McKenna Motorsport (Barry McKenna, Leon Jordan) took the title at a time of 1:38:37.9. Only 8 seconds behind, Team Subaru (Oliver Solberg,Aaron Johnston) finished in 1:38:44.7. Truly a great race to watch, and such a fun event. For more information visit americanrallyassociation.org.