Co-driver/navigator tips

Rally Navigator Tips and Tricks


Rallying is suppose to be a fun team sport. A chance for the driver to prove his ability to control a vehicle under a variety of road conditions, and the navigator who enjoys telling others where to go. These are some of the things you can do that could improve your score or your justification for not scoring well.



At start of rally.



Receive instructions.

Check for missing pages.

Highlight speed changes and pauses.

Calculate time to each speed change in regularity. Do calculations to at least 4 decimal places. Big note: do all calculations in decimal fraction of minutes not seconds ie: HH:MM.SSSS (12:24.7856 = 12 hours,24.7856 min,). Only convert to seconds after the calc?s are done (use a table to convert from decimal to seconds). If your time calc's match rally calc's, calculate remaining instructions using previous calc's to confirm your math.

Always do calc's based on given instruction values. The route instructions are the only truth even if wrong. Adjust your position on the road based on distance at each instruction. If that cattle guard is out .02, adjust your odometer to match and you've just saved a .02 min penalty on a 60 CAS.

Do a running total to end of regularity. Do not round each calculation and use at least 4 decimal places. If the rallymaster isn?t doing the same, he is doing it wrong.

If you have time, calculate all the regularities before the start. The only variable is your distance and the Rally Masters. The odo check will be used to calibrate what you have with rally distance. Beware of RMs that use rubber kilometers!



Rally Observations that you can use as excuses

or to state the obvious.



You can only hope the rallymaster has the controls as close to the top of the second as possible. If not, it's one of the many factors that will keep you from zeroing the rally.

It is much easier to be accurate during the rally than the rallymaster was setting it up. You do the event in one continuous flow. He probably stopped, ran at different speeds, different road conditions, etc.

Navigators job is to do the calculations and track progress of the vehicle. The more information you give the driver, the easier it will be to maintain accurate road position.

It doesn't matter what class your in, from seat-of-pants to computer, the rally is the same for everyone. Of course the calculations are easier with a computer.

Rallying is a percentage game, you won't be 100% accurate all the time, but the more time you spend in the 1 sec late side of true time the better your score will be.

Some people believe rallies prove you can't get there from here.