Defined: "Rally cartography is a simple, intuitive, concise, visually ergonomic, perfectly efficient line-item directional with a built-in self-correction mechanism which relays perfect information without the necessity of a scaled, thematic map projection that simultaneously optimizes the cyclical axiom to instantaneously refer back to each point of visual departure after significant punctuated durations where the user's attention span is focused elsewhere" - Mulholland Raceway.

 

If you are interested in minimizing liability of your next driving event, and would like us to engineer your next sports car event, then click here to access the text field for which to generate a query... we guarantee the aforementioned. However, doing so is unnecessary... this page is dedicated to providing you what you need to know to do so yourself.

 

What you need to know -

It was once a commonplace phenomena for maritime explorers and adventurers, docked in their home port after a long voyage, to ravage through their sea port village, turning over every nook and cranny, kicking down every door, looking for that mapmaker, consistent with their sworn oath that it would be the very first thing they did upon return. Henceforth, cartographers have a posterity for being exceptionally good at covering their asses. Cartographers are far more crafty than mathematicians at hiding. You won't likely be able to find a Cartographer, even in your local telephone book directory, they are that good.

Heed these holy tenants, grasshopper:

* NEVER put your club logo or your name on sports car rally cartography.

 

* Get your cartography back from any driver involved in a shunt; be quick and nonchalant about it.

 

* Never let your rally cartography fall into the hands of an outsider, an attorney, much less the authorities. They may arbitrarily determine existence of an omission, anomaly, or shortcoming, and they will use it to single you out. Cartographers have been persecuted since antiquity. Withhold first aid until you get your cartography back ...this tradition goes back to great Phoenician cartographers: "Your cartography or your life!"

 

* Never use san serif fonts on left/right turn lists. They're terrific on your computer monitor. On paper, at speed, in a sports car, insist upon a serif font; a Times-Roman derivative is best... much easier to read.

 

* Most importantly, my son, heed the rest of this page; export our principles, at no cost to yourself whatsoever, then go forth and maketh good rally cartography!

 

Table Of Contents | The Golden Rule

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1. The rallymaster withheld information -

 

2. The rallymaster lacked route engineering skills -

 

3. The rallymaster shirked the reconnaissance-

 

Multi car events are extremely dangerous. Commit any one of the three aforementioned criterion, and your financial life as you know it could come to an abrupt, permanent end. You could also wind up incarcerated. We've seen seen it all: people getting lost, losing their tempers, fist fights amongst participants over lousy rally preparation, shunts between cars in caravan, drivers abandoning events mid rally, and sports car clubs losing members for no good reason than one of the aforementioned shortcomings.

The last two directionals, "go for a ways" turned out to be 24 miles, plus the four additional miles incurred as a function having to u-turn two dozen overheating 50s vintage Fords, once they all got to the aqueduct (!). However, there is no one road "a couple miles" west of the California Aqueduct off State Highway 138. They're all dirt roads. No methodology is apparent in this person's thinking process whatsoever. Not only did this planner lack basic skills, he lacked forethought. It's wantonly apparent he shirked the reconnaissance entirely. About all this guy did was sacrifice 5 minutes of his TV time to squint at the map, and scribble down the first thing off the top of his head.

 

If someone in our organization produced low quality work like that planning one of our driving events, we'd kick them out of our driver's group.

 

Your worst nightmare of the three aforementioned shortcomings occurs when planners shirk reconnaissance. Bad things happen when event planners shirk: bad intersections, dips right in the middle of long fast straightaways, road closures, potholes, ephemeral runoff on decreasing radius turns, surface irregularities that could fling a tightly wound sport suspension airborne. Planning an event for your vintage Oldsmobile club, perhaps you can afford the luxury of simply relying upon AAA to do your routing. But, certainly not for a sports car event.

 

Planning a sports car event, you'ld be wise to do your homework. Multiple vehicle sports car events requires research, diligence, reconnaissance, follow up, and some rather easily attainable skills that makes it a cinch to boil everything down to concise information. The one segment of the rally that you don't reconnoiter is likely where you'll incur accidents.

Defined: "Rally cartography is a simple, intuitive, concise, visually ergonomic, perfectly efficient line-item directional with a built-in self-correction mechanism which relays perfect information without the necessity of a scaled, thematic map projection that simultaneously optimizes the cyclical axiom to instantaneously refer back to each point of visual departure after significant punctuated durations where attention spans have been focused elsewhere" ~ Mulholland Raceway.

 

 

A good deal of effort goes into the planning of our driving events. In no time at all, you find it a cinch to learn and commit to memory the methodology we employ in planning our driving events. We require all drivers to commit to memory the path they'll follow prior to the event.

 

The legend we use has four primary components:

 

That's about all you'll ever need insofar as sports car rally cartography.

 

Navigators tend not to be actively relied upon on during our driving events. If we engineer of ways to engage them in some sort of activity, then we risk becoming dependent upon them, not necessarily a good thing for participants without navigators. One of the problems I've noted is the way people compose directions these days. Very few people do cartography well, and very few people know how to prepare directions, or left-right (L/R) turn lists. More often than not, people attempt to give directions in a narrative form.

 

Narrative format: "When you pass an oleander bush, you'll then see a Corona Cerveza billboard. Proceed up the trail under the billboard and go for a ways, and turn right before you get to the abandoned gas station. Then, go for a ways, until the road dead ends and you have no place else to go, then go 2500 meters parallel to the rail road tracks."

 

This meats and bounds style narrative was written to be by, of all people, a fellow geographer.

 

This format is extremely dangerous when used to direct a sports car rally. There is no orientation. Just one poorly defined vector after another. Ferret through extraneous fluff while banging up and down through the gears, a narrative format should NEVER be employed for any driving event you plan. Route direction should be simple, intuitive, functional and line-item. It should require minimal effort on the part of drivers to assimilate the information, yet still allow them to resume their place on the route list after having had their attention diverted elsewhere. The key to accomplishing this is simplicity and uniformity. Your drivers should be able to instinctively look at the route list you prepared, and know what to do, without having to cross reference to a legend. Rest your eyes on the following example. This is how your sports car rally should look on paper:

 

 

Light years better than a narrative format! Denote bold print where the rally changed direction. Clean. Concise. It's so simple. There's plenty room off the side for picts or graphics. And, it self-corrects (!).

 

Without so much as a glimpse at the legend, people intuitively learn and retain this format without study, recall, or having to constantly refer back to a map legend. Every L/R vector directional has a built-in compass redundancy that didactically confirms vector magnitude via orientation. With a built in compass component, it's simple to resume the rally from points exogenous to your event. Best, a compass redundancy automatically self-corrects your route. If a typo slips through the final edit, your drivers will automatically self-correct. Henceforth, our route lists stand up very-very well in court. We don't worry about retrieving our route lists from crashed rally participants. The best personal injury attorney money could buy would have to admit that what he see's above is better than any written instructions he's ever provided to a wife or loved one. Any idiot you hand this to could use what you see above to find his way to the photo shoot at the end of Stage I of this rally. Where the rally changes direction is where you see bold print. Hence, drivers are able to cyclically refer back to exactly where they left off on the route list after a considerable duration where their attention focused was focused upon driving. Place, location, or intersection landmarks lie in between, denoted by a simple "X," indicates how many major intersections before the rally changed direction. Once we get into the canyons, the Xs are replaced with mile markers, so that what drivers observe when their attention spans are dedicated to driving correlate sequentially, and instantaneously, to the point they left off the last time they looked down at the route list. The fundamental objective bears repeating:

Defined: "Rally cartography is a simple, intuitive, concise, visually ergonomic, perfectly efficient line-item directional with a built-in self-correction mechanism which relays perfect information without the necessity of a scaled, thematic map projection that simultaneously optimizes the cyclical axiom to instantaneously refer back to each point of visual departure after significant punctuated durations where attention spans have been focused elsewhere" ~ Mulholland Raceway.

 

Mileage and elevation data we normally provide were removed from the route list, above, but you to get the general idea of what we're conveying: This format does not require you to change your way of thinking. If you spent centuries refining a narrative format directional, what you see above is what you would derive through Nth iterative refinements. We aren't asserting anything you wouldn't ultimately deduce yourself. We just phase shift you there, and give you what you need right now.

 

A route list cannot stand on its own. We bolster our cartographic efforts by requiring each rally participant to take responsibility for the car immediately behind them. If one participant extends a gap to a slower car behind, he is responsible for that car. It should be his responsibility to wait for the next car directly behind car to appear in his mirrors at all points where the rally changes direction (points denoted in bold print on the route list). This didn't happen during later stages of the Malibu Rally (not shown). Despite being given perfect information in the form of a preformatted L/R turn list proofed by two people, 60% of our rally participants ultimately got themselves lost.

 

If each participant takes responsibility for the car behind, then rally participants won't be chained to L/R lists; they won't have to take their eyes off the road. Carefully prepared L/R turn lists should be engineered regardless of the level of cooperation enlisted between rally participants. However, all your efforts insofar as rally cartography are of little use if your participants are passive, dull, or apathetic. If those are the type of people who participate in your driving events, then think about cleaning house (as we've recently done). If you work diligently planning your sports car rally, down to a gnat's ass, making sure every little detail is just right, then you deserve better than to have worked your ass off for a bunch of free-riders who simply want to passively shift gears behind you with their brains in neutral. It's not too much to expect your guys to at least take navigational responsibility for the car directly behind them. Sports car club culture: bastion for slackers, but only so often can we accuse them of being unappreciative.

 

 

Table Of Contents | The Golden Rule

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The Golden Rule of Route Engineering, for 10/10ths Canyon Driving, quote: