The story of our 2021 Great Race experience begins two years prior. An email appears in my inbox forwarded by my father-in-law, Ken. The subject line reads “2020 Great Race Entry.” Ken has applied and been accepted into the Great Race with his 1968 Chevrolet Camaro SS. I’ve heard Ken mention the Great Race a few times over the years – it turns out that the event has been on his radar for over twenty years.

At the time, I knew next to nothing about the Great Race. Over the next few weeks and months, I would learn more about it including that I was to be the navigator. The Great Race is a competitive controlled speed endurance road rally on public roads. It is a rally for antique and collector cars. The 2021 route went from San Antonio to Greenville, South Carolina via Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina over nine days. Each day, we were given a set of course instructions that detail every turn, speed change, stop, start that we would have to make that day. Our job was to execute those instructions as precisely as possible to create the smallest deviation from the ideal time. The overall winner would receive $50,000.

Ken putting decals on the car before tech inspection.

In the lead up to the event, we attended virtual rookie training sessions, spoke to our assigned mentors Erin and Brad, tested the car, and built some performance data that we would use during the race to determine time lost during each maneuver. Our testing revealed some glaring reliability problems with the car. The week before the race, the car was in the shop having fuel injection removed and a carburetor installed. The fuel tank and fuel pump were changed. Ken got the car back from the shop on Wednesday and we were due downtown for technical inspection the following day. We had no idea if the car would finish the race.

Thursday, June 17 Ken and I drove the Camaro downtown in rush hour traffic. We attended another rookie seminar with Bill Croker and got a few of our last-minute questions answered. We ran a speedometer calibration run to check and see how dialed in our Timewise speedometer was. There was a measured section of I-37 South of downtown that we could run at 50mph to test our speedometer. The first of two runs revealed a 4 second error before the initial calibration. After making the necessary adjustment, the Northbound run was better, but we still had .9 seconds of error. We returned to the La Mansion hotel and checked in in advance of registration and tech inspection.

Friday, June 18th was the Trophy Run which was a practice rally from San Antonio to Boerne and back. Tom joined us for the run today. The run started out with a speedometer calibration run on I-10 West toward Boerne. Traffic was terrible, so we only got a couple small snippets of data. We spent far too long crunching numbers and decided that the speedometer factor was fine where it was. We had a quick lunch at Whataburger in Boerne before we headed off into the backroads for our timed sections. Five legs on this short day resulted in 2 seconds early, 1 second early, 2 seconds late, 8 seconds early, and 8 seconds early. We felt like these were really good results for having exactly zero rally experience.

Saturday June 19th was the first official stage of the competition. The route took us from San Antonio to San Marcos and then onto Temple. Ken and I had a reasonably good stage one. The speedo run up I-35 was full of traffic and no meaningful data could be collected. We received a warm welcome in San Marcos and enjoyed a hosted lunch of Burgers at a brewery just off the town square. The square was blocked off for the cars in park ferme. The start outside the Alamo was great. I am so glad the family and friends could be there. Ken and I had a pretty good day during the timed runs and finished the day with 21 seconds of error.

The second stage on Sunday, June 20th took us from Temple to Ardmore, Oklahoma via Granbury and Nocona. We received our course instructions 30 minutes before our start time today. The previous days had us receiving them the night before. I worked on them frantically for 20 minutes before we took off on our speedometer calibration run. Ken and I missed the 35N turn on the loop and continued unit the loop hit I-35 again and went the wrong direction. Instead of going North, we were going South. It took us nearly 10 minutes to notice the error and turn around. Ken drove us North very fast to get us into position for our timed start at the correct time. We had a good first leg with only 2 seconds of error. Leg 2 was mistake free and resulted in 5 seconds early. Leg 3 saw us get rookied by a another set of rookies. Another competitor took a wrong turn in front of us. We turned back to see if we had missed a turn. We had not. We ended up hacking off the car in front to get back on our minute. Miraculously, we were only off 9 seconds from perfect on the leg. We got a 9 on the next leg as well thanks to an error by me. I got confused by my notes about a speed change. The last two legs were uneventful 3s and 7s. The lunch reception in Granbury and dinner reception in Nocona were amazing. BBQ lunch on the square in Granbury and Pasta dinner on the main street in Nocona. We had private access to Horton’s Classic Car Museum in Nocona before heading to the hotel in Ardmore OK for the night.

Stage 3 on Monday, Jun 21 took us from Ardmore to Sapulpa Oklahoma and then on to Joplin Missouri. Stage 3 will forever be remembered as a pivotal moment in our Great Race experience. We were on in the morning. We felt like we had cracked the code. We achieved our first perfect leg and followed it up with two more really good legs. Then, the car started missing and backfiring. We limped into the lunch stop in Sapulpa and Ken timed the car with the help of a few spectators in the historic museum parking lot where lunch was hosted. I described it to a local reporter as our “God Bless America moment”. We quickly grabbed lunch and headed out for the afternoon stint. The car was still sick. We stopped twice along the interstate to try and get it timed. We retired it and awaited the sweep truck that follows the route each day. Jack rescued us and took us to the hotel in Joplin where our wives Chris and Erin were waiting. Ken and I were convinced our race was done. He had already begun making alternate plans for the remainder of the week. He texted our mentor to let him know of our plight. Our mentor immediately fired back the name of a talented mechanic traveling with the race. Hal of Quick Everett’s garage from Chattanooga quickly diagnosed the car. The girls made parts runs. Patrick, Jack, Hal and another volunteer from North Carolina. helped us diagnose the car and get it ready for the next day. Ken and I had been certain that our race was done. These folks weren’t about to let that happen. Patrick and Jack - two total strangers hours before - worked feverishly into the night to ready the car. That is the spirit of the Great Race! Our results for the day were our first Ace, 5s, 1s, miss, dnf. Thankfully, we could drop the last two legs along with three others from the first five days.

The ‘68 awaiting the sweep truck. We thought our race was done.

The spirit of the Great Race summed up in one photograph.

Stage 4 on June 22 took us from Joplin to Cape Girardeau via Rolla. There was a tasty Italian lunch in Rolla hosted by the Chamber Chicks. Stage 4 was where we became well versed with time delays. We had a total of 3:20 seconds of time delays from slow traffic. The dinner and reception in Cape Girardeau were incredible. Our stage four results were 6E, 21E, 6E, Ace, and 10E.

Stage 5 on June 24 took us from Cape Girardeau to Paducah and on to Owensboro. There was a great hosted lunch outside in Paducah. Dinner was outside the Bluegrass Hall of Fame in Owensboro. The hospitality of our hosts and the spectators impressed me daily. On the road, we were early at check point 1 from front loading a cornering loss. That leg was a 6s early that could have been an ace. On Leg 2, we missed a sign while discussing makeup from a previous maneuver. We began a hack as soon as we realized we were off course. We were near the back of the field when we got lost, we got back on course, passed the timing van and the Fredettes in their yellow truck. We had nearly caught the car ahead when we passed check point 2. We would be 40s early on the leg necessitating the use of another drop. On leg 3, things settled down somewhat. We took three ten second delays for spacing and netted a 7s early. At check point 4 we arrive 12s early after having a ten second time delay for spacing. At check point 5 we were 2 seconds early and recorded a 30 second time delay. We briefly crossed over into Illinois and paused in Metropolis for a picture with a Superman statue. We crossed the Ohio river before lunch. At CP6 we recorded an ACE! At CP7, we were 7E and had a 40s TD.

Stage 6 on Thursday, June 24 took us from Owensboro Kentucky to Lexington via Elizabethtown. We had tons of tractor time delays. I made a mistake recording a 3-minute time delay on the first leg and turned what should have been a 2 second leg into a 2:58 second leg. We had a quick lunch at Elizabethtown Park because of 18 minutes of time delays in the morning. There was a very unsafe restart on a highway off ramp that had us waiting on the side of the highway. We did our first rolling start at the suggestion of Ron in the ’32 blue Speedster. Unfortunately, The leg was discarded for construction. We missed the My Old KY Home State Park break completely. Another navigation error – thankfully, on an untimed section. More farm equipment in the afternoon and a 11s leg, 5s leg, and a 9s final leg.

Stage 7 on Friday took us from Lexington into West Virginia. Lunch was in Huntington and Dinner was in Beckley. Things really came together for us on Stage 7 and we had a 7s day adjusted to 6.93. We won rookie that day and were 5th on the day overall. There were lots of transitions on leg 1. I wrote the word “unsafe” 4x in notes on the first leg referring to some speeds that we felt were too fast even though they were within the posted speed limit. We got a 1 second late at check point 1. Leg 2 saw us get an ace on a leg with some makeups that carried over into timed maneuvers requiring some fast math. We also had a mistake by Ken that required a seat of the pants correction by him. Leg 3 had a lengthy 15mph section around a traffic circle. We were 2s early on that leg. Leg 4 we executed 1 second early. At lunch in Huntington, we met a man whose wife had been corresponding with Erin about stitch shops. Small world. We had lunch in the historic train station. After lunch Hal again diagnosed some vapor locking issues we were having with the car. On the last leg, the car malfunctioned a bit and we over corrected resulting in a 3E.

Me holding our plaque for being Rookie Class Winner on Stage 7.

Stage 8 on June 26 started the championship run. There would be no dropped legs for the final two days. The route took us from Beckley to Galax, Virginia for lunch and on to Mooresville, NC for dinner. We did a 6L, 1L, 8E, 5E, 33E, 45E, 8E on the day. The 33E and 45E had lots of time delays and vapor locking on the car. Ken having to pop clutch to keep it going. Great day strategically and tactically. We would have had a great result if the car had been behaving. Stage 8 had a huge maze toward the end through a neighborhood that drove us nuts. We managed not to miss any instructions despite being task saturated wrestling with the sick car.

Four of six eventual ace stickers for perfect scores on a leg. Proof that strategy, execution, and luck sometimes line up.

Stage 9 on Sunday June 27th was day two of the championship run and marked the finish of the 2021 Great Race. We started the day 20th on the road. Our scores for the day were 2L, 2E, 7E, 6E, Ace. The short day began with a 2L on leg 1. We thought the first three legs might have been aces. We were firing on all cylinders. On the last leg, we thought we might have missed a sign. Thankfully, we did not. We finished strong, 33rd on the last day.

Crossing the finish line in Greenville, SC.

Overall, we were 42nd of 87 finishers. We had 4 minutes and 41 seconds of deviation. With our .990 car age handicap, our final score was 4m 38.19. The event winners were 51s with a .810 handicap for 41.31s of error. The rookie winners had a score of 2m01s. The sportsman class winners had a total error of 1m11s. We placed 4th in the rookie class out of 38 rookie teams.

When we started, we wondered if we would do it again. Would we be one and done? Would we finish? Would we have fun? The car was the biggest question mark. Would it run to the end? In the end, we did finish. We did have fun. We are going to do it again.

I am very grateful to Ken for the opportunity. I am thankful to Chris and Erin for being our support crew. I am thankful to my parents for watching Hannah and the dog while we were off racing. I am thankful to our mentors Brad and Erin who provided excellent support along the way. I am especially thankful to Patrick, Jack, Hal, and the others who fixed the car in Missouri enabling and encouraging us to continue. It is that spirit that has us coming back for ’22.

My view for 10 days. I can’t wait to do it again!