Take three days, three National RoadRallies, determined competitors in four classes, stunning landscapes, and great roads. Mix carefully. Add perfect fall weather and an experienced event committee. What do you get? Well, great competition and satisfying fun: To wit, the 2024 United States RoadRally Challenge® (USRRC), which took place Nov. 8-11, 2024, headquartered in Lancaster, CA.

Organized by Cal Club Region and its RoadRally arm, the Santa Monica Sports Car Club, the Veterans Day weekend contest opened with the Thunder Road National Touring Rally Saturday, Nov. 9, followed by Sunday’s Stagecoach National Touring Rally and Monday’s Highway Robbery National Course Rally. Both Touring rallies spent much of their time in California’s vast Kern County, while Highway Robbery treated teams to the many canyon roads of northern Los Angeles County.

(The 2024 USRRC put competitors on the path to California adventure, with Sunday's Stagecoach rally putting competitors like Tom and Lisa Gould on Kern County's roads less traveled. Photo by Philip Royle)

All three RoadRallies used the Richta GPS checkpoint system for timing and scoring. “Richta,” now standard for most SCCA® National and Divisional TSD rallies, guaranteed a host of controls throughout the weekend and prompt scoring at the end of each day.

To determine the weekend’s champions, USRRC teams were awarded points based on their class finishing positions in the individual RoadRallies.

On the Road

Rallymasters Joe Akerman (Thunder Road), Larry Scholnick (Stagecoach), and Jeanne English (Highway Robbery) created three distinct events, observed Akerman, who also served as the weekend’s event chair. His own Thunder Road offered a brisk Monte Carlo romp through 135 controls along its 235-mile route. Scholnick’s Stagecoach boasted a similar distance (243 miles) but fewer checkpoints (26). English’s Highway Robbery, at 204 miles and 19 controls (17 scored), kept teams busy with variable Main Road Directives and ITIS (If There Is Such) instructions, all while navigating the canyon roads around Castaic, CA.

“We decided a year ago to write a triple event,” Scholnick explained during registration and check-in on Friday evening. “We picked a starting location – Lancaster – and each of us took a direction. Jeanne took south and east, Joe took north and west, and I took north and east. By choosing north and east, I found places I had never been before.”

All three organizers gave teams generous prep time between the time they received their route instructions and their official departure time. Stagecoach and Highway Robbery teams got an hour. Thunder Road teams benefitted from two hours.

With 135 Monte Carlo controls, where teams receive both the official mileage and perfect arrival time for each control, you can imagine the calculating undertaken by serious Thunder Road navigators. Based on a highly unofficial and anecdotal survey, an hour-and-a-half was not unusual. For most, it was time well spent.

The Winners

After three days, 682 miles, and 178 timed controls, the 2024 USRRC champions from among the 13 teams are as follows:

• Equipped – Jim Duea/Jim Crittenden (BMW)
• Limited – Judy Stocker/Andy Stocker (Subaru)
• GPS – Satish Gopalkrishnan/Savera D’Souza (Audi)

Note that no Stock Class team qualified by running all three of the weekend’s events.

(Judy and Andy Stocker ran solid all weekend, earning the Limited Class win over three days of competition.)

For Duea and Crittenden, this was their second consecutive Equipped Class Challenge title. Gopalkrishnan and D’Souza also were repeat USRRC winners, having now won three consecutive GPS titles. For Judy Stocker and Andy Stocker, it was their first USRRC Limited Class title.

“The weekend was great,” Crittenden said after the Monday evening awards ceremony. “We enjoyed all three rallies. All three rallymasters put on great events – great roads, great scenery, and great people.”

“It’s been a fun, exciting weekend,” added RoadRally Board Chair Jessica Toney, “All three rallies presented their own challenges, starting off with Joe Akerman’s Thunder Road, which was a high-paced Monte that was super fun for drivers. It kept you moving. Stagecoach tour … got good scenery, and it was fun to run. It was a good, solid tour.”

(Jim Duea and Jim Crittenden had reason to celebrate, claiming top honors in the Equipped Class during the USRRC weekend.)

Still, for her, the best fun was provided by the competing teams, Toney noted, “What I think was most fun about the weekend was that we had three teams tied for the Challenge championship going into . That doesn’t happen very often, but that’s also the heart of the Challenge, to have competition like this. That made it a special weekend.”

Toney added she also appreciated seeing new faces at the Challenge. “We had the SCCA Women on Track scholarship winner here, a high school student , and she had a lot of fun.”

That is an observation echoed by Schnippel herself.

“It was a long weekend, but it was fun,” said Schnippel, who normally drives rather than navigates, as she did on this year’s Challenge, her first USRRC, by the way. “It was amazing to see the views and to be on the roads we were on. I really enjoyed seeing friends again, and making so many new ones.”

Which, overall, is good news for the SCCA, and for RoadRallying.

SCCA’s RoadRally Board will announce the location of the 2025 USRRC at a later date.

Lead image caption: For the third year in a row, Satish Gopalkrishnan and Savera D’Souza won the GPS Class.
Photos by Joe Ackerman