It’s daylight saving time again, and the advent of a new TSD Rally season. Friday, March 13th, marks the first rally of the season, and we’re going south. Registration for this novice oriented event opens at 6:45 PM at the Eastgate Park and Ride Parking lot, 14200 SE Eastgate Way, in Bellevue. First car out will be 7:31.

The rally is about 2 hours long and ends at Athens Pizza, 959 E Main St in Auburn, WA. We measured the rally last weekend and checked it out this weekend. I enjoyed the course thoroughly! The course is very fun with a lot of twisty roads. It is a great warm-up rally with no traps, just a fun drive. Even though the rally is run during daylight saving time, it will still be dark before we get started, so be sure to bring a small light for the navigator. A watch that has a seconds hand or a digital watch that displays seconds will also be helpful.

The fee is the normal $20, but we have a new promotion this year: The normal entry fee for Friday Nighters ($20) will be waived for teams mentoring first time participants. We are doing this in hopes of encouraging all current rallyists to actively draw new people into our sport.

What we want you to do:
Bring a team of first-timers to a Friday Nighter and help guide them through the process. Assist them with details like finding and completing a registration form. Show them official time and where to put their car number. Explain things like the starting order, the outcone, and the odometer check. Describe how they will interact with checkpoints. Cover the generic information that would be part of a Novice Talk. At the finish, answer their questions and help them complete their scorecard.

How it works:
Both teams (the mentors and the first-timers) need to come to the registration vehicle at the same time. The first-timers will register (using the form you helped them complete) and they’ll pay the normal $20 entry fee. Then the mentoring team registers, receiving the next (consecutive) car number and has their entry fee waived.

Limitations:
The first-timer team must be truly new to the sport. If driver or navigator has done this before, they are not first-timers. For the mentoring team, both driver and navigator need to have rallied at least once each. You don’t need to be experts, just enthusiastic. If you are first-timers one month, you can be mentors the next month. There is no limit to how many times a mentoring team can talk advantage of this offer – just keep drawing new people into TSD rally.

And, all new teams are automatically entered in the Novice Championship.

Come on out, and bring your friends!