Rally Minnesota™ Debuts Flat-Out in May 2011

[Rallygrl]

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4109/5010482575_ea266ecc70_b.jpg


Rally Minnesota, sanctioned by Rally America, will kick off the 2011 Minnesota regional rally season making its home in Park Rapids, Minn. The weekend will consist of two coefficient 3 rallies. The rallies wind their way through some of the best and fastest rally roads on the continent.

Full details here... (http://rallyminnesota.com/2010/rally-minnesota%E2%84%A2-debuts-flat-out-in-may-2011/)

Dates: May 20th & 21st, 2011

Headquarters: C’mon Inn -- Park Rapids, Minn.

Details: Regional- Two single day Coefficient 3 rallies for a total of 6 Coefficients!

Keep an eye on rallyminnesota.com (http://rallyminnesota.com) for more details, to be posted soon!

RMN Promo Video 2011 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTrgDhm3B7Q)

Become a fan on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rally-Minnesota/143943225642101)

[321Go]

Sounds fun, is this instead of or in addition to Ojib and the Nemadjis?

[dhmcginn]

As I heard it, it will be in addition to OFR and Nemadji.

A whole rally season without leaving Minnesota.

[Billy Elliot]

Crap, just what I need... another 15 hour tow rally in the central region.

I need to move to Chicago.

Wonder what happened to that Ohio regional? But then again, too many regional events will spread the butter thin? We'll see if I can make it out thought. Need to go back to the spreadsheet and balance the 2010 budget to check.

[bentmettle]

MN had a very strong regional scene just before the economy popped. I hope that local competitor involvement grows to support the number of events - it would be exciting to see things edge back to where they were when I started competing :)

Us younger Michigan competitors need to get off our asses and see what we can do downstate...

[markhuebbe]

Wow, very nice!

[Greg Donovan]

this is awesome! if this really is in addtion to the NT and OFR weekend that means that there should be a total of 10 rallies in MN spread out over 7 days! that is way too cool.

hopefully we can get our project going and work the rallies in 2011 and be competing in 2012!

of course if i stumble upon and extra 12 grand i will see you on the stages in may.

[bentmettle]

of course if i stumble upon and extra 12 grand i will see you on the stages in may.


Consider that with this many events in one place, it creates a locus for someone to center a multiple car arrive and drive service around.

Bringing 4-5 near spec 2WD cars to a series of events like this from a location in MN or IA would make it relatively easy for a person to pick and choose when to participate with no capital outlay. No tow vehicle, no garage, no service crew to round up, etc....

[Mark Holden]

Very excited to have a second large rally in the area now that I'm getting ready to hot the stages.

Any words on what forests the event will use? park rapids is closer to the Bunyan, but still not as far away from the White Earth as Bemidji is (i think) so that doesn't prevent anything . . .

Here's hoping for at least some, if not all (my ideal) in the White Earth :)

[1fastben]

This is so cool! I really hope this takes off, MN does have some amazingly good back-roads. It ALMOST makes me wish I live there still. :)

Even though I don't live in MN anymore, my folks still do, so maybe I'll at least make it out to spectate or volunteer.

[Jim Stevens]

So this gets the OFR team with an event of the right length and roads back into a time slot that fits into the revised RA national rally year. I wonder what might happen in 2012?

Good luck - the event and the people involved deserve resurrection if it happens.

Jim

[Grondl]

This is excellent news!

[Mark Larson]

Folks:

Thanks for all your kind words and good will.

We've done a lot of work on this, and would have hoped to have a little more details ready for you before announcing, but we really needed to get the word out so people can plan. We've booked the C'Mon Inn (the entire hotel) at a group rate, so you can start booking now. Just say you're with Rally Minnesota.

What we do know is that it will be a twin-coefficient 3 May 20 and 21, probably (for financial reasons) running on the White Earth side. The date puts us smack between the traditional Nemadji and Gravity Park dates, but it's the only date that worked for other reasons. June or July are possible in the future, but weren't doable this year. We've already apologized to Nemadji and Gravity for squeezing them so much. Though the nature of the events (twin 3's vs. 1's) are a bit different, there's still a lot of overlap among competitors. Sorry for that.

In no way do we want to harm Nemadji, Ojibwe or Gravity Park. It's inevitable that someone will choose one event over another when a new one is offered, but more events inspires more people to maintain cars for competition, and that's what we want to do, for the benefit of us all.

A committee of 6 has been hammering out the details, and next week the full committee is meeting for the first time. We're working on the budget and starting to work on the course. All we know for sure is that it will be great fun, as usual. Who knows, you might even get to drive through a lake!

See you there,

Mark Larson
Chairman
Rally Minnesota 2011