Fast and furious

By DAVID HULSE

GLEN SPEY, NY — The speed and danger of high-speed auto racing came to Sullivan and Delaware counties on April 17 with “Rally New York,” a 315-mile auto race sanctioned by the National Auto Sport Association, part of the Eastern States Rally Championship.

In the two days prior to the rally, race, support, crew and spectator vehicles jammed the parking lot of the rally’s official staging area at Mr. Willy’s Restaurant and the overflow lined Route 42.

Race crews, two per car, came from states around the country and other countries including Poland and the British Isles. About the one-third of the entrants had Irish crews.

The Sullivan County Visitors Association supported the event and a county press release reported that Rally New York “brought 1,500 visitors to Sullivan County and represented an economic bump of $41.2 million to the local area.”

The race

At 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, 64 drivers began the race in licensed and modified stock cars, racing against preset target times to navigate a course combining all kinds of driving situations. These included in-town traffic and highway driving on Route 17, where racers followed all posted speed limits to 10 “special stages.” On special stage roads in the towns of Lumberland and Forestburgh and the Delaware County Town of Colchester, permission was given to close selected town roads to other traffic and speed laws did not apply.

Lebanon and Chapin roads, dirt roads in Lumberland, formed the first of these special stages. Noise and fumes were intense at starting area as engines were gunned to high rpm levels before each start.

Police later reported racers averaged 70 miles per hour over the 4.17-mile dirt course, reaching 100 mph in some stretches.

Security was intense. Along with rally “marshals” controlling access, all three town constable cars were employed in the road closures on Leers Road and County Road 43, in addition to five Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Rangers and Law Enforcement Officers in the woods, on all-terrain vehicles, to prevent unauthorized access to the roads within the course.

The finish

An Irish team of Shane Mitchell and Paul Donnely, driving a Subaru Impreza, were the eventual race winners. Only 41 cars finished. Race results listed most non-finishers as victims of mechanical problems, and one accident was reported on the Hartwood Club Road.

The results listed five other cars as “off the road,” two of them in Forestburgh. There were unofficial reports of other accidents, including one on the Plank Road in Forestburgh where a Saab crashed into a tree, critically injuring a crewmember who required helicopter medical evacuation.

The only Saab listed among race entrants was crewed by James Fox of Great Britain and American Charles Paulsen.

The Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department would not confirm or deny these reports on Monday.

The environment

Van Krzywicki, vice-chair of the Lumberland Environmental Management Council, monitored the race along the Lebanon Road course and found it was “generally very pleasant.” The racers stayed within the course, left only minor rutting on the roads and the crew was pretty good picking up after themselves, he said.

Krzywicki’s only concern was the noise of several of the cars. “We’d been assured that all these cars were ‘street legal’, but we’ve found that two of the five classes of vehicles are not. Their mufflers don’t conform,” he said.

Krzywicki also said some time other than spring would be better in future, when eagles may be disturbed on their nests. “Fall would be better. They won’t get an Environmental Management Council sanction again for this time of year,” he said.