NORRA Announces Dates, Payment Plan, New Classes and More...

NORRA (National Off-Road Racing Association) has sent out invitations to prior racers and announced a number of changes to vehicle classes amongst other changes.  Some of the racer beneficial changes include a payment plan starting this month so you can stretch the cost out over a long period of time.  One of the class changes includes the elimination of a "rally" class and now includes three Rally-Raid classes (I would imagine "Rally-Raid Production" would cover most stage rally vehicles) and divides vehicles into a number of categories based on age and eliminates an "overall" winner (though adds an "overall" winner for each age category).

I don't know (OK, I'm pretty sure I won't) if I will return to this race in '16 but it was such a great/horrible/wonderful experience for me as a racer I can't help but recommend it to any rally/offroad racer out there.  Nowhere else in North America will you have a chance to race some 1000 miles in a single rally event.  Kudos to NORRA to continuing to make changes that benefit racers and not remaining static.

NORRA 2016 Announcement

Baja Portalegre 2013...

This Rally Raid event took place a couple months back.  In reality for such a small country Portugal certainly has its fair share of big time offroad events including the WRC Portugal event and this, long form Rally Raid contest.

This was the 27th year of the Baja Portalegre, making it one of the longest held Raid events in the world and as it is held annually in early November, serves as the final warmup for numerous teams heading to the Dakar--including the Mini team in recent years, Colin McRae in his first every Rally Raid (in a Nissan pickup) and the dominant VW Toureg team featuring Carlos Sainz and American Mark Miller.

For reference out there, the base entry fee for the event was 2,000 Euros and the Special Stage mileage was 418kms.

At the end of the day it was the Mitsubishi Racing Lancer of Miguel Barbosa (a local Portugal driver) taking the win with an average of 71 kmph.  The top flight effort and Dakar Mini driver of Krzyszstof Holocwzyc finished second and the Overdrive Toyota HiLux of Reinoldo Varelo of Brazil finished third.

The top finishing Nissan was the Polish team of Marek Dabrowski with his Navara who ended up in seventh.  Other Nissan entries finished 10th, 15th, 21st, 25th, and 27th among the 34 finishers and approximately 42 entrants.

Oh and the BMW shown was  of two 325s in the event with the other one taking the class win for "cars" showing there's no excuse for rally cars not to do these more WRC style Rally Raids...