“What’s the reason why you started to follow rallying?”

The Richard Burns Foundation raised one extremely interesting topic on Twitter, asking it’s followers what got them involved in rallying. Great question and the one I often thought about, but also the one I cannot find single answer to.

It could be the overall feeling of being a part of one large family, with rally fans, drivers and teams not being separated by barbed wire and high fences, expensive tickets and ill-tempered security guards.

Or perhaps it’s the fact that rallying is indeed the definitive form of motorsport, testing just about every possible driving skill in a driver and adding pacenotes making and understanding on top of that. As Kimi Raikkonen found out in his two seasons in WRC – it’s much harder than it looks.

It might be due to the way in which the rally crew operates – the perfect understanding between two people racing at breakneck speeds through all kinds of terrains and depending on eachother to make it to the finish in one piece.

For some it’s about the cars and their raw power on one side and the everyday looks on the other. Unlike Formula 1 or races like DTM or NASCAR, rally cars mostly look like the cars we see in everyday traffic. Just more mean and in working uniform.

For me it was a combination of many things. Saw my first special stage, or rather the start of it, after cycling 10 kilometers to reach the start of it on some old bike. It was 1993 if I remember correctly, and all I saw were last three or four crews taking off. But that was it, and next race I got involved as a marshall, then came photographing, some co-driving, writing… The pic above was taken in 1994 (I think!) and by the all-manual gear with fixed lens, but it was real, it was action, it was rally!

This “list” could go on and on, but it’s just rallying… sum of all those and many other things make it a love relationship you cannot fully explain. To see Lancia Delta racing through the hairpin with huge crowds cheering, the smell of burned fuel as the cars go by (the sweet one)…

Why don’t you head over to Twitter, give TheRBFoundation a follow and tell them what got you involved in rallying. Also make sure to visit Richard Burns Foundation’s Paint it Orange campaign website and see if you can get involved in this great charity.

You can also share your rally memories in comments!