Stage Four of the Rebelle Rally Was a Big Shake Up

After a night at Base Camp 2 near Dove Springs, on Monday night, the 2022 Rebelle Rally got underway Tuesday morning, with competitors starting their day with an On-Route Enduro that took them up through a Joshua Tree forest, across part of the Pacific Crest Trail, and back into Dove Springs before heading south to a new challenge in the Spangler OHV Area, near Ridgecrest, California.

The On-Route Enduro requires competitors to read and understand traditional rally road books. Tuesday’s On-Route Enduro was designed and planned by Jimmy Lewis, the famed motorcycle rider who podiumed at the Dakar. Roadbooks use FIA symbols and tulip directions to guide competitors. Checkpoints are located along the path, and as Emily Miller, the founder of the Rally noted, accuracy is key.

“At the end of the on-route enduro,” Miller told MC Emme Hall during the Live broadcast on Tuesday morning, “They end up in Dove Springs and have a choice. They can a regular route or an X-route which are both scored the same. The X-route is harder to drive and easier to navigate, and the regular route is easier to drive and harder to navigate.”

Stage 4 was a 10-hour stage that included 34 checkpoints and 105 miles of offroad driving–including some difficult dead reckoning in an open offroad park that is used by UTVs and others and, because of recent rains, has been deeply rutted out. There, competitors had to plot the checkpoints on their maps, take cap headings, and drive as directly as possible to those checkpoints to score the maximum number of points.

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The Rebelles faced a new challenge in the OHV park. They had a total of 13 possible checkpoints in the Spangler OHV area to plot and find, and for the first time in Rebelle history, competitors could choose the order in which they went after those checkpoints. Usually, the checkpoints must be collected in numerical order, as it keeps competitors moving in a specific direction toward their next base camp. The challenge of dead reckoning hinges on both communication and real-world offroad driving. Once the navigator has plotted a point, they will give the driver a heading and distance to maintain. As the driver, you’ll have to drive around boulders, bushes, and other things in your way, which takes you off your heading, and adds to the distance your odometer reads, making it extra challenging to find the unmarked checkpoints. Teams have to adjust, take headings, and measure accurate distances, on the fly, making this portion of the Rebelle a real challenge.

Stage 4 marks the middle of the Rebelle Rally, and teams started just one minute apart Tuesday morning. By the midday broadcast, Group A of the 4x4s was finished with the hunt for the choose-your-own-order checkpoints in the Spangler OHV area and headed to the On-Route Enduro. Group B did the On Route Enduro in the morning, and headed to the challenging OHV area in the afternoon as temperatures moved toward the mid-90s. The X-Cross group did the On-Route Enduro in the afternoon and went hunting for the checkpoints in the OHV park in the morning. The top five teams in Group A were already out of the OHV park by the 1 pm broadcast.

By sundown on Tuesday, the standings shifted when rookie Rivian-backed Team 187 in the R1T driven by Rivian Senior Special Projects Manager and Prototype Engineer at Rivian, Lily Macaruso, and navigator, Senior Mechanical Engineer at Rivian, Alex Anderson, took the top spot on Stage 4, scoring 92% of the available points on the trail. They were the only team on the trail to capture more than 90% of the points on Tuesday. Their win knocked the Jeep-backed Team 129 of Barlow and Petereit to second, with the Ford-backed Team 150 Penny Dale and Shelby Hall coming in third on the day, beating out the competitive privateer team, Team 188 Laura Wanlass and Maria Guitar to fourth.

In Group B’s 4×4 class the Rivian-backed Team 186 of Rosanna Nuch, a Rivian Service Lab Technician, and Nicole Johnson, the Director of Human-Machine Interface for Rivian, in their Rivian R1S, came in first grabbing 79% of the available points on the trail. Nuch and Johnson formerly worked with Nick Cimmarusti, the Mechanics Director for the Rebelle–who is also known affectionately as Nickgyver by the competitors because he can fix anything, during last year’s event. They were followed closely by privateers Team 182 and Team 101.

In the X-Cross class the Ford-backed Team 200 with Chris Benzie and Melissa Clark continued to lead. The privateer team, Team 204, in the modified Subaru Outback driven by Carrie Lando and Angie Lux, came in second on the day capturing 72% of the available points. They were followed by the privateer team, Team 203, with Karisa Hayden and Trista Smith.

In spite of the day’s shake-ups, the overall standings remain relatively stable. The 4×4 Class is led by the Jeep-backed Team 129, while the X-Class is lead by the Ford-backed Team 200. Both teams have had consistent performances over the Rebelle and will be tough to beat.