Trophy Run! The Adventure Begins

The morning started with a mandatory Rally meeting. The meeting went over all the rules and changes.  The majority of the meeting was a tribute to the Great Racers that paved the roads for us. This is the first time we all wore our team shirts.

Right after the meeting Darrin and Sam stayed for rally school.

The Great Race kicked things off with a warm-up rally on Friday afternoon, and they call it the Hagerty Trophy Run. It’s a half-day rally that gives everyone a quick dose of what’s to come when the green flag drops. Before that, we had our annual meeting with all staff, drivers, navigators and support crews to cover announcements and special appearances by Jim Menneto from Hemmings Motor News, Kyle Smith from Hagerty, Wade Kawasaki from Legendary Companies, and several others.

With this year’s event starting in San Antonio, the drivers had to cover quite a few miles of busy interstate traffic just to get far enough out of town to get on the clock. It was hot, and the course was challenging for both rookies and veterans of the race. We’re looking forward to waving the green flag tomorrow morning at the Alamo, and then embarking on this nine-day, 2,300-mile adventure.Today`s adventure was in the hill country of Texas. Team Alabama restarted on hill because the transmission was not working well. 

Darrin manovered Big Red into a 40 mile mph turn to get her to a 35 mph start. The team encountered a scary moment when a house pulled out on front of them.  But the run ended with a decent score.