(Words and photos by Tommy Lee Byrd) –  We cover many types of racing, but what you may not often see is “time, speed, endurance rallying”. It’s a rare form of racing, but there are a few regional events across the country designed for vintage cars. The big daddy is the Hemmings Motor News Great Race presented by Hagerty. It’s the ultimate rally for vintage cars, as it typically spans more than 2,000 miles, spread out across a nine-day timeline.

The route changes every year, and this year’s theme is Route 66, so the event makes lunch and evening stops in cool Route 66 destinations along the way. It starts in Kirkwood, Missouri, right outside of St. Louis, and heads West with a finish destination on the Santa Monica Pier on the beautiful Pacific coast of California. Tommy Lee Byrd is the staff photographer and social media guy for the event and he’s agreed to send us some highlights from the event.

The nature of the event does not involve the winner crossing the finish line first. It’s all about precision driving, to match a pre-determined “perfect time” on the allotted course. The racers get their turn-by-turn driving instructions 30 minutes before departing for the day’s journey. These directions also dictate speed changes, direction changes and gas stops—the theory is that if you follow the directions precisely, you will get a perfect score. Just to give you an idea of how difficult that can be; in more than 30 years of competition, there has only been one team that has scored a completely perfect day, down to the second. The age of your car adds a multiplication factor to your score—the older the car, the better the multiplication factor.

A team requires a driver and a navigator, and these guys and girls are doing math like you wouldn’t believe as they’re motoring down the road in a vintage caThey are serious about it, and they should be…there is a $50,000 check waiting for the overall winner in Santa Monica.

Tommy Lee Byrd will be covering all the action, and there will be daily updates on www.greatrace.com, as well as live updates on www.facebook.com/greatracerally. Check out this link: https://www.facebook.com/greatracerally/events?ref=page_internal to see when and where they’ll be stopping, and try to make it to one of the stops. It’s free and it’s a chance to see some rare iron on the race and the road trip of a lifetime.