How do I plan a car rally or group drive?
Pick a route your slowest car can enjoy, cut it into legs of about an hour with a stop at the end of each, and share the route with everyone before the day. On the day, run a drivers' briefing, put an experienced driver at the back, and use live tracking so nobody gets left at a junction.
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1. Pick the route
Start from the roads, not the destination. Choose a route that is fun at a pace every car in the group can hold, avoids towns and long stretches of highway, and has places to pull over. Drive it yourself beforehand at the time of day you plan to run it.
2. Plan the stops
Break the drive into legs of about an hour, each ending at a fuel stop, a viewpoint or a meal with parking for the whole group. Put the stops on the route as checkpoints so everyone's navigation knows where the next regroup is.
3. Get people signed up
Publish the event with the date, meeting point, route and any rules, and ask people to RSVP so you know how many cars to plan parking for. For a multi-day rally, add each day's route and the overnight stop to the itinerary.
4. Run the day
Hold a short drivers' briefing: the route, the stops, the pace and what to do if someone gets separated. Put a confident driver at the front and an experienced one at the back as the sweep. Above about ten cars, split into groups that leave a few minutes apart.
Live group tracking means the lead car can see when the group has strung out and wait at the next safe pull-off, and nobody has to remember a turn they could not see.
Questions
- What app is good for organizing a car rally?
- Road & Rally lets you build the route with checkpoints, publish a single-day meet or a multi-day rally with an itinerary, take RSVPs, and drive it as a convoy where everyone sees each other live on the map. It is free on iPhone, Android and the web.
- How do you keep a group of cars together?
- Share the route so everyone is navigating to the same next stop, put a sweep car at the back, regroup at every stop, and use live location so the leader can see when the group has spread out.
- How many cars should be in one group?
- Up to about ten stays manageable through junctions and traffic lights. Above that, run several groups a few minutes apart, each with its own lead and sweep.
Keep reading
- How do I find twisty roads near me?How to find the best curvy driving roads near you: what makes a road good to drive, how to measure it, and how Road Finder scores every road in an area on curvature and flow.
- What is the best app for driving enthusiasts?What a driving enthusiast app should do — find great roads, navigate them with pace notes, record drives and run group drives — and how Road & Rally covers each.