It’s always the drivers that get the attention, but the ones sitting to their right deserve some love too.
The 48th consecutive running of the Rally of the Tall Pines is coming up this weekend. Bancroft has hosted the event every year since 1997.
John Hall will be one the many entrants this Saturday. He’ll be driving alongside Boris Djorjevic in car number one, a 2009 Mitsubishi Evo X.
Hall says he’s been preparing for this rally for the past two weeks. He handles everything from booking the flights to Toronto to planning the gas load for the car and what tires they’ll be bringing along for the rally. In Hall’s case, he and Djorjevic will be flying out of Edmonton on Thursday to Toronto and will drive up to Bancroft that day. Hall says on Friday he’ll walk through the course with Djorjevic and take notes. He says it’s important to make sure he understands exactly what Djorjevic is saying to him and how he wants it to be said back to him during the rally. “In a way what a co-driver is doing is providing that sixth sense to a driver,” he says. “You want to be confident in the diver so that you’re not worried what he’s doing, but at the same time you need to be able to deliver the info at precisely the right time so he’s reacting to it appropriately,” Hall adds. Essentially, the driver and co-driver need to be of one mind during a rally.
Hall says after the Rally of the Tall Pines ends, he’s off to another rally. He says he’s been preparing for that one at the same time he’s been preparing for this weekend. “There’s really no time to not be doing rally stuff,” Hall says.
As for this weekend, Hall and his driver Djorjevic are one of the top seeds. With that in mind, Hall has high hopes for the weekend. “If the car runs well and we perform okay we have a chance to be on the top of the podium,” he says.