The Great Race Crosses Maryland: Part 2

Last month I described the Great Race, the classic car rally run each year across different routes in North America.  Today I’ll cover the highlights of the 2024 Great Race (GR) in Maryland and Virginia, on its way from Owensboro, Kentucky to Gardiner, Maine.

My wife and I hooked up with the Great Race in historic Frostburg, Maryland.  We were able to tell from GR website (GreatRace.com) that the cars would begin arriving at about 4:45 pm at the day’s finish line in front of the famous Gunter Hotel.  We arrived a little early, but a crowd was already setting up lawn chairs, a local band was practicing, and the GR support crew was inflating the arch that welcomes the rally cars each afternoon.

Sure enough, the rally cars began streaming in right on time, stopping under the arch to confer with rally staff and then moving on down the street to the “parc fermé” – a static two-hour gorgeous car show on Main Street.  (Parc fermé is French for “closed park,” a term derived from Formula 1 car racing.)

The next morning the cars assembled to receive their race instructions, one navigator per minute, twenty minutes before each car was required to start.  We followed one of the cars out onto Interstate 68, where it (and all the other cars) went through about ten miles of daily calibration runs.  These runs provide each navigator with the exact time and distance between selected signs on the highway, so he/she can check that the car’s special speedometer is accurate, and determine any corrections needed.

Then the cars turned off the Interstate onto a side road and lined up on the shoulder of historic Route 40, the National Road.  This important road was constructed from 1811 to 1820 as the first Federal road to the west, from Baltimore to St. Louis.  The National Road was the original precurser of our current Interstate Highway system.  Now it is a lovely twisting two lane road that leads to Illinois, where you can pick up the famous Route 66 and drive all the way to California.

Driving west on Route 40 and then turning south through the Maryland panhandle on beautiful back roads, the rally cars were under time/speed/distance instructions, trying to exactly match the perfect “ghost car” times allocated by the rally designers.  About once an hour the cars would pass a secret, hidden checkpoint, where judges would note the exact time of each car’s passing, and compare that time to the set time for that car.  Later any cars hitting the mark to the second would receive an “Ace” award and sticker to put on their cars.  Some of the best racers were covered with stickers.  (We got one lonely Ace sticker in our rookie GR rally in 2005.)

In Oldtown, Maryland we stopped to take photos of some of the rally cars as they crossed the historic Oldtown Historic Toll Bridge, the only remaining private toll bridge in the state.  The setting was lovely, the price was reasonable at only $1.50 per car, but the wooden planked bridge looked and sounded like it had never been repaired since being built in 1937, 87 years ago!

We then wound through more beautiful green valleys on the Greenspring Valley Road and Slanesville Pike, and crossed into West Virginia and Virginia.  We arrived for lunch at the private Ken Walsh Farm near Purcellville, Virginia.  There the rally cars rolled in about one a minute, the crews jumped out for a 45-minute catered lunch and bathroom break, while a huge crowd admired the rally cars and other classic vehicles from a local car club.

After a quick lunch at one of several food trucks, we took off in pursuit of another rally car, tagging along on more gorgeous back roads we had never before discovered, eventually crossing back into Maryland.  When we reached Interstate 70 we reluctantly turned south towards home in Silver Spring, and left the rally cars to head for their next night stop in Gettysburg.

During the rally we were able to chat with the only Maryland participant, Brad Phillips of Salisbury.  He said that he had a “small” collection of classic cars, including, “A ’66 Sunbeam Tiger Mk1a, an ’87 Porsche 911 Carrera, a 1917 Willys-Overland touring car, a 1983 Ferrari 308 GTS, a 1977 Chevrolet C20 Suburban, and a 1992 Toyota Century — a Japanese market car that is very rare in the United States. I’ve had scores of ’65-’67 Mustangs, a couple of ’68 Porsche 911’s, a couple of ‘60’s Mercedes sedans including a wicked 6.3 liter 300 SEL, a couple of Triumphs, a Mark 1 Sunbeam Tiger, a ’70 Jaguar E-Type …  it just goes on and on.”  Whew!

Brad said that they were having some braking problems with their 1916 Hudson Super Six.  “The original brakes were just leather on the rear only.  We replaced them with more modern brakes, but they are still very physical, especially when going downhill at 40 mph and having to quickly slow to 20.  My legs hurt and my back hurts, but it’s all good!”

The winners of the 2024 Great Race were Howard Sharp and his son Doug, in their 1916 Hudson.  Their score was a terrific time of only 1 minute and 00.06 seconds off the perfect “ghost car” time set for the thousands of miles of rallying. For their efforts the Sharps won the $50,000 Grand Champion prize, a prize they had won four times before!  The Sharps have a large collection of Hudsons, and usually race a different one each year.  Despite being over 100 years old, their Hudsons are very reliable and quite fast.  Comfortable – not so much!

The logistics involved in the GR are astounding.  The 2024 event lasted nine days and 2300 miles, ending on June 30 in Gardiner, Maine.  Along with 140 rally cars and one motorcycle involved in the actual racing, there were dozens of GR staff cars and trucks, and dozens more crew support vehicles for some of the wealthier racers.  In total about 500 people moved together across the country, usually taking over the one or two entire hotels each night.  In the Frostburg area race organizers were a bit peeved with the local hoteliers, since they refused to rent out their entire hotels, and thus the 500 GR people had to spread out over several hotels scattered across 20 miles around Frostburg, making meetings, briefings and the next morning start more complicated. Hence this was likely the last time the GR will come through Frostburg, unless the hotels cooperate.

The 2025 GR will start in St. Paul, Minnesota, and run SE through Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina, ending in Lake Murray, South Carolina.  The closest locations for Marylanders to see the rally cars (likely in late June) will be Charleston and Lewisburg, West Virginia.

Photos courtesy Lew Toulmin