Preparing Road Books For the 2016 Rallye Monte Carlo Historique

I have been in contact with Jens Gandrup Jørgensen who is preparing road books for sale to competitors for the 2016 Rallye Monte Carlo Historique.  Jens has been preparing road books for this event for many years and competitors using his road books have won and/or finished near the top of this challenging rally.  Jens has outlined to me the procedures that he uses to prepare these top quality road books for his customers.

One of the first things that is done is to calibrate the odometer that he uses to measure the route.  This year Jens will be using a new Monit GPS odometer for measuring the distances for the road book.  The initial calibration will be based on the same calibration run that the organizers used for the 2015 running of the Rallye Monte Carlo Historique.

Once the route for the 2016 Rallye Monte Carlo Historique is announced, typically in November, a rough pre-edition of the road book will be prepared.  Following the preparation of this early pre-edition of the road book the first pass of the entire route will be made.  Every day for about 10 days Jens and a driver, likely Torben Arp, will drive the route with Jens making notes in the pre-edition road book.  During this initial run-through they will travel at about 10 miles per hour so that they can measure the route and write down the needed notes.  Every evening during this 10-day initial run Jens and Torben will sit in their hotel runs and update the pre-edition with the distances and notes made during the day.  This care in making the notes during the initial pass minimizes any changes/corrections/additions that might be needed during the second run-through.

 

In early January Jens will make the final pass of the entire route to check the notes and measurements made during the initial run-through.  This run-through can be done at a little faster speed, say 25 miles per hour, and will take about 5 days to complete.  Final edits will then be made to the road book and the road books will be printed.

A few days before the start of the Rallye Monte Carlo Historique, Jens will e-mail the first leg from the Bad Homburg start to Monaco as pdf file to those who have signed up to purchase Jens’ road book.  These competitors will then be able to do their initial route planning and preparation.  At the starting point in Bad Homburg, Jens will distribute the printed version of the first competitive scored leg to the teams who have chosen to start in Bad Homburg.

In Monaco, at the latest, Jens will hand over the Road Books with the remaining event (Monaco-Valence/Valence-Valence/Valence-Monaco/Monaco-Monaco).  In St. Andre-les-Alpes the team of Torben Arp/Carsten Friis will meet up with the teams that are customers of Jens, and Arp/Friis will act as ice-pilots for the rest of the event driving 1 hour ahead of the first car on the road and they will send reports on the conditions on the regularity stages as SMS-messages to all teams with Jens’ Road Books.

As can be seen preparing the road books for the Rallye Monte Carlo Historique is quite an undertaking and as can be seen Jens’ road books are very comprehensive.

To contact Jens Grandrup Jorgesen and the A-Team about signing up to get road books for the 2016 Rallye Monte Carlo Historique let me know or check out their website directly at  www.a-team.dk