2020 Press On Regardless® final results
2020 Press On Regardless® is history! View the final results and read the story!
Click here to see final results.
Click here to see map of the entire 2020 POR rally course.
Our intrepid 2020 POR rallyists must’ve surely been getting bleary eyed and fuzzy brained as they departed Onaway to launch into the fifth, and final, section of the rally. But there is no rest for the weary in this case, for the 68 some miles on the way back to the finish in Gaylord traversed some of the gnarliest rally roads in the area. These are narrow, twisty, tree bordered one and a half, sometimes one, lane unpaved roads that snake through the woods of the Pigeon River State Forest and surrounding area. Included are several famed roads from POR’s stage years, including Sawdust Pile, Tin Shanty and Old Vanderbilt. Encountering rain, fog, and slimy road surfaces didn’t do much to improve the situation. So they couldn’t relax yet if they wanted a solid finish, or even a finish at all. “Press on, regardless!” was indeed the dictum here.
At last the smoke cleared, the exhausted teams were back in Gaylord, and the 2020 running of Press On Regardless® was in the books. Having 26 teams start this year’s POR was excellent; there hasn’t been this strong a turnout for POR in years. This was an unusually unlucky year for competitor cars, as in recent years POR most, if not all, cars have finished. But this year saw Maegan Burkart and Mike Burkart’s Audi A4 suffer a broken left front spring and the Jones/Mulder Saab 9-2x succumb to a broken lower control arm in the last section.
As with every POR, there were plenty of stories. Scott Harvey Jr. and Rob Moran once again claimed a POR victory with just 29.1 points over the 54 scored controls, successfully maintaining their 10+ point margin over Dave and Dan Harkcom, who finished with 41.3. Andrew Layton, author of the recently published excellent history of POR ‘Press On Regardless: The Story of America’s Longest, Oldest and Meanest Road Rally’, and his dad Joe toughed it out to finish fifth overall.
A big story for this year’s running was the limited class victory of Satish Gopalkrishnan and Savera D’Souza, who came all the way from New Jersey to claim the limited class win and 3rd overall with just 53.0 points, an outstanding result. Brothers Brian and Kevin Line put in another solid run to claim 2nd in class and 4th overall with a score 94.0.
But perhaps the biggest POR finish story this year is that of stock class victors Sawyer Stone and Alison Lee, who stormed stock class with 129.9 for the 54 scored controls, an average of just 2.4 seconds per control! That was not only good enough for a resounding win in stock class, but also for 6th place overall, finishing ahead of all but two of the nine limited class contenders. Well done Sawyer and Alison! In fact, stock class competitors had an excellent result this year, with the top four stock class teams finishing ahead of all but three of the nine limited class contenders.
This year’s running of POR saw the introduction of the new Richta GPS-based virtual controls for timing and scoring to the rally. There were a couple of hiccups that required addressing at the end, but the experience with the Richta apps was largely positive. This is clearly the future for TSD rallying. And with all of the data that must be generated and assembled for 55 scored legs over 335 miles and 14 hours, it is almost impossible not to have an error or two. 2020 POR was no exception. Calculation errors on two legs ultimately forced the dropping of one leg, but the second calculation error was uncovered and corrected, salvaging that leg.
With the 2020 running Press On Regardless® continues its tradition as the U.S.’s longest continually running rally, and its reputation as demanding and challenging TSD rally. Cars and teams are taxed to keep running, stay on course and match the rallymaster’s leg times over many miles and hours. A tip o’ the hat to all of the competitors who came out to run POR, and especially to those five novice teams who tackled this very grueling rally – POR is quite the rally to cut your TSD teeth on!
Thanks to all the competitors and workers, and here’s hoping we see you come back for the 2021 Press On Regardless®!