Follow the progress of Press On Regardless® tomorrow!

Tomorrow, Saturday September 12, sees the 72nd running of the legendary Press On Regardless®, the U.S.’s longest continuously run rally!

Starting out at noon in Gaylord, POR will cover 335 miles of mostly unpaved roads through the woods of northern Michigan before finishing back in Gaylord at around 2 AM Saturday. Twenty-six driver/navigator teams will be traversing everything from graded, sweeping county roads to tight, twisty, narrow forest roads, all while working together to keep their car on course and as close to exactly on time as they can manage. The last five hours, from 9 PM to 2 AM, will run over some of the most demanding roads at a brisk pace, adding even more challenges.

You can participate in this year’s Press On Regardless® rally by following its progress! The rally is organized into five sections, each section running approximately 2 hours and followed by a break at the end before starting the next section. At each section break we’ll post the scores for the competitors to that point, and include a map showing the rally course the competitors have followed up to that break. And, of course, once final results have been nailed down we’ll publish those too. You’ll be able to find this all from the Region’s Press On Regardless® pages, as well as in updates on the Region’s Facebook page and the Michigan Rally Enthusiast’s Facebook page.

Who will be 2020’s POR winners? Here’s who to watch:

Equipped class has just three teams this year. Of special interest are the father and son team of Dave and Dan Harkcom, and the team Scott Harvey Jr. and Rob Moran. Both teams are previous overall winners of previous PORs, are evenly matched and very competitive. This could be a contest to the very last. In addition Andrew Layton is back to run again with his dad Joe. Andrew is the author of a just recently published comprehensive history of POR, ‘Press On Regardless: The Story of America’s Longest, Oldest and Meanest Road Rally’ (available from Amazon and Revolution Press). Andrew was inspired to write this book by his own experiences running POR.

Limited class will likely see some stiff competition as well. Brothers Brian and Kevin Line are always strong contenders, having won the class in multiple previous PORs. Adam Spieszny and Piotr Roszczenko are regular winners in this class too, so this match could be one to watch. Satish Gopalkrishnan and navigator Savera D’Souza are coming all the way from New Jersey to run this year’s POR. Satish is a relative newcomer to TSD rallying, but has become competitive quickly. Perhaps a black horse winner?

Driver Tristan Koivisto and navigator Ryan Vindua have been regular stock class competitors in Detroit Region rallies over the past several years, and quickly came to all but dominate the class. They will surely be in the chase for first in class here. But they should expect competition from Sawyer Stone and Alison Lee. Sawyer and his granddad won the 2006 Great American Race, when Sawyer was just 13! And stock class is seeing some visits from veteran rallyists of yore – the teams of Bob Martin and Jim Kloosterman, and Kent Gardam with James Oess. It should prove entertaining to watch stock class!

And with novices, who knows? Novice teams are those with six or fewer rallies under their collective belt, oftentimes newcomers. POR is one challenging rally to cut one’s TSD teeth on, but many who have done so tell great tales of their first road rally adventure!

We’ll be ‘talking’ to you tomorrow, and remember – urge the erstwhile POR teams to press on – regardless! You never know how things will shake out until the end!