The 2025 Thunderbird Rally: Snow, Precise Timing, and Car Culture

Is it part overlanding and part competition? It can be. But no matter what TSD you decide to do, there are instrumental regulations you should follow. My husband, Andy Lilienthal, and my latest TSD competition, the 2025 Thunderbird Rally, was a snow-filled event spanning 560 challenging miles over two days. It was hosted by the West Coast Rally Association in British Columbia, Canada. It started in Merrit, went to Penticton, and finished back in Merritt.

Thunderbird Rally taught us several things. The most important takeaway? Rally culture is alive and well, with loads of people wanting to help everyone involved.

What is a TSD Rally?
By definition, a time-speed-distance (TSD) rally is a type of motorsport competition where drivers and navigators follow a specific route, adhering to precise speeds and arriving at checkpoints at designated times, focusing on accuracy rather than outright speed.

This essentially makes it a test of precision driving and navigation skills rather than raw speed. A TSD rally can also be called a precision rally, a regularity, or an enduro. They can last anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks or more.

TSD rallies happen all over the world and can take place on tarmac or off-road via trails, open OHV areas, and more. Each rally organization is different. Some events can happen in busy cities, rural areas, or in the middle of nowhere. The surfaces you drive on may be grooved ice and snow like we ran in the winter 2020 and 2024 Alcan 5000 Rally.

They can also be dirt, rocks, silt or gravel, or even plain tarmac. It’s up to you to research the organization, their regulations, and where the rally takes place before competing. The team finishing closest to the rallymaster’s perfect time after driving the prescribed route wins.

These kinds of rallies combine multiple factors: travel, vehicles, meeting like-minded gearheads, adventure, and the challenge of it all. Depending on the rally organization, most vehicles of any type can enter … but the outcome is up to you.

TSD Rally Details
Most TSD rally events are held on public roads at or below posted speed limits. You may get stopped or slowed by traffic lights, local vehicles, trains, or even livestock. However, a TSD rally (or a precision event, regularity, or enduro) is NOT a race.

You aren’t sliding sideways racing as quickly as you can to the finish line. You’re traveling at or below speed limits on public roads. And if you get stopped by an obstacle, take a time allowance. TSD rallies are a game of precision driving and mathematical chess.

Our 2022 Subaru Crosstrek Rally Car
Sometimes we drive an auto manufacturer’s vehicle for a competition. For Thunderbird, we took our 2022 Subaru 2.0i Crosstrek (6MT). We bought it new and outfitted it to be a competent mountain car. In rally mode, this is how we’ve outfitted it:

Exterior upgrades:

• BFGoodrich: 215/75R15 KO2 all-terrain tires
• Reika: 15x7 (+15) satin black Seeker wheels
• Primitive Racing: 3/16” 5052 polished aluminum front, mid, and rear skid plates
• Rally Innovations: steel tube auxiliary light mount
• Lightforce: Venom LED auxiliary lights
• Nameless Performance: Executive Axleback exhaust and Twin Tube strut tower brace
• Packasport: Day Tripper cargo carrier
• EcoHitch: Stealth series two-inch hitch receiver
• Factor 55: HitchLink 2.0 hitch-receiver recovery point and locking hitch pin
• CravenSpeed: Platypus license plate mount
• MAXTRAX: Mini recovery boards (four)
• Full-size shovel

Interior accoutrements:

• ARB: single portable air compressor and Speedy Seal tire repair kit
• Garmin: GPSMAP 67i handheld inReach device
• Rugged Radios: R1 business band two way handheld radios
• Scosche: TerraClamp mounts and MagicMount Pro vent mounts
• Ledlenser: HF6R Signature headlamp

“We have a few road rallies under our belt in the Crosstrek, and have become pretty familiar with how it performs,” Andy said. “Knowing the speedometer is 3 MPH off is good, as well as knowing how it reacts to throttle and steering inputs.”

For him, this was the most snow driving we’d done in the car. He got a good feeling of how the car reacted in a variety of snowy situations.

The 2025 Thunderbird Rally Classes
Collectively, we were one of 28 total vehicles. There were multiple classes consisting of a driver and navigator: Novice, Paper, Calculator, and Unlimited. (Classes may vary depending on the rally organization.)

We could also run as a team group, with different team combinations but we had to have a novice team as part of an overall team. We forged ahead as a trio: Team Trackside. Our head leaders, however, had to bow out due to sickness. But we pushed ahead in hopes of doing well.

Team Trackside included the following cars:

• 2022 Subaru 2.0i Crosstrek, Calculator Class, car #8 (us, Andy Lilienthal, driver and me, Mercedes Lilienthal, navigator)
• 2019 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon JL, Novice Class, car #21 (Shane Bowman, driver and John Williams, navigator)
• 2013 BMW 3351 xDrive Coupe, Unlimited Class, car #2 (Marinus Damm, driver and Renee Ramm, navigator)
• Sick and couldn’t attend: V-8 swapped 1973 Mercury Capri, Unlimited Class (Garth Ankeny, driver and Russ Kraushaar, navigator)

How the Thunderbird Rally is Run

The Thunderbird Rally packed 560 fast, snow-filled miles into two challenging days. This event had eight TSD regularity stages (four each day) and included transit sections between them to connect it all together.

The rally is sanctioned by Rally Pacific Motorsports (BC region of Canadian Association of Rally Sport) and is put on by the West Coast Rally Association. The roads were about 40% clear pavement and 60% snow-covered gravel and tarmac. A route book is handed to all team navigators, giving us specific instructions on how to complete the competition.

This included tulip notes with arrows and a short description indicating which direction to drive, incremental odometer readings in miles and kilometers, and prescribed speeds to follow.

Although we were from the United States, we ran the rally using kilometers. This way I could call out whole numbers for Andy to follow (i.e. driving 52 kilometers an hour vs. 32.3 miles per hour).

Teams calibrated their odometers (odos) after driving 35.01 miles (56.34 kilometers). This is a common thing to do with TSD rally. Navigators can calculate their odometer factor (how far they’re odos are off compared to the exact rallymaster’s odo reading after driving a specific mileage).

Classes and Calculating Timing
Paper and Calculator classes can essentially only use long-form math and paper to figure out incremental times a driver needs to arrive at a specific place during each regularity. We ran Calculator Class; I used a kid’s calculator and kitchen timer as aids.

The Unlimited class can run any type of rally equipment. This includes rally apps, computers, GPS boosters, charts, and more. Unlike Paper or Calculator classes, Unlimited teams will know how many seconds they’re off continually by using those things.

Paper and Calculator classes rely solely on their incremental math and Richta to stay on pace. The Thunderbird is unique because novices can use any type of equipment, too. Most of them used Unlimited tools according to the rallymaster.

We were car #8, so we started eight minutes after car #0’s time (which is the rallymaster’s car). In short, each rally car starts competition one minute after the last one does. Example: car #0’s time is 11:30:00 (hours:minutes:seconds) and we’re car #8, we leave at 11:38:00. The Thunderbird Rally begins!

Tackling the Thunderbird
“SOR (sign on right) for SC (surface change) Gravel at .57 kilometers … you need to get there at 11:38:29,” I call out as Andy drives exactly 72 kilometers per hour. “CG (cattle guard) at 4.85 kilometers! Stay 72 km/h and you should arrive there at 11:42:03,” I say immediately we pass the sign for gravel. The GPS-based rally app, Richta, calls out checkpoints and how far off we are. “Late 1.0 seconds … early 0.6 seconds!”

We continually adjust speeds accordingly to match perfect zero on-time marks. This is TSD rally. Too early or too late and you accrue seconds or points off perfect time. Teams with the least points win their class and the best duo earns the overall win.

As we weave our way from Merritt to Penticton, BC, the timing game and mathematical chess continue.

The Headwaters TSD Regularity
The sun waned into darkness, and the entire rally group faced our toughest challenge of the event: the Headwaters regularity. This nighttime TSD stage gave us heavy snowfall, with several inches of soft snow already on the ground.

“Our Rally Innovations light bar and aux lights were great at illuminating dark forest roads,” Andy said. “The BFGoodrich KO2 all-terrain tires are 3PMS-rated, they’re quite good in the snow and performed great.”

However, conditions got too treacherous to keep up. Safety first, we start taking time allowances (TAs) to help with lost time. Tip: Use too many TAs and it can work against you. Not enough and you’ll get a bad score for the next checkpoint or a few until you make up time.

Soon, we started seeing rally cars stuck. Vehicles with more ground clearance pressed on, and we made it just over eight miles in before our Crosstrek slid into a snowbank.

Thankfully, our Primitive Racing skid plates proved their worth, keeping snow out of the engine bay and protecting our underside. We used MAXTRAX recovery boards and a shovel, and along with our Factor 55 HitchLink 2.0 recovery point, WARN Epic shackle, and the kindness of a fellow competitor in a Jeep Wrangler, we got unstuck and continued on as one of six rigs that made it through. The other vehicles were turned around. All but the first checkpoint of that regularity was scrapped. That’s rally.

After nearly 11 challenging hours on the road, we made it back, unpacked, and got a late dinner and a beer. Armed with a few hours of sleep, we repacked our rig the next morning and finished the second day unscathed, winning the Calculator Class!

Rally Community
It’s about car culture and the rally community. People help each other learn the ropes, do time calculations, get unstuck, and check in on one another. It’s one of the many reasons why we love TSD rally so much. What’s not to love when just about anyone can compete in just about any type of vehicle?

“TSD (time-speed-distance) or road rally combines travel, driving, motorsports, and community together into a super-fun activity,” Andy said. “It’s such an approachable form of motorsports; you don’t need a highly built-up vehicle to participate. Get out there and try it! Find a local rally group. Ask questions. Join the novice class. It’s an affordable, approachable way to get into rally with a fantastic community.”

Stay tuned from us, the Lilienthals, as 2025 will be packed with rallies, events, and a major off-road adventure!

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