Prescott, Ariz. (September 20, 2024) ~ After last weekend’s exciting Overmountain Rally Tennessee, the ARA heads out of the Tennessee forests and into the Arizona deserts for this weekend’s Prescott Rally September 20-21!
Held as part of the ARA West Region Championship, Prescott Rally is both the sixth and seventh round as each day is counted and scored as its own separate event.
Seated in the Arizona Mountains, the historic town of Prescott will host the rally's 32nd running this weekend, after a long and rich history spanning all the way back to the SCCA PRORally days where names such as Rod Millen, Paul Choniere, and Mark Lovell all picked up wins on the dusty trails.
This year, 19 teams are set to tackle the Grand Canyon State’s best roads as they compete for ARA and California Rally Series points across 12 stages, 113 miles, and two days of high-octane desert rallying action.
Each team will also be provided with a RallySafe tracker, as more and more regional events move toward using the RallySafe tracking and timing system in the ARA.
Friday’s rally is the shorter of the two, starting at Noon with a Parc Exposé and Car Show Event hosted at Findlay Subaru, with cars departing for the stages at 3:00 PM.
Four stages await competitors on the first day of Prescott, starting with the 11.58-mile, 2000-ft descent of “First View North,” followed by the shorter 7.68-mile “Witty Tom North.”
After a service at the Chino Valley Equestrian Center, the cars head back out once more to perform the same stages in reverse, starting with Witty Tom South, followed by a long climb up First View South to finish off the day around 8:00 PM.
Twice as many stages are on the itinerary for Saturday’s racing. The first car will leave the service park at 8:00 AM to begin the first stage at 9:00 AM. The first loop will consist of Witty Tom South, followed by the “Perkinsville West” stage, a 1300-ft climb over 11.10 miles that connects the towns of Perkinsville and Chino Valley.
After breaking for service, teams will repeat the same loop to complete the first half of the rally. For the second half of the day, the loop reverses, and cars will tackle Perkinsville in the East configuration, and Witty Tom in the North twice over, before rolling into the service park for the last time at 9:00 PM on Saturday to end the rally.
First on the road this weekend will be the L4WD 2002 WRX of Scott and Elizabeth Crouch. The Crouches are favorites to win Prescott this year after multiple class podiums at Oregon Trail Rally and The Rally in the 100 Acre Wood already in 2024.
Battling the Crouch car for both class and overall podiums, Santiago Carabello and Jeremy Augostino will be ones to watch in their 2011 Subaru WRX, which won the 2023 Ridge Rally last time it was on stage.
The L4WD class will be will also see competition from the 2002 WRX of Robert Shibao and Dillon McKenna, and the 1997 Impreza of Michael Thomas and Krystal Lockwood.
O4WD competitors Brett and Hunter Livingston will also be in contention for the top spot on the podium in their 2004 WRX which landed a class podium at the Oregon Trail Rally this year. Their class competition will consist of Ryan Bouffioux and Steven Winnat’s 2002 WRX which earned a class podium at Rally Colorado earlier this year, and Arto and Mary Ylkingas’ 2002 WRX which took the win over Bouffioux and Winnat at that event.
The biggest class at Prescott will be O2WD, which accounts for over 30% of the field with six entrants.
Jonathan Compton will be an exciting one to watch as he makes his O2WD debut in a 1995 BMW E36 after competing in an L2WD Ford Focus for the past few years, picking up class wins at Olympus Rally, Rally Nevada, and Ridge Rally. Compton will be co-driven this weekend by James Veatch.
Another exciting debut this weekend will be the V8-powered 1973 Ford Ranger desert truck of Flynn Baglin and Andres Bautista, a fitting vehicle for the Arizona landscape. Baglin has a history in rally dating back to 1997, including a win in the O4WD class on Prescott Rally Day 1 last year in a Mitsubishi Evo X, but the Ranger will be a step in a different direction.
Also fighting for a win will be the 1987 VW Golf GTI of Erik Christiansen and Amy Floyd, which has finished second in class in five of its six past rallies.
Other cars in the class include the 1994 Honda Civic of Tony Chavez and Sterling Smith, the 1989 BMW 325i of Benji and Gerardo Carvallo, and the 1982 Mazda RX-7 of Corbin Beu and Bryce Proseus.
NA4WD will likely have a tight battle for the win between the 2001 Impreza of Trenton Koury and Matthew Michell, and the 2007 Impreza of Albert Goad and Loren Bench, while long-time rally vets Ralph Kosmides and Doug Nagy look to impress in their Impreza.
Kosmides has three class wins at Prescott dating back to 1998, 1999 in a G5 Toyota Supra Turbo, and 2001 in a Class-N Subaru, while Nagy has a class win from 2016 co-driving with John Coyne.
Finally, the L2WD will be contested by three teams this year. The 1987 VW Golf GTi of Jennifer and Terry Stonecipher who podiumed in the class on both days of the rally last year, the 1995 Honda Civic of James Besing and Travis Harrell, and the 2010 Ford Focus of Grant Steen and Phillip Dozeman who are starting in their first stage rally after a few years of rally cross competition.
For more information about Prescott Rally and updates on the event, head to their website, Facebook, and Instagram, and stay tuned to the American Rally Association’s Social Media as well!
~Mason Runkle, for the ARA
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