RoadRally Results: Tulips by Night May 30
Seven road-rally teams dodged the raindrops Saturday evening, May 30, to run the 2026 edition of Tulips by Night, which began at the Park & Ride in Troy, Ill., and concluded at Vitale’s Hideaway at Illinois Route 4 (Historic U.S. 66) and Interstate 55 near Worden, Ill.
Congratulations to our podium finishers: (1) Danny Adams and Shelby Blecha, (2) Jeff Ryan and Angie Ryan, and (3) Sean O’Brian and Luther Triplett.
Tulips by Night, designed as a Monte-Carlo-style TSD road rally, featured 10 Richta GPS timing controls spaced over a 60-mile rural Madison County, Ill., route. Penalties: 1 point per second early or late at a timing control, with a maximum penalty per timing control of 60 points. Adams and Blecha, both new to rallying (as was the entire field), maxed the first timing control (60 points) and zeroed the remaining controls.
The results are as follows:
1, D. Adams/S. Blecha (Subaru), 60
2, J. Ryan/A. Ryan (Ford), 65
3, S. O’Brian/L. Triplett (Ford), 71
4, J. Hill/L. Roth-Hill (Subaru), 87
5, B. Niehaus/J. Niehaus (Honda), 169
6, J. Mallrich/S. Mallrich (Ford), 175
7, R. Fournelle/A. Harris (Porsche), 541
Up next for the 2026 St. Louis Region RoadRally program: Rallymaster Tom vonHatten’s “Continuing Education: Rally with the March Hare” Sept. 10 (https://msreg.com/STLRallyEducation2026), to be followed by the SCCA’s 31st United States Road Rally Challenge® (USRRC) Oct. 9–11 (https://msreg.com/USRRC2026), which the St. Louis Region will host for the fifth time.
Of particular USRRC interest for beginning and occasional rally teams is the “Gateway Challenge” component of the 2026 USRRC. The Gateway Challenge is composed of Regional SOP (seat-of-the pants) versions of the weekend’s Saturday and Sunday National Touring rallies (i.e., the Great River Road Tour and the Route 66 Ramble), where calculations will be kept to a minimum and the emphasis will be on a fun driving experience. (The Route 66 Ramble, like Saturday evening’s Tulips by Night, will be a Monte-Carlo-style rally.)
Finally, to close our 2026 road-rally season, the Region has a Stan Lawson GTA (Game-Tour-Adventure) road rally planned for Nov. 22. More about that event later.
Until then, happy rallying.