Useful tips for using the road-book
After almost 40 years in the rally business (he debuted in 1985...) Filippo Ceccucci explains all the tricks for juggling road-book navigation and getting the most fun out of it.
roadbook, how and why
The feature that distinguishes rallying from enduro is the route marked in no other way than in the roadbook.
It consists of a roll of paper that is wrapped in a box with two cross pins and equipped with an electric advance system: by pushing a button, the driver sends the roadbook forward and can read the mileage note of the moment. The note consists of an explanatory drawing of the fork or difficulty to which a kilometre corresponds. The rider knows the exact mileage thanks to the trip-master, a particularly precise odometer, which is also capable of going backwards, even by fractions of a kilometre.
The discourse appears tedious and complicated, but it is not: seeking the correct path is an enjoyable sporting challenge, not only with respect to opponents in races, but also to oneself.
As you can easily imagine, an off-road tour in the mountains or hills of Italy, along mule tracks and dirt roads, allows you to discover splendid landscapes, and this has led many enthusiasts to take part in these races, even without any particular sporting ambitions. Hence the idea of the Anàbasi e Rally dell’Umbriamotorbike touring events designed to visit little-known areas of the Umbria by following the route via road-book, preferring it to the impersonality of the GPS track.
roadbook, structure and reading
The legend consists of a few, very intuitive symbols:
The sketch shows where you are and where you have to go with the difference between asphalt and natural road.
The dotted line means a poorly defined path or track.
Houses are represented as rectangles, ruins as rectangles but with a grid, churches as pentagons with a cross at the top, gates two dots, according to international patterns.
In the area of directions, those with experience know that it is much better to give graphical signals, instead of long, hard-to-read and distracting writing.
A now unique feature of the Moto Club Umbria roadbooks is that they are hand-drawn, not computer-generated, which makes them much more intuitive to read: a side a comparison of the same route sections as drawn by Moto Club Umbria or in the Motorally: the difference is striking!
preparation of the roadbook
The preparation of the roadbook is an aspect that is often underestimated: like any other aspect concerning a rally, the main thing is that it does not create problems for the driver during the day.
In this paragraph we refer mainly to competitive use, because for non-competitive events such as those organised by Moto Club Umbria we consider it unnecessary to highlight the roadbook, except for particularly important cases such as refuelling or where you have to go at a walking pace.
In all Italian races nowadays the roadbook is delivered already in strips, but there may be cases in which it is delivered in the classic block of sheets, many drivers pay little attention to the fastening of the individual sheets, but this may create problems that will naturally emerge at the least opportune moment.
Some of the following tips will seem trivial, and are often overlooked. Let's start with the simplest: the roadbook is rolled up backwards, i.e. from the end towards the beginning and keeping the strip as straight as possible as it is rolled up. Care must then be taken to ensure that the sheets are all in line and firmly taped to each other; it is good to always try to use pieces of tape a little longer than the width of the sheet, so that the tape can also be folded over on the back side of the roadbook and thus have it even more stable and united.
The weight and volume of the roadbook may compromise the advancement of the roadbook holder, so it is naturally essential to take care when inserting the roadbook into the holder, trying to roll it up well, without leaving any 'slack', and trying to roll it up as straight as possible: it seems trivial, but it is not simple.
If the roadbook is particularly full-bodied, a good system is to cut it in half, at the refuelling point for example, and carry the second part in your pocket, to be assembled at the time.
Attention: even if you no longer need the first part, take it with you - at almost all events, competitive and non-competitive, the complete roadbook must be returned!
A few notes on the use of highlighters: it often happens to see drivers at the briefing with coloured pencil cases worthy of a primary school pupil! Too much information can only cause confusion. The advice is to highlight only a few essential notes and, except in serious cases of danger, to avoid scribbling on the route as well and not only in special stages.
We personally used to highlight in yellow only the right road, in orange the km of the note where you have to change road and the drawing of the direction to follow. With a blue mark we would connect the notes when they were closer than 100 metres. We also highlighted the uphill or downhill arrows, exclamation marks and any special notes, that was all. And that was only in the special stages of the races, certainly not along the entire route.
Some riders prefer to signal whether they are going left or right, for example by highlighting right in green (both at the Km and in the drawing) and left in orange. Still others signal uphill or downhill (green for downhill and orange for uphill): everyone has their own methods, the only essential thing is that, once you have chosen your 'style', you follow it forever.
the most common errors when navigating
- Do not set the trip master correctly by following the instructions of the organiser Moto Club or at the first reset. Better to lose a few minutes the day before the race than on the day of the race. This does not apply to Lupi & Bison events, which have always had their instruments calibrated to ANAS milestones before drawing the roadbook, so everyone can do this at home.
- Do not study carefully the directions given to the briefingThey are often very useful and fundamental.
- Do not try to navigating on one's ownand queuing up with other drivers: one must always try to do one's own thing, to always know where one is.
- In case of doubt trusting othersWe may be wrong, but at least the fault will be ours, not someone else's, and we will have learnt something for the future.
- In case one is following a pilot who navigates, sticking on him and giving him a hard time or even trying to pass him and then waiting for him on the first note: it's very annoying.
- When joining another pilot overcome it suddenlywithout warning him.
- Once you reach and overtake a driver, take a wrong turn and then catch up with him and overcoming it again twenty times in two kilometres.
- Surrender at the first difficulties or mistakes: everyone has made them and everyone continues to make them.
- Running too much and even worse 'disconnect the brain'.
- Exploiting badly refuellingwhich serves to rest for a moment and fix any small problems with the bike.
- Exaggerating with the refuellingIf we have a motorbike with a ten-litre tank and which consumes 14 km/l, there is no point in filling the tank at a refuelling after 60 km if the next refuelling is 110 km after departure.
- Do not stop to inquire, and eventually assist, a stationary pilot along the route.
- Getting caught up in the tension, completely forgetting the roadbook and driving with your head down without looking at the notes. It may sound strange, but this is one of the most frequent mistakes, even in experienced pilots.
- Forget about update the trip master when getting back on track after an error. This is also a very common mistake.
- Do not update the trip master during the journeyIt is virtually impossible for the mileage to always match perfectly, accumulating the error only causes confusion.
- Not check every single noteperhaps with a quick glance: it serves to confirm that we are on the right track, even if we are sure.
brief history of rallies and roadbooks
Roadbooks ('book of the road' literally) originated with the first car rallies in the 1930s and were used to indicate the route to the crew, who had to follow it within the prescribed time limits: this was even before the discriminating time trials were created, which date back to the early 1960s.
In the car, of course, it was the co-driver (initially a mechanic) who took care of it, while the driver concentrated on driving, hence the name 'navigator' and consequently navigation.
These concepts were then carried over in the late 1970s to the African races, which initially had a single classification with no distinction between cars and motorbikes. For the motorcyclists, it was all a matter of scrambling to fit the block somehow on the handlebars (usually with a simple board). It must also be said that navigation at the time was not very complicated and the races were mainly along African roads and never with off-piste or the like.
With the advent of the Paris Dakar the roadbook was continued in this manner, and it should come as no surprise that even in 1985 on the official Cagiva Ligier the roadbook was in sheets that were torn up and only a compass and odometer were provided as standard instruments (image right).
Also in the eighties, dreaming of the Paris Dakar, which in those years was living its golden age, many fantasised about the Ténéré's expanses, and the motorbikes that were being sold also reflected these dreams. So some decided to use these motorbikes, used by most just to glorify themselves in front of some bar, also in off-road races.
In Italy, the Motorally Trophy was born, which could boast a huge following from the main manufacturers, almost all of which even had rankings that rewarded their customers (Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Cagiva, Gilera), Yamaha even went so far as to organise its own 'XT Challenge' that had a huge following.
Since then the evolution was very rapid, the first mechanical trip meters were born, which could move forward or backward for tens of metres, and the first roadbook holders, often simple boxes with a transparent lid and two pins, one of which was (laboriously...) turned manually. Soon someone thought of connecting an electric motor to them and so the cockpit of the official 1986 Cagiva (only a year later) was already quite different (image right)
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