Seems wild, but also surprisingly accessible.
Photography Credit: Jeff Zurschmeide
I’m behind the wheel of a brand-new Toyota GR Corolla. Yes, it’s a borrowed car, and the owner is riding shotgun. We’re about to take on a 12-mile stretch of county road between the towns of Halsey and Purdum, Nebraska, as part of the Sandhills Open Road Challenge.
We’re sitting at the start line of the Loup 2 Loup Race, watching the clock tick down to our half-minute. This being my first-ever open road race, we have signed up for the 80 mph target group.
Photography Credit: Jeff Zurschmeide
Open road racing is deceptively simple. The idea is to pick an average speed and then run the road as close that average as possible.
The organizers even tell you the perfect time for the run. You can race in your daily with little or no modification; just bolt down a fire extinguisher and cinch up your three-point harness. Driver safety gear is as basic as long pants and a long-sleeve shirt–all cotton, please–plus gloves, closed-toe shoes and an SA2020 helmet.
In practice, there’s a bit more that you need to think about. First, the race includes a standing start, but your imaginary perfect car leaves the start line at 80 mph and doesn’t slow down for corners. The organizers give you a minimum speed to maintain, typically 20 mph below your target, and a not-to-exceed top speed for the straights, typically 30 mph over your target. GPS-based phone apps are allowed, so you have a prayer of getting close to your average without a rally computer.
Photography Credit: Wayne White/OpenRoadRacingPhotos.com
The roads used for the race won’t seem challenging to an experienced track day driver or club racer, but here again, there’s more than meets the eye. In the Sandhills region of Nebraska, blind crests come at you about once every quarter mile, and the GPS signals a welcome warning when there’s a curve on the far side of that crest.
At the end of the first half of the Loup 2 Loup race, I had averaged 80.313 mph, crossing the line about 3.3 seconds early. Coming back, my more experienced driving partner took the wheel and did better, averaging 80.121 mph and adding only about 0.8 seconds to my middling-poor performance. We finished 10th out of 18 cars.
The Loup 2 Loup race is kind of a tune-up for the big event, the actual Sandhills Open Road Challenge race. The race runs up and down 28.7 miles of mostly rough pavement between Arnold and Dunning, Nebraska.
For this longer and straighter course, we opted for the 90 mph target group. Class options range from 80 mph up to 125 mph. Classes at 100 mph or more require increasing safety gear including rollover protection, racing seats, neck restraints and a proper racing harness.
Photography Credit: Wayne White/OpenRoadRacingPhotos.com
Having the Loup race experience under my belt, I felt like I had a clue for this one. When our timer counted down, I gave my navigator a beat to get the clock going instead of launching into the race.
There’s plenty of mileage ahead and long straight stretches to catch up to that average speed. The rhythmic thump-thump of the well-worn Nebraska farm road fades away at higher speed, but the road is also heavily washboarded in the curves. That prevents anyone from choosing an ideal line, except on one stretch of new asphalt in the middle of the course. We touched 120 mph at several points, getting ahead of our average to give us the option of taking the curves at a comfortable speed.
The GR Corolla is better than ideal for this event, with a street-tuned suspension and AWD to give us grip and confidence in the rough patches. The 300 horsepower provided by the 1.6-liter, three-cylinder engine comes in a wide power band that makes maintaining and recovering speed a breeze. We didn’t even turn off the air conditioning.
Our results in the SORC were better than the first race. I averaged 89.944 mph for 0.767 second of error, while my partner averaged 89.948 mph for 0.619 second of error. That was good enough to land us in seventh place out of 27 cars.
Photography Credit: Jeff Zurschmeide
The winner in our class finished with 0.436 second of combined error. Notably, in Open Road Racing you can “fix” an error on the first run by running slower or faster on the return trip. The class winner was about 12 seconds late on the first run, and ran about 13 seconds early on the return run.
This year, for the first time in SORC history, a driver scored a perfect zero. Mike Black of Garland, Texas, drove his 2022 Corvette Stingray in the 105 mph class to a score of 0.084 second late on the first run and 0.084 second early on the return leg.
Photography Credit: Jeff Zurschmeide
The SORC started in 2001 with 34 drivers, and will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year. The event was first imagined as a fundraiser for the community, and to date has generated well over $1 million dollars for Arnold and the surrounding towns.
The expansive Arnold Community Center that functions as home base for the event was built with racing money. Each day, the event offers breakfasts, lunches and dinners, all prepared by local groups who benefit from driver donations for the meals.
The SORC will accept anyone with a valid driver’s license between the ages of 18 and 84, and the entrants just about span that range. Entering both the Loup 2 Loup and the SORC will cost you between $1100 and $1300, depending on your class choice.
The SORC is just one of several similar events including the Big Bend Open Road Race in Texas, the Nevada Open Road Challenge, and the Silver State Classic Challenge, also in Nevada. If all this sounds like something you might want to do, you can find full rules and results at sorcrace.com.
Seems wild, but also surprisingly accessible.
This looks really cool. It'll probably be a few years before I'm able to make it all the way out there, but I did subscribe to their newsletter so I could eventually sign up for it.
There's not anything in their rule book that says I can't give each of my kids a helmet and sign up in the minivan.
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