Team SuperNova consisting of driver Erin Liberty, navigator Ron Rowland, and a 1962 Chevrolet Nova competed in the 2024 Great Race. One hundred thirty-seven (137) teams took the green flag in Owensboro, Kentucky. Nine days and 2300 miles later, only 114 teams crossed the finish line and received the checkered flag in Gardiner, Maine. Once again, the 2024 edition of the Great Race was a successful and spectacular event.
The Great Race is not a “first car to the finish line” race. It is an endurance, time, speed, and distance (TSD) rally where teams leave a minute apart and receive a penalty point for every second they are early or late at each of the six or more secret checkpoints each day. The lowest score wins. Vehicles must be 1974 or older, and those built before 1954 receive age-related score reductions. With 23 teams not making it to the finish line, the endurance part of the competition is easy to understand.
This article focuses on the exploits of Team SuperNova in the 2024 Great Race.
…but first, a word from our sponsors…
Our participation in the 2024 Great Race was made possible by the generous sponsorship of the Stahls Automotive Collection. Erin, myself, and the 1962 Nova were one of four teams entered by Stahls.
The official name of this event is the 2024 Hemmings Motor News Great Race presented by Coker Tire, and now you know why I shortened it to the Great Race. Hemmings Motor News, affectionally known as the “Old Car Bible” is the premier marketplace for buying, selling, and learning about vintage and classic automobiles. Coker Tire is your #1 source for tires, wheels, and accessories for your classic vehicle.
Pre-Race Activities
Owensboro, Kentucky hosted this year’s starting line and pre-race activities. Teams began arriving three days before the official start, and there were plenty of activities to keep everyone engaged.
The first scheduled activity was shotgun target shooting at Mattingly Target Shooting Range. This was followed by an open house at the Green River Distilling Company, where Kentucky Bourbon was prominently featured.
Every team was assigned a scheduled registration time followed by a technical inspection. Teams also received a set of “measured mile” instructions, which are actually about 15 miles in length, to perform speedometer calibrations. Janet and Steve Hedke graciously held a class for rookies (and veterans needing a refresher) to help them better their chances in the competition. The Fat Monkey Garage hosted an excellent barbecue lunch and the Bluegrass Hall of Fame hosted a Bluegrass Block Party.
The day before the race included the Mandatory General Meeting, where buckets of important information, facts, and rules were presented. This meeting also included an auction to benefit the X-Cup (high school) teams, with Sarah Stahl’s 2024 Great Race painting being the most sought-after item. Then, Great Race Director Jeff Stumb and Coker Event Coordinator Houston Gibson joined the ranks of Kentucky Colonels.
Next up was the Trophy Run, a half-day rally through the hills of Kentucky south of Owensboro. This was a chance for teams to shake off the cobwebs and ensure their vehicle (and its occupants) were ready for the nine-day grueling event that would commence the following day.
The evening finished with a social hour, the huge Welcome Dinner, presentation of the Trophy Run Awards, and then we spilled out onto the streets to join Owensboro’s “Friday After 5” events along the riverfront.
Stage 1: Owensboro, Kentucky to Lawrenceburg, Indiana
The beautiful Owensboro waterfront along the Ohio River provided the perfect backdrop to this year’s start. The cars began lining up at 8:30 and the green flag dropped two and a half hours later at 11:01.
As the race got underway, we soon crossed over the Ohio River and into Indiana. Then it was a series of twisted and hilly backroads to our overnight stop in Lawrenceburg, Indiana.
As competitors, we are not allowed to have a cell phone in the vehicle’s interior during any part of the competitive day. Therefore, most of the following pictures were taken by Great Race staff photographers (and others as noted).
Stage 2: Lawrenceburg, Indiana to Marietta, Ohio
Now known as the “train day” stage, the trip from Lawrenceburg to the lunch stop in Lancaster, Ohio turned out to be dramatic. We came over a hill and saw about 40 race cars pulled off alongside the road to the left and another 10 cars on the road we were on. Our first inclination was that there was an accident, but someone walked back to tell us there had been a train that delayed all of these cars. The train was now gone, but most of the cars were still there trying to calculate their time delay requests and waiting for the cars in front of them to leave.
We didn’t want to wait any longer, so we drove around all 40 (or so) cars, crossed the railroad tracks, and went on our way. We filed a 10-minute 30-second time allowance request and ended up with a score of 5 seconds on that leg. We later learned that many teams sat there so long trying to calculate their delay times that another train came along and trapped them again.
My friends, John and Martha Tetlow were at the Lancaster lunch stop to meet us and cheer us on. We then rallied to our overnight stop in Marietta, Ohio, the first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory. It was founded in 1788, 15 years before Ohio became a state.
Stage 3: Marietta, Ohio to Frostburg, Maryland
Stage 3 turned out to be our best scoring day of this year’s event. We tied for 1st in raw scores with 10 seconds. However, vehicle age factors came into play, pushing us down to 4th place behind three 1930s Early V-8 Fords. Despite the apparent setback, the three teams ahead of us were all former Grand Champions, allowing us to claim 1st place in the Expert Division for the day.
Stage 4: Frostburg, Maryland to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
This was my first time in Frostburg. In fact, I had never heard of the town before the 2024 Great Race route was announced. It is very near the Eastern Continental Divide, and when we crossed over the divide, I thought I could see all the way to Baltimore. It is a stunningly beautiful area.
Frostburg is less than 10 miles from the Pennsylvania border and Gettysburg is just a tad over 100 miles away if you take a direct route. Great Race competitors did not take the direct route. Instead, we headed into the beautiful Shenandoah Valley and a lunch stop in Purcellville, Virginia. Great Racer Ken Walsh hosted the lunch at his farm and there was no surprise when it was named the “Best Lunch Stop” at the Awards Banquet. Not only did he provide great food, but Ken also gave us class-A mobile air-conditioned bathrooms, open access to his barn/museum/workshop collection of race cars, 409 Chevy’s, dragsters, and more. Plus, the size of the crowd was amazing. Then, on our way out of town, the Walsh family provided free gasoline for all competitors. Great Racers will remember this lunch stop for many years.
Our arrival in Gettysburg included a one-hour (much longer for those who failed to follow the instructions carefully) auto tour of the Gettysburg National Military Park.
Stage 5: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to Binghamton, New York
Stage 5 took us north out of Gettysburg and included a lunch stop in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. It started raining about the time we crossed the border into New York. The weather put a damper on our arrival in Binghamton, but many fans were waiting in the rain to watch and cheer us across the day’s finish line.
Stage 6: Binghamton, New York to Providence, Rhode Island
Stage 6 began in a southeasterly direction where we soon found ourselves on hallowed grounds. Yes, we were near Bethel, New York and instruction #58 took us by the site of the 1969 Woodstock Festival. We were on the clock, so we did not have the opportunity to take pictures or selfies with the commemorative marker.
Next, we continued eastward for lunch in the Village of Montgomery before crossing the Hudson River. We spent most of the afternoon crossing through Connecticut before reaching our overnight stop in Providence, Rhode, Island.
Stage 7: Providence, Rhode Island to Freeport, Maine
Stage 7 took us north out of Rhode Island, into Massachusets, and on to New Hampshire before cutting over to Maine. The day’s itinerary included a lunch stop at the New England Racing Museum in Louden, New Hampshire.
Sometimes rally teams miss a turn. It is often possible to time your return back to the correct course and then gradually recover that lost time. Then there are the occasions when determining the amount of time lost becomes nearly impossible. In those instances, rally participants tend to rely on what is known as “hacking” a competitor.
Leg 2 of Stage 7 provided such an instance. The Camaro that was supposed to be one minute in front of us on that stage was never seen that day. We missed a turn and found ourselves down the road a piece before we could turn around. We determined our best chance of recovery would be to hack off another Expert team — car #38, the 1932 Coker Ford of Gary and Jean Ann Martin. They were one minute behind us at the beginning of the day and were solidly in the top 10 teams for cumulative standings. We waited alongside the road for their arrival and then we sped up and put ourselves a minute ahead of them.
It seemed like a reasonable course of action at the time. However, both teams ended up being more than 2 minutes early at the next checkpoint and received huge scoring penalties. It turns out that the Martins got off course and off time also. Their plan of action was to hack off us, not knowing that we were hacking off of them. Fortunately, teams in the Expert Division can throw out their four worst legs from stages 1 through 7. Both teams were able to throw out this leg and not impact our overall cumulative standings, which allowed us to laugh about it afterward.
Stage 8: Freeport, Maine to Owls Head, Maine
The heatwave hitting most of the lower 48 states was not being experienced by us in Maine. Stage 8 was a jacket day and the first day of the two-day championship run. The first 7 stages are called ‘qualifying’ stages, and teams can toss out a few of their worst legs. The number of thrown-out legs ranges from 3 to 6, depending on which division you are competing in. However, no legs from the two-day championship run can be tossed out. You must live with what you get.
Stage 8 consisted of 8 checkpoints, 23 pages of instructions, and a nice lunch stop at the Seal Cove Auto Museum. The route also took us to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. The day’s finish line was in Owls Head, Maine at the Owls Head Transportation Museum. After dinner and a museum tour, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the final day of racing.
Stage 9: Owls Head, Maine to the Finish Line in Gardiner, Maine
Stage 9 consisted of 16 pages of instructions with more than three dozen turns. Any team whose turn-loss calculations were off by more than a 1 second, could have received a score of 36 just on the turns alone. A score of about 12 seconds was needed to be in the top 10 that day.
The crowds in Gardiner were amazing. After crossing the finish line and putting the Nova on display, it was nearly impossible to walk down the street through the throngs of spectators.
To Finish Is To Win
To Finish Is To Win is the official motto of the Great Race, and any participant will tell you how true that is. However, since there is a $50,000 first prize at stake, there needs to be an “actual” winner. For 2024, the winners were Howard and Doug Sharp in their 1916 Hudson Pikes Peak Hillclimber. No strangers to the winner’s circle, this was their 5th win, having taken first place in 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2023.
Team SuperNova finished in 5th Place Expert Division and 10th Place Overall. In addition to the plaques, the 5th Place Expert earned us $2,000 while the 10th Place Overall garnered us $1,000 and a bottle of Southern Star Bourbon (in the red bag I’m holding).
Great Race Blog Posts
Be sure to check out the following Great Race blog posts. Each daily summary contains 50 or more beautiful pictures of the race cars, crowds, and countryside.
- Great Race 2024 — Day 1
- Great Race 2024 — Day 2
- Great Race 2024 — Day 3
- Great Race 2024 — Day 4
- Great Race 2024 — Day 5
- Great Race 2024 — Day 6
- Great Race 2024 — Day 7
- Great Race 2024 — Day 8
- Great Race 2024 — Day 9
- Great Race 2024 — The Finish Line
- Howard and Doug Sharp Win the 2024 Great Race – their 5th win
- Great Race 2024 Awards Banquet – see all the award winners
Further Reading and Background
- Great Race clocks, stopwatches, bezels, and rally accessories for sale. Seven teams used these Rally Clocks in this year’s race.
- The Great Race is not a speed event. Instead, it is a Time-Speed-Distance (TSD) rally where competitors are charged a penalty for every second they are early or late at multiple secret checkpoints along the day’s route. The objective is to be on course and on time, with the winners being the team with the fewest penalty points (lowest score). Vehicles need to be a 1974 model year or older, and a few 1916 automobiles usually participate each year. Scores are adjusted for the age of the car to encourage entries of older vehicles. Learn more at the Great Race website.