For automotive gamers, many have had the experience of driving through the dusty turns of “The Mill” in Snoqualmie, Washington, where Dirtfish Rally School is headquartered. The former lumber mill, now an adventure park, is neatly tucked into the Cascadian foothills of Western Washington with the incredibly photogenic Mount Si amidst the lazy Snoqualmie River.
The School’s Campus was formerly the Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company, which operated from 1914 to 2003. In the fall of 2010, Dirtfish Rally School officially opened, quickly earning fame throughout the racing world. Before Dirtfish became a household name in the racing community, the mill was featured in the television show Twin Peaks and many other sites from Snoqualmie and North Bend, Washington. Today, Dirtfish has been featured in two video games, DiRT 4 and Project Cars 2.0, as well as television shows such as Subaru’s Launch Control.
Every day, the school hosts a wide range of drivers, from absolute beginners to experienced Drivers and Co-Drivers such as Oliver Solberg and Lia Block. Every driver who walks through the school’s gates has one goal in mind: improving their Rally driving.
For those who are unfamiliar, Rally is a motorsport that explores the backroads of the world in a race against time. The routes are called “Stages,” and any given Rally will have as little as six and up to as many as twenty-three stages. Competitor cars are released one at a time and must transit local roads in between stages. The world stage, known as the WRC, goes on a world tour throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, testing a driver’s skill on a wide variety of surfaces.
In the United States, the grassroots form of the sport is known as Rallycross. This form of racing features a sprint-style stage that takes most competitors one to two minutes to complete. The track is lined with cones indicating where the driver must travel and where striking them results in a time penalty. Many American drivers use this as a starting point into the world of Rallying, eventually entering the American Rally Association, the United States national series.
Along with Dirtfish, the Pacific Northwest is home to the Northwest Rally Association, one of the most flourishing Rallycross Associations in the United States. Run by CEO Kito Breilmaier, COO Katie Lubkovich, and many other dedicated people, the league tours small tracks throughout Oregon and Washington with a season that runs from March to September every year. Every event has over seventy entries, leading to fierce competition amongst several classes. The NWRA encourages drivers from all experiences, offering a stock class up to a Modified All Wheel Drive-Turbo Swapped class where many Stage Rally drivers compete.
The 2024 NWRA season has hosted two events at Dirtfish, beginning with a single-day event in May. Every year, the mid-season event, Rallycross Fest, is the quintessential event of the season. The event hosts two days of private lessons taught by Dirtfish instructors and leads into two days of racing on two separate tracks; this year, over 200 cars registered to race from all over the United States, filling the paddock with a wide range of vehicles and personalities.
As engines started to roar, the light moondust of the mill kicked up, creating a minor haze throughout the property. An army of vehicles lined up at the start of each respective track, and the driver’s meeting ended with the question, “ARE YOU READY TO RALLY?!” The enormous crowd erupted with cheers, and drivers traveled back to their vehicles.
Two expertly designed tracks encompassed the Dirtfish campus, testing each driver’s skill along unforgiving hairpin turns, chicanes, and straights on a mixture of dirt, stone, and tarmac. In between runs, vehicles pulled into the paddock to be serviced, yielding help from those around them. The Rally community is filled with passionate individuals who exhibit incredible sportsmanship. To the many fans and drivers of Rally, the collective experience is more important than cutthroat competition.
Rallying is a brutal motorsport at every level that is incredibly demanding on crews, Driving teams, course workers, and even spectators. These all-weather events force the best and worst out of everyone involved, so just showing up is winning.
As the weekend ended, sparkling wine was sprayed amongst the winners of each class in addition to the distribution of event trophies. For all competitors, this marks the halfway point of the NWRA season as they prepare for the next event in Bellingham, Washington, on Labor Day weekend. Some teams, like Driver Sean Dorrough (@teamdorrough) and Co-Driver Andrea Lauria (@dreamer2394), will use these events to dial in strategy for the upcoming Tour De Forest, an ARA regional event in Shelton, WA.
Lauria, who has been a Stage Rally Co-Driver for over three years, enthusiastically said, “The event was absolutely fantastic! The tracks were fun and versatile, one [being] very technical and the other built for speed… Being able to get two days of practice and testing new note styles is always great because we head over to stage, and it can get a little dicey with cliffs and trees.”
Lauria describes her role as a Co-Driver as the “manager” of the team. At events, she handles all communications between teammates, the Driver, Sean Dorrough, the service crew, and the event marshals. Most importantly, she is responsible for developing short-hand notes that describe the stage, known as pace notes. Lauria describes the grueling process: “…Our team prefers to write all of our notes from scratch. For example, a ‘left three’ is typically a 90-degree corner for us. Practicing the distances of the straights or even how long we are going to be in corners is something we practice in Rallycross, so when we get to stage, we both know what lingo we are using. It is super important that we are both speaking the same [language] so we [can] finish the Rally safely and in one piece.”
On stage, the duo sometimes reaches over 100mph on single-lane dirt roads. This unwavering commitment and reliance on pace notes prove that competitors must have immaculate skills and constantly be a split second away from disaster.
With the second half of the racing season underway, drivers nationwide prepare their vehicles for some of the year’s most challenging stages. On the national stage, the back roads of Tennesse and Michgan await in September and October. For the NWRA season two events remain, the night races of Labor Day Dirtcross in Bellingham, Washington and the series finals in Eastern Washington at the end of September.
For more information on Rally and getting involved, visit https://www.nwrallyassociation.com/ https://dirtfish.com/ and https://www.americanrallyassociation.org/
Erick Huertas
Erick Huertas is originally from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and was introduced to the social aspect of cigars during his schooling in San Antonio, Texas. Around this time, he also developed a growing interest in writing and photography, using his phone camera and notepad to capture the world around him.
Erick solidified his passion for photography and adventure when he completed the Trans-American Trail in the summer of 2021 with his Land Rover Discovery 3. Since his 2021 expedition, he has been interviewed on several podcasts and has written extensively about the open road.
In 2023, Erick became involved in Grassroots motorsports by covering local Rallycross through the Northwest Rally Association, local autocross, and other events. In late 2023, he debuted as a photographer in the American Rally Association and has since covered events with Pan American Superbike and Formula E.
When not traveling, Erick can be found on Whidbey Island, Washington. You can contact Erick via email at [email protected], on Instagram at @_ebhphoto, or on his website: www.erickhuertas.smugmug.com
