At a glance
- Physical loss mid-stage: Violent compressions and heavy jump landings can tear pacenote books from a co-driver’s grasp, as experienced by M-Sport’s Eoin Treacy in Paraguay.
- Immediate consequences: Drivers face sudden blind sections where they must rely strictly on sightlines, sacrificing stage time to avoid catastrophic accidents.
- Reconnaissance discrepancies: Low-speed recce restrictions can result in notes that do not reflect true rally speeds, leaving crews with compromised or missing pace details.
- Managing the gap: Straight sections and distance before an upcoming junction can provide a crew with crucial seconds to regroup after notes are dropped.
In the World Rally Championship, losing pace notes—whether physically dropped by a co-driver on a violent compression or missing critical information—instantly forces a crew into survival mode. Rally drivers depend entirely on continuous pacenote delivery to commit to blind corners, crests and compressions at maximum speed. When notes are interrupted, the driver must immediately reduce speed and read the road visually until the co-driver can recover the notes and resume calling instructions.
Violent impacts and dropped notes on stage
The physical violence of modern gravel stages poses a direct threat to pacenote delivery inside the cockpit. During the opening Cambyretá stage of Rally del Paraguay, M-Sport Ford driver Josh McErlean experienced the sudden loss of notes when co-driver Eoin Treacy lost grip of his pacenote book after a heavy landing over a jump. McErlean explained that his mind went momentarily blank following the harsh landing, leaving the crew with roughly 400 metres before the next junction without pacenote guidance. In that high-speed vacuum, the distance to the upcoming junction provided just enough time to regroup before navigating the turn.
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Missing information and reconnaissance limits
Pace notes do not need to be physically dropped to leave a crew vulnerable; missing or inaccurate notes create comparable hazards. At the 2026 edition of Rally Japan, Takamoto Katsuta suffered a punctured rear-left tyre on the opening test and subsequently dropped 25.9 seconds on stage two while battling missing information from his pacenotes. Accurate notes depend entirely on the reconnaissance (recce) pass conducted prior to the rally. During the 2022 Rally Japan, Thierry Neuville noted on the Shinshiro City stage that strict recce speed limits—such as being restricted to 60 km/h—can make creating speed-dependent pacenotes dangerous and difficult, producing notes that fail to align with the real-time demands of Rally1 machinery.
Coping with blind driving in the cockpit
When pace notes cease, the driver’s role shifts from anticipatory driving to pure reactive response. In rally competition, drivers commit to fifth-gear straights and blind brows trusting that the road beyond is clear. Operating without descriptive notes demands early braking and intense visual scanning, dramatically slowing stage times. Without pacenote instructions to describe what lies over blind crests, drivers are forced into survival mode until the co-driver can regain composure, recover the notes, and resume stage delivery.
Related reading: Rally Flying Finish vs Stop Control: How Stage Timing Works.
