By Keith Barry
The winners of an eco-driving rally challenge have proven it’s possible to hypermile, even among the dunes of the western Sahara.
Sisters Amy Lerner and Tricia Reina won the Logica Challenge for eco-friendly driving in this year’s Rallye Aïcha des Gazelles, a prestigious all-female rally held each year in southern Morocco. Overall, the pair came in eighth out of 150 teams, proving that it’s possible to save fuel without finishing at the bottom of the pack.
Driving a 2012 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon that was modified by American Expedition Vehicles, the sisters won the challenge by avoiding fuel-wasting activities like excessive idling, hard acceleration and high speeds.
Lerner and Reina managed all that over the course of an eight-day rally that saw them dead-reckoning a course across dry riverbeds, fields of boulders and the sand of the Sahara Desert. To win the Logica Challenge, Lerner used some simple hypermiling strategies that would also work on a daily commute. “If I can perform strongly during the dunes and this intense competition, that means a driver can practice eco-driving on the road as well,” she said.
The Rallye is a grueling endeavor that’s more about careful planning and execution than high-speed racing. Drivers and navigators aren’t allowed access to cellphones or GPS, and only have a compass and 1:100,000 scale map of the 1,500-mile course from Meknes to Essaouira. The winner is determined by the team that racks up the least number of miles after completing the rally.
For the Logica Challenge, each driver’s vehicle had a special monitoring device plugged into its OBD II port that recorded both real-time emissions data and driver inputs. At checkpoints along the way, rally organizers downloaded the data and awarded points and penalties depending on how well drivers performed.
It’s part of the Rallye’s overall environmental focus. Though the event itself requires drivers to take motorized vehicles across an otherwise undisturbed landscape, it’s still the only ISO 14001-certified event in the world of motorsports. That means that rally organizers have implemented an environmental management strategy for ensuring the least possible impact.
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