The Immediate Cockpit Emergency
In stage rallying, a driver commits to blind crests and high-speed corners relying entirely on the co-driver's steady delivery of descriptive pace notes. When a physical disruption occurs inside the cockpit—such as when a violent compression or harsh jump landing tears the physical notebook from the co-driver's grasp—that flow of essential information instantly stops. During the Cambyretá stage at Rally del Paraguay, M-Sport Ford driver Josh McErlean and co-driver Eoin Treacy experienced this firsthand when a severe landing knocked Treacy's notebook away, leaving the crew driving blind for roughly 400 metres before a junction allowed them sufficient time to regroup.
When dealing with WRC lost pace notes, the driver is forced immediately into a reactive survival mode. Instead of attacking blind bends with full confidence, the driver must lift off the throttle, brake substantially earlier, and rely strictly on visual sightlines until the co-driver can locate the book and resume calling the road ahead.
Reconnaissance Restrictions and Gaps in Information
Physical loss is not the only way a crew finds itself without vital details. Missing or misaligned notes can also stem from the mandatory pre-event reconnaissance passes. In standard championship reconnaissance, crews traverse the route at restricted low speeds—such as the 60 km/h limit Thierry Neuville highlighted on the Shinshiro City stage at Rally Japan in 2022—which makes judging how modern Rally1 machinery will behave at full racing speed challenging and prone to omissions.
Whether information is missing due to a reconnaissance discrepancy or dropped pages, the consequence remains severe time loss. At the 2026 Rally Japan, Takamoto Katsuta conceded 25.9 seconds on stage two while wrestling with missing pacenote information, highlighting how critical uninterrupted stage notes are to competing safely at the sport's highest level.
Official reference: FIA World Rally Championship regulations.
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