What is recce?

Recce is short for reconnaissance. This activity is when the racers get to scout the roads before the event. In all cases, the roads are still open to the public and to two-way public traffic during recce, so this is not a "practice session" in any fashion. The goal of the activity is to produce a set of stage notes that are tailored to the driver.

There are several different methods of doing this that you might encounter:

• Open recce - A schedule is published of when the roads are open for racers. They are allowed to be on the roads any time during that window, and see the course as many times as the schedule allows.
• Two pass recce - Regarded as sufficient to do stage notes from scratch, the number of times you get to drive the road prior to the rally is limited to two.
• One pass recce - You are limited to seeing the roads once before the rally. This is viewed as sufficient to modify high quality notes that are given to you by the organizer, but not sufficient to write your own quality notes.
• Notes Familiarization Pass - This is just an awful way to say "One pass recce".
• Parade or Train style recce - This is when all cars are led through the course following one another, which increases the amount of dust in the air, the target fixation on the vehicle in front of you, and the amount of time it takes to complete recce. Open recce is preferred.