THE CALL REFERENCE
Rally pacenotes are a compressed language for describing a road faster than you can drive it. This is the complete set of calls Tornante makes, what each one means, and the geometry that earns it.
15 calls · 990 published corners · English and Italian
THE SHORT VERSION
A pacenote is a co-driver’s description of a piece of road, given far enough in advance that the driver can act on it without seeing it. It has to be short, because there is not much time, and it has to be unambiguous, because there is no chance to ask. What comes out sounds like code because it is one.
Every rally crew’s notes differ slightly, and a real co-driver’s book is full of shorthand only that pair uses. Tornante has to be the opposite: one system, the same on every road, derived from the road’s own geometry rather than from a recce. What follows is that system in full, generated from the engine itself, so the definitions here are the definitions the app runs on.
THE SCALE
The grade comes from the corner’s measured radius, not from a feeling: the tighter the arc, the lower the number. A road that barely changes direction never earns a call, and a curve open enough to take flat is called as a straight. Everything in between lands on one of these six rungs.
| Grade | Spoken | |
|---|---|---|
| Grade 1 | “right 1” | 65 |
| Grade 2 | “right 2” | 90 |
| Grade 3 | “right 3” | 147 |
| Grade 4 | “right 4” | 301 |
| Grade 5 | “right 5” | 210 |
| Grade 6 | “right 6” | 46 |
R1
The tightest corner on the numbered scale. Not quite a hairpin, but close enough that the road doubles back on you.
All the braking happens before you turn in, and you will be down to the bottom of the gearbox. Get the car slowed, rotated and pointed early, because there is no room to correct a bad entry and the exit usually arrives sooner than you expect.
Real one: Col de Turini, right at the start.
R2
Still a genuinely slow corner, but with enough radius that the car can carry a little speed through the middle.
A firm brake and a clear turn-in. The difference from a 1 is that the corner keeps its shape rather than closing on you, so once you are settled you can start feeding the power back in before the apex has fully passed.
Real one: Col de Turini, 999 m in.
R3
The first of the medium corners, and the point on the scale where a bend stops being a manoeuvre and starts being a curve.
Enough braking to change the car’s attitude, not enough to unsettle it. A 3 rewards a smooth single arc: if you find yourself adding steering after the apex, you arrived too fast.
Real one: Col de Turini, 315 m in.
R4
A quick corner that still asks for a deliberate entry. On mountain roads this is the most common call there is.
Usually a lift and a brush of the brakes rather than a real braking zone. The risk with a 4 is complacency: it is fast enough to feel easy and tight enough to punish a lazy line, especially when it is linked straight into something slower.
Real one: Col de Turini, 542 m in.
R5
Nearly flat, a fast bend rather than a corner. The road bends, your speed barely changes.
A lift is normally all it takes, and in a car with grip in hand you may not need that. What matters on a 5 is where it puts you for the next call, because you will arrive at that one carrying everything you kept here.
Real one: Col de Turini, 1.6 km in.
R6
The gentlest call the engine makes. A 6 is a kink you notice in the steering and nowhere else.
Flat, in the ordinary case. It is called at all because knowing the road bends is worth something at speed, and because a 6 that arrives at a crest or ahead of a much slower corner is information you want in advance.
Real one: Col de Turini, 1.3 km in.
NAMED CORNERS
Some corners are not on the scale at all. When the road doubles back on itself, or turns like a junction rather than a curve, the call is a name instead of a number, because the two are driven differently enough that a grade would be misleading.
R hairpin
A corner so tight that it turns you back the way you came. Named rather than numbered, because a number would undersell it.
The slowest thing on the road. Brake in a straight line, get everything done before the turn-in, and accept that the exit is more important than the entry: a hairpin is where a tidy line pays back for the next several hundred metres of climb.
Real one: Col de Turini, 74 m in.
R open hairpin
A hairpin with room in it. The road still doubles back, but on a wider arc that does not need the car pivoted around its nose.
Treat it as a hairpin you can flow rather than one you have to stop for. The wider radius means you can hold a steadier line and get on the power earlier, which is exactly why it is called differently: reacting to it as if it were a tight hairpin costs you the whole exit.
Real one: Col de Turini, 9.9 km in.
R square
A corner that turns like a road junction: an abrupt right angle rather than a curve, with no meaningful radius to carry speed through.
There is no line through a square that saves you anything, so brake properly, turn the car, and go. It is the one corner class where getting the entry slow enough is the whole job.
Real one: Passo del Mortirolo, 304 m in.
roundabout exit 2
A roundabout, with the exit counted for you. It is a navigation call, not a corner grade, so it carries no number.
Take it as you would in any other car on any other day: give way, take the exit you were given, and remember the app is describing the road, not the traffic on it.
Real one: Passo Gavia, 83 m in.
WHAT GETS ADDED
Two corners can share a grade and drive nothing alike, because a grade describes how tight a corner is and not how long it lasts or where in the band it sits. These are the refinements that close that gap.
R3 long
The corner holds its angle for much longer than its grade suggests. The number tells you how tight, long tells you how much of it there is.
Patience. The mistake on a long corner is unwinding the steering and getting on the power at the point where an ordinary corner of that grade would release you, which on a long one puts you on the outside of the road with the corner still going.
Real one: Col de Turini, right at the start.
R4-
A corner sitting close to the edge of its grade. Minus means it is at the tight end of the band, plus at the open end.
It is a hint, not a different corner. A 4 minus will feel like a slow 4 and a 4 plus like a quick one, and over a long stage those hints are what stop consecutive corners of the same grade from blurring together. The voice does not say it aloud, deliberately: reading out every nuance would make the co-driver sound like a satnav.
Real one: Col de Turini, right at the start.
RHYTHM
A stage is not a list of corners, it is a sequence with gaps in it. The distance call gives you the gap; the joins tell you when there is none. This is the part that makes recorded notes sound like a co-driver rather than a sat-nav.
Two corners with no road between them, the second tighter than the first. They are called as one phrase because they have to be driven as one.
There is no reset. The line you take through the first corner is chosen for the second one, which usually means giving up some of the first to arrive at the second correctly.
Real one: Col de Turini, 74 m in.
The same immediate join, where the following corner is equal or easier. Called in one breath for the same reason.
Easier than an into, but the pairing still matters: the second corner is on you before a separate call could reach you, and knowing it is coming is what lets you use the full width on the exit of the first.
Real one: Col de Turini, 542 m in.
The number before a call is the gap to it, in metres, from where the road last did anything.
It is the rhythm of the whole thing. A call with no distance in front of it is on top of the previous one; a call with 200 in front of it means you have a genuine straight to use first. Distances are how you know whether to breathe. In the app, hearing the number spoken is a beta option our test drivers are running now; the written note has always carried it.
Real one: Col de Turini, right at the start.
YOUR CALLS, YOUR WORDS
The grade is measured once and never changes. How it reaches you is a setting: the number can come before the direction, and the whole 1 to 6 ladder can be swapped for plain words if you would rather not learn a scale before your first drive. Here is one corner, R3, in each of them.
Both settings change only the words. The classification underneath is identical, so a stage sounds different but is called the same.
WHAT TORNANTE DOES NOT SAY
None of the thresholds below are editorial. Tornante measures the tightest sustained radius through each corner and the total change of heading across it, and reads the grade off a fixed table. The same road always produces the same notes, which is what makes it possible to publish them.
That also sets the limits honestly. The engine knows the shape of the road and nothing else: not the surface today, not the light, not what is parked around the corner. Everything a co-driver knows from walking a stage is missing, and the calls below are the ones geometry alone can justify.
Cut, and don’t cut
Whether the inside line is safe depends on what is on it: a ditch, a bank, a rock, gravel dragged out by the car in front. None of that is in a map. A co-driver knows because they walked it.
Caution
A caution marks a specific hazard someone saw. Geometry can tell you a corner is tight; it cannot tell you a wall is close to the exit or that the bridge has a lip.
Maybe, slippy, wet
Surface and weather calls describe the road on the day, sometimes on that pass. They belong to a recce, not to a road’s shape.
Keep in, keep out, keep middle
Positioning calls assume a stage closed to traffic, with a known racing line across its full width. Tornante describes a public road you share.
Junction, crossroads, over junction
Junction geometry is in the map, and this is the most likely of these to arrive one day. It is absent because calling a junction correctly means knowing priority and sightlines, not just that two roads meet.
Acute
Rally notes distinguish an acute from a hairpin by how sharply it doubles back. Tornante folds both into hairpin and open hairpin, split by measured radius, which is the distinction the geometry actually supports.
These calls exist in the engine and are not made. Each was tested against real driving and turned off because it fired where a co-driver would have stayed quiet, and a call you learn to ignore is worse than no call at all. They are documented here so that the list above is the whole truth, and they are marked wherever they appear.
R5 tightens 3
The corner closes on itself: it ends tighter than it began. Where the difference is large, the exit grade is called too.
Enter as though the corner is one grade slower than it looks and you will be about right. Tightening corners are where the road takes back the speed you carried in, and they are the classic reason for a run-off on the exit rather than the entry.
R2 opens 4
The opposite of tightens: the corner releases towards its exit.
The whole value of the call is that you can get on the power at the apex instead of waiting for the road to prove it will open. Without the call you drive the corner to its tightest point throughout, which is safe and slow.
R4 don’t cut
Stay off the inside of the corner. It marks an apex you cannot see into, where the surface or the drop on the inside line is not worth the metre it saves.
Hold the outside line even when the inside looks inviting. On a public road this is the call that most deserves respect, because what you are avoiding is usually a ditch, a rock or an oncoming car.
R4 over crest
The corner crosses a rise, so the road falls away from you in the middle of it and the car goes light exactly where you are asking it to turn.
Get the turning done before the crest, not on it. Steering input while the suspension is unloading is how a corner that measured easy becomes a moment.
crest
A rise sharp enough that you cannot see the road beyond it. The stage continues, you just cannot see where yet.
The call exists so the next one arrives before the view does. A blind crest with a corner behind it is the single most useful thing a co-driver tells you, and the single hardest to trust the first time.
jump
A crest sharp enough to unload the car completely at the speed you are likely to arrive at.
Straighten the car before it, and be honest about your speed. This is a rally call, on a rally stage, in a car built for it. On a public road the correct response to a jump call is to slow down.
dip
A compression: the road falls away and comes back up, loading the car heavily through the bottom.
Grip goes up in a dip and then leaves abruptly on the way out. Braking into the compression works well and braking on the exit does not.
IN PRACTICE
Every call above is linked to a corner that actually carries it. These are the complete stages those corners come from, each with its full pacenote table, route map and elevation profile.
QUESTIONS
In Tornante, 1 is the tightest and 6 is nearly flat. This is the descending convention used by most modern rally crews, but it is not universal: some pairs number the other way round, so a 6 in their notes is a hairpin. Always establish which way round a set of notes runs before driving to it.
They use the same language and the same 1 to 6 scale, and they are measured from the real road. What they are not is a recce: a rally crew drives the stage twice and writes down everything they see, including surface, hazards and lines. Tornante works from geometry alone, so it makes the calls geometry can justify and leaves the rest out.
Because a co-driver does not. The nuance is a refinement on the written note and it is shown in the corner tables on this site, but voicing every one of them would clutter the rhythm of the calls without helping you drive.
Yes. The app can put the number before the direction (three right instead of right three), and it can replace the 1 to 6 ladder entirely with easy, medium and hard if you are new to pacenotes. Both are in Settings, and both change only the words, never the underlying grade.
Italian and English, each recorded with a real voice rather than synthesised on the phone. Every call on this page is listed in both.
No. Most people pick the scale up within a few corners of their first drive, because each call is confirmed by the road a second later. If you would rather not learn the numbers at all, switch the notation to easy, medium and hard and drive.
Pick any road on the map or import a GPX track, and Tornante builds this exact set of calls for it and speaks them as you drive, timed to your GPS.
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