Photographing rally: settings that work
Rally photography rewards patience and preparation. Choose a spot where the car is moving across your frame rather than directly toward you, and think about the background before the first car arrives.
For crisp, frozen shots, start with a shutter speed around 1/1000 second. For a sense of motion, drop to 1/60 or 1/30 and pan smoothly with the car. Take lots of frames: even experienced photographers keep only a small fraction.
Use continuous autofocus and a burst mode, and pre-focus on a point where you expect the car to appear. Clouds, dust and sunlight can all make focusing harder, so check your results frequently.
Respect the rules. Stay behind barriers, follow marshals and never stand in a place where a car could leave the road. No photograph is worth an accident.
Finally, tell the story beyond the cars: service parks, crews at work, spectators in the forest. Those images often end up being the most memorable.