Rally - my Oxford dictionary says (remember that English texts "say" things!) that the first recorded (written, published) use of the word "rally" meaning a type of car race appeared in 1955. The word was certainly used in this sense by people speaking together some time before that year, and they surely picked up on some older meanings.

A rally is a gathering of people who gain strength from coming together for some purpose. A political rally is the same as "míting" in Slovak. A rally in tennis is the unbroken series of returns by both players between the serve and a fault. To rally means to regain strength rapidly and recover from tiredness, like an ice-hockey team in the last period after "losing" the second one. This type of car racing involves cars and crews coming to a competition from many different places. It is divided into stages, so that if a crew is slow on one stage, they can return and renew their attack in the next. The spelling rallye" is the French form.