F-Cup

Is F-Cup short for Fuck-up?

There seems an unusually high attrition rate in this vid. Bad notes?





Guess there must be a booming rally economy with businesses sorting all the cars or building new ones.

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Disappointingly not yet a Jackass

It properly has more to do with that theirs a 100+ cars at every rally event in Finland, so more cars = more crashes?

Danny add to it that the competition is tight and that means people charge as hard as they can..Closer to the limit means putting the toe over the line more often..

I posted times from a F-cup event earlier in the year where in the F-cup Senior (I guess like "A" class) there were like I dunno 54 cars and on every stage the time from first to last for the full field was within 1 minute on every SS..

Contrast that to here with the weekends Nude Englantii Forest Rally.

23 2wd cars of all sorts
class:
National "2wd"
Group 2 (regional 2wd n.a. cars)
Group 5 (regional 2wd turbo cars or big dumb engines)
B=spec..(some made up thing just so some guys could get some poncy plastic trophies)

3 out of 4 Group 5 cars out after SS2

Looking at all classes for 2wd cars combined:

Times from best to worst on

SS2 14m48s to 27m54s

SS3.........8m29.2s to 15m12s

SS12 from 6m23s to 12m19s

In the end there were 6 Group2 finishers, 3 in "2wd" National, 3 in "B-spec" and 1 in Gp5

13 finishes in 4 classes...

F-cup one I posted the times was 50 something in just "Seniors"..

Perhaps just a teeenie tiny bit more incentive to push and try to do better...

But what the fuck do I know, huh?

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Not much part throttle in those guys!

So is it the BMW or the BMW Drivers? Seem to be the majority of the cars, not sure if that's in general or in crashing....

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Power means nothing if you cannot control it!

F Cup are blind events.

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"Talk about drugs. Driving a car like that, going that fast, it’s like all the drugs at once." - Tommy Byrne

"Now, Pinky, if by any chance you are captured during this mission, remember you are Gunther Heindriksen from Appenzell. You moved to Grindelwald to drive the cog train to Murren. Can you repeat that?" - The Brain

My three year old enjoyed this vid. She said, "oh my goodness. He squished his wheel. Rally cars need to be more careful."

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Grant Hughes

Since they're blind events, I wonder what the tulip instructions are for those tricky corners, or if there even are tulips for those particular corners? Sure seem to be a surprise to most of the crews. Some of those corners look really familiar over the years of watching f-cup highlights (lowlights?) videos, and judging by the amount of spectators at them, they aren't exactly unknown gotcha's, and certainly would deserve a caution or two from the organizers in a "blind" rally?

Interesting points made, and goes some way to explain the vehicular carnage.
No notes is a bit of a surprise to me. Thought that was the point of having a two person crew in a rally car.

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Disappointingly not yet a Jackass

Quote
tmachnik
Since they're blind events, I wonder what the tulip instructions are for those tricky corners, or if there even are tulips for those particular corners? Sure seem to be a surprise to most of the crews. Some of those corners look really familiar over the years of watching f-cup highlights (lowlights?) videos, and judging by the amount of spectators at them, they aren't exactly unknown gotcha's, and certainly would deserve a caution or two from the organizers in a "blind" rally?

I wonder as well Tom. I've seen Finnish Route Books and they seem kinda sparse, but I've not been on Finnish stages.. Been on Swedish stages though and driven 10s of thousands of KMs on Swedish gravel, some roads many many times (one of which was a well known stage.)

Now when I was living there most of the 70s I was there for moto-cross and was only vaguely aware of rally so driving on those roads I was in ordinary cars (Austin 1100--like a big Mini, or Volvo sedan or 404 Peugeot (240 Volvo sized) or Transit van and I gave it no thought--we were going someplace..and we drove 70-90 km/hr typically... when i was going back when I was already doing US and Alberta event suddenly I was just short of terrified. The roads were (same roads, same old favorite to Grand-Pa Fredh's farm which was a SS) insanely narrow..Insanely close to the edge in the woods were nasty stumps or big fawkin rocks 2-4" off the edge or around fields (where most of the videoes are shot) crowed roads leading to chest high ditches, that crown wanting to unbalance the car and "pull ya in"..

But that was in comparison to PNW and Alberta roads which were big enough to run semis down or even wide enough for semis to pass. WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE.
Ours were built for big Kenworth logging trucks. Theirs had grown out of goat or moose paths.


One little note most aren't aware of is that MOST of Finland and a lot of Sweden was settled more than maybe 10 miles from the coast well into the middle/late 1800s...as USA and Canada's wild west was being settled, those that didn't emigrate (easily 20% of Swedens population left for USA and Canada between 1840 and say 1920) were doing the pioneer thing into wilderness in the interior.. Even now the population density of much of Sweden and Finland is sparser than Northern Alberta (peaked maybe in the 1920s and 30s, then some urbanisation began)

So these are pretty basic roads done as easily as possible, done with low manpower methods, and lots of little squiggles to dodge a tree or a rock outcropping, lots of frost heaves, lots of roots upsetting the road..
Here we just blasted through stuff in a much more heavy equipment-ized bulldozer heavy way and that's where we have our virtual freeways in the woods.*


And then there's the 60 guys in your class all with roughly pretty damn good spec cars thing, and enough that that's 60 in F-cup Senior and more in F-cup Junior thing...
That many guys actually "going for it" and you build clear lines, and clean lines.
You start watching tree lines with one eye and the obviously "good" line with the other...

And when one guy goes off without braking---and leaving no sign of braking---then its easy for the next guy to follow that line right off.. And then the next guy comes along and sees power on, no braking and he follows that line---soon you have more guys off in one corner than we have total entries in 2wd...
60-150 cars, all more or less same drive configuration and driven with vigor leaves its marks on the roads in a way different from our much lower numbers and much more solidly build roads (remember we're running BIG stuff down our roads, Kenworths and BIG stuff is what they're built for, while there its known its just a little road for farmers to drive the car or maybe the tractor to the next field)

Following lines is really fun if they were made by skilled drivers...




* and that's why I propagandize so heavily for the longer cars I push: Le-gassy, Gaylant and Sierra/Xratty all in the 102"+ wheelbase and 240 Volvo at about 104"... Those car just with the length will be more stable (an important thing for us amateur numbskulls---and lord knows we are all amateur numbskulls here) compared to cars in the 97-98" range, and sure theres a weight penalty but they have BIG motors so OK the weight penalty may be 10% more, but the motor might be 30% bigger plus maybe a nice sized turbo...
anything goes good at 30-50 km/hr, but what still accelerates good from 100 to 140Ks? 1800 n.a or 2300 turbo?
Advantage.

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

I enjoyed watching the video...but cringe when I see those nice looking rwd escorts getting torn up in the rolls and flips...

I want to tell the spectators.."Come on guys-you know what's coming in that corner-warn those drivers!"...

But -not everyone gets it wrong in the corner...so I suppose that would be wrong assuming the previous crashed car is safely out of the way...

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Asked why Finnish rally drivers were so fast, Juha Kankkunen replied, "Heavy foot, empty head." Seems to apply in F-Cup.

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"Talk about drugs. Driving a car like that, going that fast, it’s like all the drugs at once." - Tommy Byrne

"Now, Pinky, if by any chance you are captured during this mission, remember you are Gunther Heindriksen from Appenzell. You moved to Grindelwald to drive the cog train to Murren. Can you repeat that?" - The Brain

We now have to watch this "We are siamese" and this rally car video before bedtime. I suppose there could be worse things for a 3 year old...

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Grant Hughes

As I was watching Group F videos at nap time for the thousandth time this week it wondered, how do these Finns manage to survive long enough to even crash their BMW with all the MASSIVE inherent design flaws I keep reading about?

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Grant Hughes

I heard some good advice once, which was to look to countries with large entries to see what works well in the sport...

Looking at the 2014 F-Cup standings gives a rather interesting car count...

BMW 62 (M3: 37)
Toyota 40 (Starlet:20 Corolla: 20)
Ford 34 (Escort: 30)
Opel 22
Volvo 9
Honda 7
VW 4

(A few on-off brands not in that list)

More M3s than any other single car on the list.
More than half again as many BMWs over the next most common manufacturer.

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................................................. .....................

Support your Local North American Rally Forum!!

While they are still around-and get the hell off Farsebook!!

We still have Specialstage & RallyAnarchy.

Post up Here:

https://rallyanarchy.com/phorum/posting.php

and here:

https://www.specialstage.com/forums/forum.php