http://www.rally-america.com/story.php?article=540

I even bolded the important parts for lazy people haha


"
While many motorsports sanctioning bodies are looking for ways to shrink and save, Rally America, Inc., the premier sanctioning body for performance rally competition in North America, is expanding and growing.

Rally America today announced three European-style rally cross events in 2010. The three events will be run as exhibition events in 2010 but there may be more on the calendar in 2011.

European-style rally cross combines disciplines from road racing, short-course off-road racing and X Games-style rally car racing. It’s the action sport of motor racing.

“We’ve experienced dramatic growth in spectator interest the past three years,” said J.B. Niday, managing director for Rally America, Inc. “We’re confident American rally spectators would like to add this wheel-to-wheel competition to their plate of national championship rallying. Our championship is among the most respected in the world. This will make it more so. It’s a logical move for the growth of rally here in the United States.”

All three Rally America events will take place in the fall of 2010 at New Jersey Motor Sports Park in Millville, NJ. The course will be a combination of pavement and gravel surfaces totaling about one mile in length. It will include jumps, un-banked turns, hills and transitions between pavement and gravel that promise to unsettle the cars and drivers. The three-minute sprint heats will see competition between six cars on the track at once. The winners advance through the day to the main event finale. It promises extreme challenges and extreme excitement for spectators and drivers alike.

The rally cross format is extremely popular in Europe. You can experience the excitement through on-demand video highlights at www.Rally-America.com.

There will be two classes of cars in Rally America’s initial year of competition. The faster, all-wheel-drive cars will resemble those used in current Rally America competition including the AWD Subarus used by four-time American rally champion Travis Pastrana and Internet gymkhana video star Ken Block. The second category of rally cross cars will be two-wheel-drive. That includes the various body styles from manufacturers such as Ford, Mitsubishi, Dodge and Honda boasting 450+ horsepower, highly modified engines and rally-style suspension.

Both categories include vehicles currently being used in the Rally America National Rally Championship. There will be one departure; rally cross is a driver-only competition. There’s no need for a co-driver to help navigate the car around the one-mile course.

“The Rally America National Championship has experienced constant growth in the past couple of years,” Niday continued. “The sport of rally cross has taken place successfully in Europe for many years and draws tens of thousands of spectators to each and every event. The excitement of wheel-to-wheel racing action for high-powered rally cars should work well here in the United States as it takes place on a closed-loop course that allows spectators to take in all the high-speed racing action from a single vantage point.”


2010 RALLY AMERICA NATIONAL RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP KICKS OFF IN JANUARY

In addition to European-style rally cross competition at the New Jersey Motor Sports Park in the fall of 2010, Rally America will resume its National Rally Championship series beginning with Sno*Drift, the traditional championship kick off in January 2010 and one of the only American national championship motorsports events run in real snow on real roads with real cars.

The 2010 championship, however, will be compressed to allow more spectator and media interest during the season. It ensures that every event will have greater import in the chase for the Rally America Championship. The 2010 Rally America National Rally Championship Schedule:

1. January Sno*Drift Rally Atlanta, MI
2. February Rally of the 100 Acre Wood Salem, MO
3. April Olympus Rally Olympia, WA
4. May Oregon Trail Rally Hood River, OR
5. June Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally Wellsboro, PA
6. July New England Forest Rally Newry, ME

Three rally events that were on the calendar in 2009, the Ojibwe Forests Rally in Bemidji, MN, Rally Colorado in Steamboat Springs, CO, and the Lake Superior Performance Rally in Houghton, MI, will be changed to regional-level rally events and will not be included in the 2010 Rally America National Rally Championship.

“After a great deal of consideration and review of the past three seasons, we’ve decided to reduce the Rally America National Championship from nine to six events to help reduce team costs and increase competition," said Mike Hurst, the Rally America competition director. “The 2010 championship schedule will include two national-level rally events on the west coast, two on the east coast and two in the central portion of the United States. The six-event schedule will not only make it more affordable for the teams, but allow for better competition as well as allow Rally America to introduce European-style rally cross competition in the fall.”

Considered by many to be the extreme sport of auto racing, rally car racing is often described simply as “real cars, real roads, real fast.” This all-season motorsport sees drivers and their co-drivers take modified road cars to the limit as they achieve blistering speeds over courses that cover more than 100 miles of gravel, dirt or snow-covered roads. Among the marques typically represented in Rally America events are Subaru, Mitsubishi, Dodge, Ford and Volkswagen.

In addition, some of North America’s top rally drivers from the Rally America National Rally Championship series will be invited to compete in ESPN’s Summer X Games competition, the leading action sports event broadcast live on ABC and ESPN. Rally America officials will once again be involved in the organizational aspect of the rally car racing segment of competition for X Games 16 which is scheduled for July 29 to August 1, 2010.

For more information regarding Rally America, Inc., the 2010 Rally America National Rally Championship or the new European-style rally cross events taking place at the New Jersey Motor Sports Park in the fall of 2010, please call (763) 553-2742 for details or visit www.rally-america.com. Photos by Andrew Comrie-Picard.

# # #

"

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Welcome to the cult of JVL drink the koolaid or be banned.

Maybe it's just 'cause I'm just a spectator/worker/fan, but I don't really see the big deal - outside of the detriment to the three rallies affected, obviously.

It's not as though Rally-America is the only choice for organizing/sanctioning rallies in the US (despite the connotations of the name).

Personally, I'm glad to see RA moving to a smaller championship - I guess I'm one of the folks that thinks that fewer rounds => more people competing in a higher %age of the championship => a more competitive championship.

As long as RA is willing to consider some sort of rotation program (ie. Ojibwe, Cog, and LSPR are national championship events in 2011, and three other events take a hit for the year), then I don't have any problem with that plan at all.

It might even be construed as an effort to grow RA's regional program - with 9 National events, I think it was difficult to have many meaningful regional rallies. Hopefully the three events effected will be able to run well as (only) regional events for a year.

It also puts the onus on the rally community to attend and support those regional rallies - this actually means I'm a lot more likely to work Cog again next year, because it's NOT a RA-National.

---

KF7RWG
http://www.utahrallygroup.com

Kudos to RA for having the balls to implement real European style rallycross! Let's hope it expands and they introduce entry level classes and a feeder series, though the key to that is finding more venues around the country which might prove a challenge. But you gotta start somewhere and NJMP should make a good venue. Too bad it's on the wrong side of the country, I'd be all over that. This should be very popular and exciting and lends itself well to TV. And make X-Games just a stupid memory.

As for the second part all I have to say is, they dropped Ojibwe but kept STPR? WTF?

I'd love to be able to compete in the RallyCrosses! Too bad they are just back in New Jersey. Hopefully will be here soon.

Will go though a lot of windshields!

I like the smaller championship as well.

RA sanctioning euro-style rallyx is old news, I posted about that back in january and knew about it a months before then. Try and keep up guys.

Ditching some of the best ra national events because of where they fall on the calender is lame. Blindsiding the organizers of those events is even lamer. I doubt any three of the events dropped will be even close to what they were in previous years if they are run as regionals (or even if even are run at all next year.)

I like the idea of the smaller championship, and the rally cross idea. I would love to drive a real rally cross sometime, as wheel to wheel sounds really fun to me.

---

Welcome to the cult of JVL drink the koolaid or be banned.

The appearance of speed depends on speed time distance that the viewer is from what they're watching, and the size of what they're watching. A 747 doing 450mph viewed from 5 miles away doesn't look too fast, and a 747 doing 160mph from 150 years away appears to be floating nearly still.

Any rally car once up to speed looks fast at 70mph from 10 feet away.

But ......the current restricted turbo 4wd cars in North America viewed from grandstands and on a tight inside a stadium type course I believe are going to look agonizingly slow.

Even the looniest of European Rallycross, the real stuff with 550-650 bhp motors and drivers with a couple of decades of world's top experience don't look all that insane from a distance or on TV.

We have neither the machinery or the drivers at even half that level.

Realistically, anyway.

As for good news, how many spare motors, spare close ratio boxes, spare ROLLER BODYSHELLS does anybody have just laying around cause those real rallycross guys blow shit up, break shit and bang up the panels constantly.

Let's see, who has extra complete high spec cars? Who? WHO? WHO!!!???


And tracks?
The better Euro Rallycross tracks are BIG trackes, and speeds will hit 70-75, and the cars will do that in 3-or so seconds from a standing start.
Any track based sport is FAR more emphasising tailored vehicle and tailored set up and then PRACTICE.

Which is diametrically opposed to rally as it has been know most of its history---don't be dumb asses and suggest I have overlooked how much pre-event testing for correct suspension set ups and gearing, but when the "course " takes 5 hours to do it is quite another thing than when there's a little 1 mile course that takes 1:45 to do again and again and again-----and far less emphasises THE DRIVER, and hence is that much LESS interesting.

(I did spend literally thousands of hours going round hundreds of tracks for a couple of decades but at least there, in moto-cross---the bike was an insignificant part of the final result (since they were virtually the same performance and weight and suspension); judgment and conditioning was paramount.

Less events:
Less total events sounds OK, but its still how much for a so called "National" entry fee? (And please lets not pretend its all up to the organizer, THEIR "sqanction fee and insurance" drives the cost of the entry fee to a large degree "officially". Just look at Lake Superior with 21 entries and how much for a sanction fee? How much after the kick-back?

Also might hold your breath and see what sort of shenanigans might be done for counting how many events, might be some BS like SCCA tried that you have to declare intent to do all or score nothing.....

Never trust a Sanctioning body, never, especially when it's a privately held Corporation.

Schedule all stacked up in the spring to early summer is going to force an awful lot of money to be spent in a shorter period of time but hey, for Rally America's target market that's chump change, right?

How many seasons till the whole "Rally" Championship for RA is done in parking lots?

---

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.

john vanlandingham Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The appearance of speed depends on speed time
> distance that the viewer is from what they're
> watching, and the size of what they're watching. A
> 747 doing 450mph viewed from 5 miles away doesn't
> look too fast, and a 747 doing 160mph from 150
> years away appears to be floating nearly still.
>
> Any rally car once up to speed looks fast at 70mph
> from 10 feet away.
>
> But ......the current restricted turbo 4wd cars in
> North America viewed from grandstands and on a
> tight inside a stadium type course I believe are
> going to look agonizingly slow.
>
> Even the looniest of European Rallycross, the real
> stuff with 550-650 bhp motors and drivers with a
> couple of decades of world's top experience don't
> look all that insane from a distance or on TV.

>
> John Vanlandingham
> Sleezattle, WA, USA
>
> Vive le Prole-le-ralliat
>
> www.jvab.f4.ca

Not meant as a pro RA Euro rallycross statement...just an observation. I'm not sure any of that matters. Look at all the drones that flock to NASCAR events in person to watch little dots off in the distance go round and round or on TV where unless someone crashes it's pretty boring. However fast or exciting RA rx is relative to standing at the edge of a stage getting gravel flung in your face it can't be worse than NASCAR can it?

---

Quote
Morison
[jvl] Ohh noooohs! There's an h'off tawpik thread in the gent-urinal dick-cushion four-hum. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!![/jvl]

RallyTaco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> it can't be
> worse than NASCAR can it?
>

It can be worse than nascar if it comes at the expense of the real rally events.

john vanlandingham Wrote:
> Schedule all stacked up in the spring to early
> summer is going to force an awful lot of money to
> be spent in a shorter period of time but hey,

The six events happen across the same time span that those same six events would have happened anyway.

Much of the rest of what you say has some merit.

---

First Rally: 2001
Driver (7), Co-Driver (44)
Drivers (16)
Clerk (10), Official (7), Volunteer (4)
Cars Built (1), Engines Built (0) Cages Built (0)
Last Updated, January 4, 2015

Quote
john vanlandingham
Blame is for idiots. losers.

Carl S Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> RallyTaco Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > it can't be
> > worse than NASCAR can it?
> >
>
> It can be worse than nascar if it comes at the
> expense of the real rally events.

I was just referring to JVL's speed vs perception vs people caring about it.

But as far as the expense of real rally events I obviously don't want them to go away but I think there's some chance for them to have a better future outside of RA and without RA requirements.

Even if that future is sketchy I'm not sure it will be worse than if they would have limped along as part of a not really functional national championship and RA imploded after X years. Not saying any national championship can ever be functional here or that is where all effort should be put to "save" rally, but the status quo at RA didn't seem to be sustainable.

---

Quote
Morison
[jvl] Ohh noooohs! There's an h'off tawpik thread in the gent-urinal dick-cushion four-hum. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!![/jvl]

Morison Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> john vanlandingham Wrote:
> > Schedule all stacked up in the spring to
> early
> > summer is going to force an awful lot of
> money to
> > be spent in a shorter period of time but
> hey,
>
> The six events happen across the same time span
> that those same six events would have happened
> anyway.
>
> Much of the rest of what you say has some merit.


All of it has merit, you're simply trolling like the true asshole faggot you are.

I'm told you're friendly in real life, but I think you show your true colors here with the pseudo-anonymity of the internet..
In motorsport you are a "never was anything", and you want to attack somebody who did more before 30 than you'll ever understand to lamely try to imagine you're arguing as equals.
You aren't.
You aren't arguing just insulting so don't whine that you're given back EXACTLY what you give here.
Fuck off.

---

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.

john vanlandingham Wrote:
> > Much of the rest of what you say has some
> merit.
>
> All of it has merit, you're simply trolling like
> the true asshole faggot you are.

Oh, I forgot ... Every opinion is valid.

> ... you want to attack somebody who did more before 30
> than you'll ever understand to lamely try to
> imagine you're arguing as equals.

Dude, nothing I said was an attack.
For fuck's sake I actually was playing nice this time and not taking a kick at you for the way you said what you said, which was your standard obnoxious self aggrandizing bullshit. (stating the bleeding obvious like you were some visionary)

> You aren't arguing just insulting so don't whine
> that you're given back EXACTLY what you give
> here.
Insulting? By pointing out that anyone who can compare the 2010 schedule to the 2009 schedule can see that the 6 events in 2010 occur on the same time period as the first 6 events of 2009?

> Fuck off.
No.

In my apparently worthless yet equally valid opinion, your comments that have marginal, at best, merit are:

"Track events de-emphasize the driver."
True to a point but the driver, their judgment and conditioning will still be major factors in the end results. I'm not saying you're wrong just that it isn't as black and white as you suggest.

"... but its still how much for a so called "National" entry fee?"
Irrelevant to the discussion.
Rally America is still loosing money in a big way with the Rally America Championship and it brings a lot of infrastructure and service to the national events when they roll into town. (some needed, some not. Some welcome, some not)

"Never trust a Sanctioning body,"
Never say never amigo.
In many ways competitors HAVE to trust sanctioning bodies to set the right standards and make the right decisions for the sport. If you don't like the direction being taken, be proactive and supportive about getting the right decisions made.

"especially when it's a privately held Corporation."
without a doubt good reason to look at their actions with a more critical eye but in some ways a privately held corporation is even more likely to look at the desires of the stakeholders (its clients.) We get that you don't like RA. They aren't evil, horrible people. (then again, neither am I)

"How many seasons till the whole "Rally" Championship for RA is done in parking lots?"
USRC was the first sanctioning body to have a 'national' run wholly in a stadium... and at that event the 'first' woman to win a national as a driver.

Havir has put a ton of his own money and Niday, Hurst and the rest of the RA crew have invested years of time to build rallying in the woods into something sustainable over the long haul. I seriously doubt they would just abandon it in favour of the quick buck. (Havir doesn't need the quick buck)

John, participate in the conversation or go away. Your crass, homophobic name-calling is really, really tiresome.

---

First Rally: 2001
Driver (7), Co-Driver (44)
Drivers (16)
Clerk (10), Official (7), Volunteer (4)
Cars Built (1), Engines Built (0) Cages Built (0)
Last Updated, January 4, 2015

Quote
john vanlandingham
Blame is for idiots. losers.

Wow, both of you, go sit in separate corners.

---

Welcome to the cult of JVL drink the koolaid or be banned.

i agree with jon's first post.

and for those of you that think rallycross is exciting to watch on tv i encourage you to try to watch a full episode from the uk.

it's still boring!

it doesn't matter that they have way more hp or awesome set-ups, the race is basically decided within the first lap. and it seems to combat this there is a lap of your choosing where you have to go around an extra piece of course so that you slot in somewhere different. its still pretty damn boring, and i like watching racing, but i couldn't hardly get through an episode.

i think that rally-america may have screwed over a lot of people. i know ojibwe was an amazing event to even spectate and it seems like it may not be coming back. also rally colorado is in flux now because of this and feels like a big fuck you to those of us living in colorado to me.

i also think it's hilarious about how people protested saying that the xgames didn't have that much effect on entries for the last 3 events, yet these are the 3 that were cut (seemingly without reason other than the xgames).

even without factoring in where the national events are, i would think a better championship could be crafted by making the season last a full 12 months so that cars could be fix and funding could be found between events.

i hope colorado, ojibwe, lspr, and other events go nasa.

"Never trust a Sanctioning body, never, especially when it's a privately held Corporation."

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-Mark
www.nocoastmotorsports.net