In case you still dont get why RA stands for...........

Rally is really effed in

America

Hate to post links to the eternal faboi rally site, but when old school rally people get POed, I notice.

http://www.specialstage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42040

Maybe Jerry should go to work for Monster Fucking Rally Team.

Hey, I don't get any credit for the few things I do right at work, but i sorta get paid. ;-)

Jerry and Tim Winker are old school rally folk. Jerry has been going to events and taking great pictures for years.

Tim, his brother, I think, used to be the main man for the US saab club. Good people.

been following that one......sucks.

Yeah, saw that crap this morning; only one word can describe the mentality of those fools and their strong arm tactics re images and vids and their treatment of people who've dedicate 3-4 times the time to making rally whatever it is--and encouraging more people--of all sorts--to participate: totally fucked up...

Lessee, Volunteers organise and staff and run an event, gullible saps strain the family budgets to build cars and pay extortionate "Sanction and insurance fees" to enter an event and pound the piss outta their own cars, and these midwest thugs claim they own all you piccies and even your on-board vids shot with your own equipment.....

Is it greed or fantasies of power that drives their madness?

Maybe RA stands for Rapacious Authoritarians.

It's pretty easy to get POed at race sanctioning orgs. By nature, they do end up being the fun police, a lot. But RA takes the cake.

RA is ok paying out cash to Wasserman Media and others and fly their chronies around unnecessarily. And they still have time to totally eff the regular guy and whine that they are losing money. Furthermore, they continually let their "media" peeps do unsafe things that affect rally operations at events.

It slays me to volunteer to work, and as a worker we are asked to control the spectators, keep them off the stage road, make them walk through the woods, to some crappy coral, and then have some RA media peeps walk or drive in to what is now a closed stage and take up positions that we just got done telling the POed spectators is unsafe and that we will not run the stage if they stand there. Then the RA media types get bored after Travis, Ken and finally Mirra go by, and hop in their min-van and drive down the hot stage road, cancelling the stage for the rest. Seen this with my own eyes.

If you aren't selling energy drinks and video games to 10 year olds, you don't exist. If you do have connections to X-Games or Monster or Red Bull, you can do anything you want, any time you want, and RA will bend over to help you do it.

SCCA was far from perfect, and they wasted a ton of our cash on the ill-fated Rally Denver, but at least they were a club, and we were members who were allowed to run for club management positions.

I guess it takes a lot of marketing to convince 10 year olds and Subaru that Dave Mirra can drive a car.

I read that yesterday, actually, and felt bad for about two seconds that while we were marshalling, pictures and video were also being taken.

There were only three other guys with cameras in our area other than us, and they were only around for about 10 minutes total during the first two stages. One guy was an "official" photographer I think. He looked familiar, I may have seen him last year too.

The other two guys were high-school lookin' kids with fruity looking camera bags, with some expensive-looking equipment, and even to me didn't look like they really knew what they were doing. Plus, they looked so far out of their element trying o climb around on the loose rocks, I was almost worried we'd have to call a medic in for a broken leg.

I had one spectator ask me how he was supposed to get a media badge, as he'd done it before, but he couldn't find out how to do it this year.

We had no idea that there was some sort of ownage of the air surrounding the event to prevent us from taking any photos or videos. Didn't see any signs, maybe it was in some of the fine print on the waiver when signing in at worker registration?

I wonder if RA thought that taking over the SCCA rally was going to be a juicy cash cow, and are now trying to make it so unpalatable that they can divest themselves of it easily now that the coffers are bare, at the same time preventing someone else to come in and do it better.

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---** To be in compliance with the Anarchy **---
Jorden R. Kleier
Baraboo, Wisconsin, USA
1990 Mazdog Protege 4WD
1973

Kinda sounds like all the photogs that had their pictures used and distributed without credit may have grounds for a class action lawsuit against RA.

Quote
Doivi Clarkinen
Kinda sounds like all the photogs that had their pictures used and distributed without credit may have grounds for a class action lawsuit against RA.

You don't supposed Mr Havir has a platoon of slimey lawyers (was that redundant?) sitting in some smoke filled back room playing poker and just waiting for the "Action Stations" buzzer to go off when they'll leap into action slinging injections and stays and postponements and discovery and subpoenas around?

On the banner at the top of this forum, it occasionally says "Spins Prohibited". Lots of the statements above are misrepresentations of events and/or policies to make RA look bad. That is the definition of negative spin.

RA does some things right and some things wrong. Just like any other organization.

Constructive criticism is a good thing and might even succeed in getting things changed. I hope venting and ridiculous speculation makes you feel better because that is all that it will accomplish.

BTW, in SCCA days, every year (2001-2003) I submitted a list of typos and inconsistencies in the rally rulebook. None of them were ever fixed. I believe that RA has made more rule changes based on competitor feedback than SCCA.

Hmmm, I just stopped in to find JVL's contact info to talk to him about making struts for the TR7. Why am I even posting this?

alan perry

Call it a spin if you like, but I still think RA has pretty much ruined forest rallying in the US. Just my opinion, which tends to spin out of control, after about 10 jager-bombs.

But, on the bright side, how about RA's new X-games Circuit Rally program. No thanks. I'll stick with $200 track days. I'm a fanboi of going to my local road race track and getting a bunch of seat team, in my daily driver car with no cage, no hans devices, stock belts, minimum BS, for short money. Oh yeah, the local track day club, doesn't give preferential treatment to X-games phenoms. Money talks, BS (like me) rallies elsewhere, eh.

If I hit the lottery wicked hard, and get rallye fever again, I'll go rally in Canada or Mexico or somewhere where they "get it"!

Don't want to get into a discussion about RA destroying forest rally because it is a rathole discussion that goes nowhere. Aside from the economy and organizer/worker fatigue, I think that regional rally is doing just fine up here (PNW). In my opinion, other than the six RA national events, the flavor of rally in the US comes from the locals who put on the rally, not the sanction body.

I have had strong disagreements with RA media policy since my first direct involvement with it (as Media Relations Officer at Wild West 2006) and now I just agree to disagree. On the other hand, they have brought out a lot of spectators to Olympus, which is more people that will support us when we try and get roads.

Tonight I am heading out to NJ to work the rallycross events this weekend, so I guess I will see firsthand what that is like.

The point of rallycross is to put on a show. No one is paying to watch you run a track day. No one is paying you for a good finish at track day.

In the events so far, the excess of tarmac has not been great, but I think that is a venue issue and a teething pain of starting a new sport. I imagine that there will be courses with more dirt/gravel in the future.

alan

RA stands for Really Asent.

I'm on Twitter. All the time. This past weekend, I thought it was pretty sad to see RallyAmeri-, I mean RallyCar_Series promoting the everlovingdogshit out of their rallyx at NJMP.

Into a wall!
Into a wall!
Red flag
Into a wall!
Mirra doing an engine swap before the next heat!
Into a wall!
This is rallycross (picture of broadsided $100,000 Pastrami STi)
Buy your limited edition rallycross calendar for only $15!
Tommi Mäkinen and Per Eklund are here!

Meanwhile, the last RallyCar stage rally event of the season - Seed9 - is running in Jean, Nevada. CRS is live tweeting the event, stage times, mechanical issues, race conditions, results.

Apparently this was not a priority for them.

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Brian Driggs | KG7KCA | PHX, AZ | 89 Pajero
alterius non sit qui suus esse potest

They pretty much never update Twitter for divisional events. That is nothing new. As for the Rallycross event, it was actually a lot of fun to see (I was there crewing for Broken Motorsports) and very well received by the spectators and teams alike.

Don't get me wrong, I love the CRS and have a lot of friends out there (drove out from Connecticut twice this year to compete with my southwest pals), but the fact that Rally AmeriCar decided to do Twitter updates for the final event of their new series, which rightly or wrongly, they are hoping will ease some of the financial burden on the stage rally program, while not doing updates for a small divisional event, doesn't bother me one bit.

Oh, and the organizers and competitors at the Nocona Rally Stomp events, this coming weekend, might dispute Seed 9 being the final stage event of the year. ;-)

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-Brian

I competed in Seed 9 and didn't have any problems with the exposure. It was fine by me.

It would have been helpful if you'd come out for the event, Brian. It could've used more workers.

And I'm unclear on the whether the last event of the year is the Nocona Rally Stomp or the Rally de Paris in January, but either way it's in Texas.

I'd have loved to have been there, Michel, but 200 miles from home at the Rallycross trumped 2500 miles from home for Seed 9 in this case.

Quick further threadjack: What happened to Chuck?

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-Brian

Oops, too many Brians. I consider it a bonus when you come out - going 2500 miles just to work an event would be sort of crazy. That plea was aimed at Brian Driggs.