Quote
Doorman
Is there a way to make rallying affordable to more interested parties?
How are the events NOT getting it done?
Is Ken Block and Travis Pastrana the ONLY answer? (I don't think so)
Back to original topic.
Rally is very sensitive to disposable incomes and extracurricular time. You will not find many other hobbies that require the amount of money and time to compete. Thus it is highly sensitive to swings in the economy. Entries and economic indicators have very high correlations.
Then there is what I think of mostly as the Subaru effect, though it's not limited to Subaru nor is Subaru to 'blame'. It is simply a side effect of a very effective marketing strategy. The majority of people who get interested in rallying get interested due to being 'car' guys and often specifically Subaru fans. These are people who maybe have a WRX or an STI. They may even consider rallying them. Some even go so far as to build them into rally cars. They think that that is the only thing they would be willing to rally and that it is what they know so is required to have fun rallying and be competitive. The problem is, rallying a Subaru or any AWD car with the goal of being competitive is expensive! There are three diffs. Want to be competitive? Better have an active center and clutch packs front and rear. Guess what, now you need to drop $2500 on the Rocket Rally diff computer and some fancy maps. Oh yeah, that restrictor is killing you. Time to spend $7k to build a higher compression Cosworth engine and then you need to spend another $4k on an Autronic and tuning time with a competent tuner. Lets not get into turbochargers and intercoolers and struts and brakes and pads and and and. Mitch Williams is leading the USRC championship right now after 1st overall at Idaho and Gorman. It remains to be seen if he has a new Cossie engine for Prescott or if he's going to run the loaned one he had to borrow from one of the supporting shops friends' street car since the old Cossie engine was destroyed after Idaho. But I digress...
Point being, the general rally fan feels a need to rally a Subaru and by and large these people do not stay involved for long if they ever actually make it that far.
Then there is the American dream as it's being warped in recent years. Everyone needs a 55" LED TV with a bad ass surround sound system and nice leather sectional sofa in their 3500 square foot home which they have to buy but they want lots of space, not some little run down house built 100 years ago so they end up buying a house in the suburbs that leaves them with a sixty mile commute, which sucks in a shitty car and well, we're still americans so we need to have a nicer car which means a bigger car payment and insurance costs and suddenly two or more hours of every weekday is spent driving to and from work and by the time you get home at 7 pm and eat some dinner with the girlfriend/wife it's suddenly 8 pm and you decide to sit down and watch the primetime shows you recorded on the DVR while you were driving home and then at 10 it's bed time cause traffic is worse in the morning and you have to get up a 6 am just to get there. When now are you supposed to work on the car? Weekends? Bet the wife/girlfriend is super supportive of you spending every Saturday working on the car. If it takes 100 hours to prep a rally car properly it takes 250 for a one day per week person.
Now don't get me wrong. There are exceptions to the above cases. Single people for example, though they tend to spend more money on 'stuff' in the efforts to impress the fairer sex. And they tend to have even less income to spend on this stuff and spend more money and things.
I happily admit that there are two main factors to why I'm not rallying. Girls and time. I just solved the time problem but it also comes with a 1/3 pay cut. I'm hoping to make up for it by making a little side money building roll cage kits for a local shop and helping friends out with maintenance here and there on their cars. My girlfriend is supportive of rallying and understands when I spend an entire Saturday at the shop. Doesn't mean that it doesn't have a negative effect on the rest of the weekend though. She may be supportive but boredom or not spending time with me still has a negative effect on her persona. Between three long relationships and one marriage I've found this to be the case and have only seen a few examples of this not being the case. I even opened one former rallyists eyes to this fact that his time was not free when he was spending every night building his high spec open class Subaru and that while it didn't cost him money, it did cost him relationship issues and in the long run ruined alot of the fun for him because while he was rallying, it wasn't balanced with the rest of his life. So that's really what it all comes down to, is finding a balance between what you want and what you need and what your partner needs and wants.
So, what is this solution? Well, to really be successful we need a class of cars that meet the following criteria.
1) Reliable
2) Affordable to compete with
3) Do not require constant tinkering or repairs or fabrication
4) Not dominated by monetary expenditures. IE> Winning doesn't depend primarily on dollars spent or having the best equipment.
5) Has stuff available to make it a competent rally car, not just a street car with cage.
And we need events to compete at that fit the following criteria.
1) Affordable
2) Close
3) Challenging
4) Consistent
I do not think any national focus will ever achieve this. My vision is a spec series utilizing a car that meets the above criteria and could be built and sold for around $10k. I'd like to get two of these built and start a monthly low key rally school that would also act as a sales pitch for what we can build for someone. To market locally, I would offer a shit ton of free classes to the 14-18 year old demographic that are racing motocross and/or go karts. Lastly, and perhaps most difficult of the entire plan is to organize 5-8 local events that are essentially a sprint rally with one - two roads in the 5-20 mile length that are run multiple times to give 50-75 competitive miles. The service will occur on the side of the road. There will be no transits. The cars are not required to be road legal, though it is encouraged and that they drive to and from the event in their race car is also encouraged. Organizers will have a three car trailer available to bring anyones car back to Denver if they break beyond repair and can't drive the car home.
Now, one big comment I often get is against the spec series. Well what if someone wants to build a XXX because that's what they have and love and really really want to race. Sorry. Racing is not a sport for brand dedication. Look at Ken Block. He doesn't care what he rallies, just that he is in the best car for the series he is competing in that is within his price range.
Now lets talk economics of rallying right now... How much expendable income do you need to rally? Well, in my experience, a rally weekend requires about $2k done cheaply. Let's set a goal of three events per year. You need a trailer and a truck. Let's say you manage to finance a used truck and trailer for $15k, or about $300 per month, plus $50 per month for insurance and about $2k per year in maintenance. So that's about $11,000 per year to go do three events per year.
Let's just say you also have maybe $2000 in expenses related to housing, clothing, fuel, etc. That means you need to have $35k net. Or approximately $45-46k annual salary, or about the national median. That also means that you are spending all of the money you would be spending on vacation, savings, and other types of entertainment. That's not even factoring in the cost of maintaining the rally car or tires or repairs and my $2k per event is for low low budget. I know one team that spent over $10k per event in an Open Class Subaru.
There has also been since 2000 an approximate 10-15% decline in the average salary of people under 34, which I consider to be the target demographic for rallying.
Do we want to go around the country and rally in obscure locations with beautiful scenery or do we want to compete against someone in a similar car on a fun and challenging road? I personally lean towards the latter plus it's way way cheaper. And now I've got to continue reading about anaylsis of quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction data so that I can finish my Master's and move closer to my goal of rallying. Step one: Pay cash for everything. Step two: Eliminate debt and monthly expenses. Step three: Build a new local rally series and get all my friends to build the same car as me.
