Four Class Structure - CARS Bulletin 2012-05 now online

A sequential would be nice.


We should ban AWD. It just makes the cars too fast and a lot less reliable.

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Self-righteous douche canoe

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NoCoast
I'll probably have a Drenth or Selholm or similar sequential dogbox someday. Is it needed? Definitely not. Is it pretty cool? Yeah. Plus my daughter told me she wanted a Volvo like Nuorala's a little bit ago so I guess I gotta start looking for a 242 to build for her. Luckily she's only 2.5 months so I have a few years to build the thing.

Mine got her first broken arm last night. She wants a car like Pocky's (grandpa) which is a 997 911S. I'm gonna see if a go kart will suffice for now.

I had a better idea for the turbo AWD cars. They get a 20% handicap per second, so each minute is actually 72 seconds and this is automatically calculated in our timing software (did I mention the elimination of time cards) and reported in results (did I mention these are going to be auto updated to a screen at the service area and each ATC/FTC). The handicap will be set pre-event but will be adjusted before each event to ensure that the top turbo AWD car would have been in 6th place overall. The guys rallying turbo AWD cars will either be pissed about it or they won't care, but at least it effects everyone in their class. If they want overall wins they will have to switch to a different car and everyone is happy. I'm happy as series organizer because the series is dominated by the 2WD and Open Light cars that I try to direct competitors towards. The 2WD and Open Light guys get to be in the spotlight and hopefully like 30-40 competitors per class will be battling it out for a win making for lots of smiles. I'm happy as a shop owner/partner because the cars I focus on building and fabricating parts for are really popular so we're kept busy and everyone is making a fair live-able wage doing something they enjoy which makes my partners and employees happy. The communities we're in are happy because we brings lots of people to town and are putting on a good show without tearing up their roads and our public access TV coverage is great for the town and getting them worldwide exposure via our youtube channel. The only ones not too happy are the open AWD guys but their cars are really built for playing with people at the pointy end of a National Championship so why would we cater to them.

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Grant Hughes

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hoche
A sequential would be nice.


We should ban AWD. It just makes the cars too fast and a lot less reliable.

Way back in 1998 I proposed in a questionnaire sent out by SCCA not banning turbo 4wd, but not making it the class that awards people with any Driver's Champignonskit points.

Somebody want to drive their 4wd turbo car, fine. They can score points for "Makes Champignonskit"..but for the title, the honor and the glory of "National Champignon Driver" award points for 2wd cars---and at the time I suggested a simplified Group 2 (2wd, 2 man crew, 2000lbs min).

Then a person can make a choice..they want to drive their turbo 4wd car, fine but! they want the title National Champ-peen, then enter 2wd.

Ray Hocker I believe it was said on the old CRS forum "That would be the best thing that ever happened to American rallying.........


Too bad it would never happen."

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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.

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john vanlandingham
*snip*

Speaking of rules that don't "solve" problems, I see nothing there that would prevent people from spending OODLES of cash to beat their competition...

Realistically, you're not going to prevent people spending oodles of cash if they want to. It happens when stuff is price capped, it happens when there's claimer rules, it happens in fawking LeMons.

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HiTempguy

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john vanlandingham
*snip*

Speaking of rules that don't "solve" problems, I see nothing there that would prevent people from spending OODLES of cash to beat their competition...

Except for not having oodles of cash.
Or being intelligent enough to know its pointless.

Adam, people have been repeating here on this thread and its common knowledge: the beauty of 2wd is the diminishing returns of going crazy with the check-book....

There's only so much grip that 2 tires can put give---specially for a whole stage, and tires cost lots of money..

A lot of people elsewhere where there's 100+ 2wd cars at every event know that somewhere in the 220-230-235 range is all you need and after that work on delivery---ya know? like powerband.

Now sure plenty people talk about wanting 300 bhp, but whatever...bullshit talk.

Here's the real deal: presume somebody bought a $35000 engine and the $17,000 gearbox to go with it.....the question remains: Can they drive a peaky high strung car 100% and consistently?

Few of us have that chance, but we can study what some guys down here who were driving blue things and doing OK, occasionally even beating some Canajians, and winning some titles and stuff here.

But those guys in a high powered 2wd car could not even get out of the bottom 1/3 of the results when there were 125 guys in cars similar spec.
I've posted links and results earlier.

That super killer $35,000 engine maybe makes some BHP, but it only made about 190 ft/lbs torque..

And of the 2,1 or 2,3 8v turbo cars just excluded can match that easily---for free. And they're easier to drive..

So one guy can waste all he wants, doesn't help if he can't drive 100% 100% of the time...

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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.

Quote
mekilljoydammit
Realistically, you're not going to prevent people spending oodles of cash if they want to. It happens when stuff is price capped, it happens when there's claimer rules, it happens in fawking LeMons.

A very astute guy said elsewhere when another genius was changing rules and that time, suggesting a ban on any car more than 6 or 7 years old:

Nothing stopping people from spending their cash---it is the federations job to attempt to mitigate the results of unrestricted money.."


This isn't the presidential election, its a passtime we engage in, we CAN try to limit what the results of sheer budget does.

I thought the competition was supposed to occur on the stages, not in the offices at some investment banker.

And the beauty of the 'Drivers points for National Crown" in 2wd only is it plays on driver's egos. if it's important to be able to call yourself champed-peen, then you know what to do; if its important to drive a blue Subaru and get freebies and cash, and cover your costs, fine drive one.

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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.

To be perfectly clear to everyone, in case I wasn't before, I'm personally all for keeping all the Gr5 options because it does just that (mitigate the results of unrestricted money) - makes it so that *anyone* can get to the 2wd wheel-torque limit for making shit go on gravel, and fairly cheaply. I'm trying to illustrate, by bringing up megabuck (or multi-kilobuck anyway) full balls out race solutions that fit the letter of the rules, that if you make it harder to make toarks by going to small bore or restricted engines only, you're going to restrict ye torque limit to a few advantaged platforms with aftermarket support to make huge NA power with good ratios (Honda FWD shit I'm looking at you; possibly some others, whatever) or people willing to feed cash into a fire with a snowshovel to have race shit developed.

Nobody is going to bother to build that? Is that really what anyone wants to rely on? I don't know about rally guys and all, maybe the Open AWD shit is enough to distract everyone. I come from going to roadraces and shit, where I see some people living with operating costs on the order of a grand per hour of track time just in engine rebuilds, and enough of those people to fill a grid. SCCA sortakinda tries to tone that down by having a lot of explicit rules in every damn class for every damn car. I don't think any rally organization in this continent wants their infrastructure.

I changed my mind. We should ban 2WD. The lack of grip is a serious safety concern.

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Self-righteous douche canoe

No no, open differentials only!

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hoche
I changed my mind. We should ban 2WD. The lack of grip is a serious safety concern.

I think that's obvious. Why else would we write the rules to keep 2wd at half the power level of AWD?

I find it interesting the completely opposite approaches taken to Open 4WD and Open 2WD. Open 4wd: change as little as possible, we'll change more if we have to.

Open 2wd: gut the classes, ban good, proven cars, restrict the hell out of the remaining cars. Maybe we'll open it up later.

It would make sense to me to start simple.

Step 1: Combine the classes.
Step 2: If the combined class shows turbo cars w/ too big of an advantage, then restrict them OR limit displacement.

But to start by limiting displacement AND adding a straw doesn't make any sense...unless the goal is to make sure nobody tries to start running turbo 2wd cars.

Wouldn't it be easier to ban turbos?

Blah blah blah, is it not the technology of tires increasing average speed? Seriously how far has the gravel tire evolved in the last 20 years? How much has BHP's evolved?? Has suspension technology allowed us to drive flat out over the rough shit? What about anti lag, launch control, flat foot shift software, smoking' hot co drivers. Helmet mounted cameras. Uber awesome gear boxes and fuckin recce.
Personally I, and my car are not affected by the rule change, so what do I give a shit? When I wake up after this vodka induced rant and find someone either quoted my post to tear it apart, in advance GO FUCK YOURSELF, hop in your car drive 3 miles down the road pull over and FUCK YOURSELF.

"I find it interesting the completely opposite approaches taken to Open 4WD and Open 2WD. Open 4wd: change as little as possible".

One word - Placate!

Look at the CARS sponsors - Subaru is the main sponsor.

Rally sells automobiles off the showroom floor.

What Subaru's are promoted through Rally that are currently at dealerships? WRX? WRX STi?

Why would a sanctioning organization who has 1 main sponsor want to mess with that sponsorship by restricting the fast cars whose distant cousins are available at a dealership near you?

Grassroots racing?

AWD is of course waaaay faster than what can be effectively put down with 2WD, so the whole speed thing is (quoting George Carlin here) "Pure Bullshit"!

I know little about rally but do have sort of an understanding of reason and common sense (some may differ). My input to CARS may have little impact, but a lot of you who are on this forum have likely been involved in rally in one aspect of another longer than some (if not most) of the board members on CARS.

Why not follow Keiths link and send your opinions to the board instead of bickering about it here.

Help facilitate change and dialogue.

You know what's kind of messed up to me about this whole thing? Reading along with this whole bickering argument thread is actually making me want to spend some time building up a shell that could be rallied - 2nd gen RX-7 with an RX-8 engine. I'd only have to trailer 6-8 hours to get to a buncha events after all... if I convince myself that that's not really that much, it could be fun.