turbo question

This may be a dumb question or it may have already been asked hundreds of times but why does Rally America require new drivers to run a non-turbo car? I get that having a turbo gives the car more power and hence, can make it more dangerous for an inexperienced new driver but is that the only reason? Is it for insurance purposes too? Why don’t they just require a smaller restrictor? It seems to me that they are limiting growth by at least a handful of people. How many cone squishers are out there with WRXs, EVOs, XRs, Speed 3s, turbo Volvo, etc, etc, that are thinking “If I had to take my turbo off it would be a huge pain in the ass because I’d only have to put it back on to autocross, rally cross, hill climb, etc etc….”. Putting a restrictor on and taking it off would be, in my mind, much easier and much cheaper especially because some of the classes those cars would end up running in, when the person no longer had the newb status, would have restrictors anyway. Couldn’t you find a small enough restrictor to keep the cars "safe" and allow people to run turbos until they had enough coefficients? Aren’t the WRXs and the EVOs the cars they want at their events anyway? I don’t know enough to answer these question so any info would be appreciated.

Ski Sawmill accident.

I have never seen a person who believed themselves to be a "fast" driver able to be in top 10. If they are they have a tendency to wreck often and actuarial science and a brain leads us to believe that the more often you wreck the more likely there will be an injury and those lead to insurance claims and hospital bills and lawsuits and such.

---

Grant Hughes

Quote
NoCoast
Ski Sawmill accident.

I have never seen a person who believed themselves to be a "fast" driver able to be in top 10. If they are they have a tendency to wreck often and actuarial science and a brain leads us to believe that the more often you wreck the more likely there will be an injury and those lead to insurance claims and hospital bills and lawsuits and such.

Pfffft, Havir and JB both bought turbo 4wd cars, Niday after a few events with a lame POS stockish Golf; Havir right out of the box, and both flipped them more or less right away. Havir's answer was to get a Prodrive built and maintained Super Subie ---and then to flip that like 4-5 times in about 22 events...(should have seen the cage fold in Shelton once)
Since they could not have any restraint on themselves, they extrapolated nobody could have restraint....so better make a rule forbidding everybody for their own sins...

Sounds kinda similar to a lotta people every election cycle.

We all know how a full F2 kit car with 265 bhp n.a. and short short gearing would be perfectly legal and "obviously" incapable of harming anybody but a stock 240 Volvo with 130 bhp is judged too dangerous.

Its stupid...and if we are lucky as soon as RallyAmericar gets lost in the Fogg, and that shit cloud evaporates, maybe so will the idiot rule.

---

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
NoCoast
Ski Sawmill accident.

I have never seen a person who believed themselves to be a "fast" driver able to be in top 10. If they are they have a tendency to wreck often and actuarial science and a brain leads us to believe that the more often you wreck the more likely there will be an injury and those lead to insurance claims and hospital bills and lawsuits and such.

After reading through

http://www.rally-america.com/news/1296/

“I don’t like crashing,” explained Urlichich, “I go flat out every time I race, but when you have new roads, you will crash. Over time we got to know the Canadian Rally Championship (CRC) events better, which gave us a good chance to win it all. But we will budget for accidents, because I don’t want to take 20 years to get fast. Just look at the top drivers in the world and see how much they crash. Look back in history… it comes with the business and you have to be ready for it.”

(Let it be known I have nothing against Leo)

it seems like Rally America was promoting his....lets say buck wild driving approch. Do you mean that having a turbo car means that you also have a certain mindset and this is what they are trying to avoid? Better for them to wreck a cheap POS car than a turbo car?

The rule seems like it is exclusionary to anyone with a turbo car. People look at it and think "I'd have to run a different car than I currently have..." Why not just say "you can run your turbo car, you just have to have a 20mm restrictor for 6 races or until we say so". Would that be bad for the motors or something? Would it not limit hp enough across the board? It just seems that de-turboing a car is a much bigger issue than popping a restrictor on and off...at least it sounds like it.

To comment on something - the "existing cars" angle you're bringing up kinda doesn't fly. Anything with a rally legal cage doesn't resemble a competitive autocross car or normal street car anymore. So the argument I'd make is that if you were to make a rally legal car (say a Subaru for argument's sake) that could do other stuff too (say track days or the like) you'd basically be starting with a rally car, and having a separate engine, suspension, and possibly drivetrain setup between the two anyway, unless you were happy with having something not suited to one or the other surface (or possibly not suited to either) Compared to all that, taking a turbo on and off is easy.

Now, that's a hypothetical for ye AWD shit trying to be at the pointy end of the field where there's maybe sorta fair arguments about not letting newbies (or possibly anybody, but nevermind that) drive. What gets me (and a lot of people on this board, John probably being one of the most vocal about it) is 2wd turbo stuff being disallowed for newbies when it's the easiest and cheapest way of having "enough" power, and having "too much" doesn't really get you much... especially when expensive ways of making "too much" power are perfectly legal for newbies.

What about things like this:

http://www.newenglandforestrally.com/rally-car-hillclimb-series-announcement/

and the various grass roots rally cross and rally sprints that are around. Rally cars arn't competative in those without moddifications greater than removing a turbo? No one falls into the "duel purpose" class? I honestly don't care about the competativeness as much as the fun factor anyway (never mind the fact that I spent $$,$$$ on a toy that gets used 2 weekends of the year. What about the other 50?). If they let me in and I roll across the finish line in last place, I need something to make it worth it right? I just want to know why not a restrictor so that its less miserable when I take the turbo off my Merk (oh sad day ....).

I meant, the rally organizers aren't concerned about maybe excluding autocross people or whatever because they'd have to deturbo their cars for rally. Unless you overbuild past what the rules you require, even full roadrace cages aren't rally legal - so fundamentally anything that's going to be multipurpose, with rally as one of the purposes, has to start as a rally car. You can't really use the "but I have this car already built and I want to rally it!" argument is my point.

As for the NA only at first thing... well, it's dumb. But I find it doubtful RA are going to change it to some sort of restrictor to limit horsepower for newbies... first off, I'm willing to bet a sufficiently small restrictor would cause turbo overspeeding issues. But also, it would mean that they'd have to target an actual power level for newbies, and add more restrictions for everything else now that it was figured out (if turbo cars can only make 200 horsepower, why can some other people build NA engines with more?) and I doubt that they care/have resources to do that well (depending on how cynical you're being) ... as opposed to the Open class stuff where restrictor sizes are just cribbed from FIA, who do have resources.

Now now we should all know how the world really works.

Problem - Insurance Company, land owner or someone else is concerned by past acidents/ crashes etc.

Constraint - Limited staff, money, time etc to address the concern of the above.

Answer - Hey we will not let beginners use a turbo till X. - easy to explain in a 10 min phone call to someone who really rather be doing something else (Insurance Company/ Landowner etc) it is a story that goes down well, is easy to implement and got RA what they needed. The general public knows what a turbo is and they know it make a car faster so easy to explain.

A much harder requirement would be like most track racing requirements - a license issued by a school - then RA would need to find schools, certify them, and then people would bitch about needing to travel to a school when there was really only one in the who USA at the time and the class would likely cost $3500 - an even larger barrier to entry. So RA did the easy thing.

---

In the long run reality always wins.

Quote
derek
Now now we should all know how the world really works.

Problem - Insurance Company, land owner or someone else is concerned by past acidents/ crashes etc.

Constraint - Limited staff, money, time etc to address the concern of the above.

Answer - Hey we will not let beginners use a turbo till X. - easy to explain in a 10 min phone call to someone who really rather be doing something else (Insurance Company/ Landowner etc) it is a story that goes down well, is easy to implement and got RA what they needed. The general public knows what a turbo is and they know it make a car faster so easy to explain.

A much harder requirement would be like most track racing requirements - a license issued by a school - then RA would need to find schools, certify them, and then people would bitch about needing to travel to a school when there was really only one in the who USA at the time and the class would likely cost $3500 - an even larger barrier to entry. So RA did the easy thing.

Other than NASA RS figured it (insurance+ no novice restrictions) out...

RA used to require novices to use a 28mm restrictor. I'm not sure what that did for power levels or tuning. Tuning can get expensive tho.

NRS hasn't seen a bunch of incidents that I'm aware of but they are a much smaller population than RA.

We see people bring this up once in a while. I don't think we'll ever see a large migration from cone smashers to rally. The expense of prepping a car for rally is kind of pricey and much of it can't be short cutted. The easy answer is to enter NASA events, those count for the RA experience requirements or sit and wait for RA to roll over and die. That may happen before you get the car ready anyway....

Quote
heymagic
RA used to require novices to use a 28mm restrictor. .... or sit and wait for RA to roll over and die. That may happen before you get the car ready anyway....

The 28mm thing was never a hard and fast rule.. It SEEMED to be dragged out when somebody with a really big budget who THEY wanted, like washed up hEXTREME hero guys wanted to start..Money talks.

The last bit is our best hope.

---

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
john vanlandingham

Quote
heymagic
RA used to require novices to use a 28mm restrictor. .... or sit and wait for RA to roll over and die. That may happen before you get the car ready anyway....

The 28mm thing was never a hard and fast rule.. It SEEMED to be dragged out when somebody with a really big budget who THEY wanted, like washed up hEXTREME hero guys wanted to start..Money talks.

The last bit is our best hope.

I hain't never seen a 28 restrictor that I can remember, but I gots a checker for one.

I was once offered a PGT WRX drive for a regional event as thanks for spending lots of time drinking the Mendhams' beer, fiddling with the car, and driving all over the eastern US and Canada to service for them. I believe it was Niday who told me I could do it if I put a 28mm restrictor in the car. Between the hassle of getting a restrictor made, getting the car tuned for it (so it could be slower than my Legacy street car but not blow up), putting it back to the 32mm restrictor after the event, and the fact I was going to have to fab new seat brackets to fit in the car, I gave up on the idea.

---

Andrew Steere
Lyndeborough, NH
KB1PJY

Isn't USAC the sanctioning body for Pikes Peak?
What else do they do?

Stupid decision in my opinion but maybe there is a good reason, like...

---

Grant Hughes

Quote
fiasco
I was once offered a PGT WRX drive for a regional event as thanks for spending lots of time drinking the Mendhams' beer, fiddling with the car, and driving all over the eastern US and Canada to service for them. I believe it was Niday who told me I could do it if I put a 28mm restrictor in the car. Between the hassle of getting a restrictor made, getting the car tuned for it (so it could be slower than my Legacy street car but not blow up), putting it back to the 32mm restrictor after the event, and the fact I was going to have to fab new seat brackets to fit in the car, I gave up on the idea.

You should have done a Canadian event...eh!