2008 RA Arena Rally Championship presented by Subaru?

With all the problems RA has getting stages to run, how long do you think it will be before they too (like SCCA before them) give up on forest stage rallying (for safety reasons) and run X-games style single-venue events (weather permitting) exclusively?

Oh yeah, don't bother showing up with a Mitsubishi 'cause they don't land jumps
too good.

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Ted Mendham
www.rensport.net

"X-Games Style Single-Venue Events"?..... Yawn..... Yawn..... Yawn......
Stadium Rally?..... Double Yawn..... Double Yawn.... Double Yawn.....

It's time rallying became a renegade sport again. Sans commercial sanctioning and permission slips.
Surely I'm not the only free man on this train!

Rich Smith


(Gee Wally, won't he get 10 demerits for saying that?)

I've been as much against the R-A crap as anybody but I think I've had an epiphany of sorts. Lately I've come to the conclusion that as long as NASA is here and maintains its grassroots outlook, I'm ok with it. Let them try to get money into stadium racing. More power to them. Hell, if somebody wanted to pay me to build a car and race it in stadiums I probably would (as long as I could take it racing in the woods on the other weekends).

I know I'll probably get flamed hard for saying this but R-A is going to do what they think is best for R-A. Not what's best for the sport of rally, or you, or me, or anybody else and all the bitching in the world isn't going to change that. So I've decided, let's be thankful that we have NASA here to keep the game going when R-A either crashes and burns, or does go full time stadium races.

Ok I'm done now. Flame away.

---

"Time to unpimp ze auuto."





sleightc (A.T.) Yahoo {DOT} com

I think we'd all like to... liability is the sucker punch these days.

-Martin.

MRWmotorsports Wrote:
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> I think we'd all like to... liability is the
> sucker punch these days.
>
> -Martin.


In what way? I don't understand. Do you mean like the SCCA Prorally situation? To be honest I don't even know the whole story there but it seems like rally survived.

---

"Time to unpimp ze auuto."





sleightc (A.T.) Yahoo {DOT} com

Phlyan Pan Wrote:
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>
>
> In what way? I don't understand. Do you mean
> like the SCCA Prorally situation? To be honest I
> don't even know the whole story there but it seems
> like rally survived.

It endured, limped along like it has limped along for 30 years and only at a tripling and quadrupling the prices of entry fees in a 2-3 year period.

There are now more unfinished? already done cars in the PNW than entries at events.

SOMETHING is drastically wrong.
It was a farce and in some states a crime the way SCCA bought insurance from a guy who was their paid "Risk analyst" suggesting that they buy insurance from Company X which just coincidentally was him.

And now the entries are sky high "because of the insurance fees", same bullshit since the first event I went to ($75 insurance fee total for the whole event, $55 entry: 1.5 cars covered the fees)
>
> "Time to unpimp ze auuto."
>
>
>
>
>
> sleightc (A.T.) Yahoo {DOT} com

---

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.

Ok so are you saying insurance fees is the big thing overpricing rally right now? I always thought road use permits were a big chunk.

So if the problem is insurance, what can we do to fix it? Has anyone ever tried to source insurance and run an event independently of one of the sanctioning bodies?

---

"Time to unpimp ze auuto."





sleightc (A.T.) Yahoo {DOT} com

Phlyan Pan Wrote:
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> Ok so are you saying insurance fees is the big
> thing overpricing rally right now? I always
> thought road use permits were a big chunk.
>

It depends on who you talk to. Road use fees, insurance fees, sanctioning fees, decreased number of entires, trophy girls....It all adds up. The equation is likely different for each event and each sanctioning organization.

---

Matt Smith

Racing in glorious black and red

My daily life is a Saab story (sold!)

Its really never been clear how rally fees are structured. What I do know is that the RA pricing is high:

ESRC - avg $7.92 per stage mile
CARS - avg $5.15 per stage mile
RA - avg $9.36 per stage mile

These are unloaded numbers, just straight entry fee (plus stage notes if applicable) divided by stage miles.

For me living in nude hampister - CARS events are far and away less expensive than both ESRC or RA. Both are about the same $24.88 & $24.75 per stage mile, loaded (including travel, hotels, food, etc..) where CARS is $18.30...

I only do NEFR to support our local sport - but its the most expensive event available to me...and even that is getting to the point where its just not worth it.

So is the difference between CARS and US Rally - insurance? Road Fees? Local participation in the form of sponsorship? to the tune of 45% more expensive?? Perhaps this will change in 2008 with the loonie at parity w/the $ - but not by 45%...

And if you loaded the numbers to reflect actual stage mileage run (as opposed to advertised) CARS would be an even bigger price leader.

US based rallyists need to find a way to put some value back in the Dead Presidents. The loonie is about to kick the US dollar's ass.

I have done a fair amount of ranting the last few days, sorry. But I do try to try to be positive (really) and remember that no matter how much more expensive it is now and no matter how much more BS (it's huge!) there is that "these ARE the good old days!"

Try to enjoy what is left. Fossil fuel-injected, turbo-charged, flame spitting, gravel spewing, AWD, suicide-machine rally cars and real forest road special-stages may be an extremely endangered species in the US.

The (grand) kids won't understand that it was a lot more than a video game or tv show. Or maybe they'll be pretty busy dealing with the next Ice Age.

---

Ted Mendham
www.rensport.net

tedm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------


>
> Try to enjoy what is left. Fossil fuel-injected,
> turbo-charged, flame spitting, gravel spewing,
> AWD, suicide-machine rally cars and real forest
> road special-stages may be an extremely endangered
> species in the US.
>
> The (grand) kids won't understand that it was a
> lot more than a video game or tv show. Or maybe
> they'll be pretty busy dealing with the next Ice
> Age.

>
>
>
> Ted Mendham
> www.rensport.net


Wow. That's a hell of a lot of apocalyptic talk in one post. The sad thing is it's hard to disagree with any of it.

So what's the answer to getting stage mileage up and prices down? Are we at a point where we have to go to closed venues to lower road use fees and insurance costs so we're basically running huge motocross tracks? God I hope not.

---

"Time to unpimp ze auuto."





sleightc (A.T.) Yahoo {DOT} com

Phlyan Pan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Wow. That's a hell of a lot of apocalyptic talk
> in one post. The sad thing is it's hard to
> disagree with any of it.
>
> So what's the answer to getting stage mileage up
> and prices down? Are we at a point where we have
> to go to closed venues to lower road use fees and
> insurance costs so we're basically running huge
> motocross tracks? God I hope not.
>
> "Time to unpimp ze auuto."

I think the biggest problem is insurance and because things are so damn litigious these days you'd need a super ironclad waiver. A 100 page document signed and initialed on every page plus a videotaped waiver.

That and/or 1000's of acres of private land with amenable owners.

That's my opinion of course.

---

Andrew M
Onterrible
30ish

I hope to not offend anyone, but the mix of costs varies wildly from event to event. In some cases, road use fees are high (#1 cost item at some events) but are near to $0 for other events. Insurance is generally a lot steeper for R-A; they do not have to large number of overall events like NASA has, since R-A only runs stage rallies, and NASA has a few hundred track events.

RNY has to be a standalaone insurance buyer; their costs have not gone down since they started buying their own insurance, so independent insurnace buying is not the answer. I doubt that these cost items will significantly change.

On thing everyone forgets is that if you go back about 6 years and more, stagenotes were NOT typical and in fact were rare. The cost to write stage is many thousands of $$ and adds (very approximately) $150 per car in a typical event, more or less. This was demanded by numerous competitors so no one can fairly fault organizers and sanctioning bodies for this cost item.

Also, the increase in car safety requirements has to have a negative impact on overall cars built and thus the number ready to participate. With fewer cars, the fee per car has to go up for break-even. Seeing 50-80 cars in every eastern National rally was typical every year in the 80's, and divisional events did not have a hard time with 35 entires on average. It just takes a lot more to get in to the sport these days. Again, there is probably no going back on this.

Regards,
Mark B.

I know for Coeff 1 rallies under RA the event insurance is handled per car, which makes them more easily sustainable even if only a few cars show up.