Oooo! The next "this will save rally" is almost here!

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Anders Green

The middle of a city/town? Targa Newfoundland style (where whoooosh! it just goes through the town) sure, super-special-sit-around-all-day-for-a-35-second-run... I'll pass.

Anders

Amen.

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-Brian

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fliz
It's here.

RallySOLO!

I do have some good feelings about RallySolo... the car prep cost is obviously lower. Is it HALF? No, obviously not. But when I go out to lunch, I'll happily spend $7, I'll eat $8 and like it, but $9 I'm reluctant and $10 I'll eat somewhere else. Everyone has a fuzzy line in their budget and if that brings a particular combination of car build under that line, some of those folks can come play.

TerraTrip 303 - $350
Wheel probe - $35
TerraPhone Clubman - $80
TerraPhone mic/speakers (driver) - $50
Seat - $280ish
Seat bracket - $35ish
FIA belts - $150
Cage construction of seat mounting area for passenger seat - a guess of $150
Vinyl on the window - $20

That's $1150 dollars less. Equally important, in my mind, is the TIME that wasn't spent doing those things. I've seen plenty of rally cars get coats of dust as people messed around with dual odo pickups, buttons for the nav to have the wipers controlled by their feet and all sorts of things as rally after rally comes and goes without them entering. Cutting the prep time by six or eight weekends makes it that much more likely that people will actually get out there and RALLY!

Anders

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Grassroots rally. It's what I think about.

i dont see it affecting anyone negatively, as it just allows for more options. Especially with rallysprints that are shorter. My question is would you still have to buy a route book and the like? Perhaps 50 dollar less entry fee (think pikes peak charging more for a codriver, but in opposite)

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Anders Green

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fliz
It's here.

RallySOLO!

I do have some good feelings about RallySolo... the car prep cost is obviously lower. Is it HALF? No, obviously not. But when I go out to lunch, I'll happily spend $7, I'll eat $8 and like it, but $9 I'm reluctant and $10 I'll eat somewhere else. Everyone has a fuzzy line in their budget and if that brings a particular combination of car build under that line, some of those folks can come play.

TerraTrip 303 - $350
Wheel probe - $35
TerraPhone Clubman - $80
TerraPhone mic/speakers (driver) - $50
Seat - $280ish
Seat bracket - $35ish
FIA belts - $150
Cage construction of seat mounting area for passenger seat - a guess of $150
Vinyl on the window - $20

That's $1150 dollars less. Equally important, in my mind, is the TIME that wasn't spent doing those things. I've seen plenty of rally cars get coats of dust as people messed around with dual odo pickups, buttons for the nav to have the wipers controlled by their feet and all sorts of things as rally after rally comes and goes without them entering. Cutting the prep time by six or eight weekends makes it that much more likely that people will actually get out there and RALLY!

Anders

$500 of that list is not required to have a first responder & second head sitting beside you when things go wrong.

And people who let the car gather dust while they work on non-essentials are NOT going to magically enter. They're people who are not willing to commit, and have found a simple excuse to sit it out. They will find another excuse to not show up.

Will rallysolo cars be mixed in with the rest of the field? From a safety perspective, I would not enter an event where the car in front of or behind me has only one person in it, at least not until it has been proven that they do not pose an additional safety hazard.

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fliz
not until it has been proven that they do not pose an additional safety hazard.

Proving the non-existence of a safety hazard in this type of situation has many of the same logical difficulties as proving the non-existence of God. If you make some progress on a method of proving the former, let me know. (And I guess if you make any progress on the latter, well, I don't even know who you should inform.)

Cheers,
Anders

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Grassroots rally. It's what I think about.

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Anders Green

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fliz
not until it has been proven that they do not pose an additional safety hazard.

Proving the non-existence of a safety hazard in this type of situation has many of the same logical difficulties as proving the non-existence of God. If you make some progress on a method of proving the former, let me know. (And I guess if you make any progress on the latter, well, I don't even know who you should inform.)

Cheers,
Anders

Yeah, "prove" was a bit strong.

I suppose a couple years of them not running hot into controls/stopped cars/off course would do it.

But I take it you intend to have solo cars intermixed with fully crewed cars? I hope you gain more entries than you lose.

It seems a lot of teams aren't even interested in running w/o notes, I'm not sure how big the demand for completely blind rally is.

Just one more point on costs, most drivers get the codriver to share event costs, I usually try to get the hotel covered. A couple of events, and the additional prep costs are covered.

If you want to cut car prep costs, why not drop the FIA seat restriction? There are a lot of safe seats that don't have that sticker.

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Chad
Yeah, "prove" was a bit strong.

I suppose a couple years of them not running hot into controls/stopped cars/off course would do it.

The difficulty is, a couple of years is something that we may not have. Rally entries dropped another 9% in the US in 2011 compared to 2010 (and NRS is pulling that average up, so it's worse for other folks). This sport is now down to 51% of the heyday of less than a decade ago, and it's been dropping steadily. Fewer car people participated in rally this year than ever before. Nine rally events were cancelled, the most I can ever recall. Several big events lost money even at the entry levels they had. On a per-person basis, drivers averaged 16% fewer events this year than ever in more than a decade.

Project forward another couple years of 10 percent decline, and there might be only 3-4 events in the country that don't cross that line into losing money. Once that happens, places to rally are going to dry up quickly, and once THAT happens... poof, no more rally cars get built. This sport is not linearly scalar in the downward direction: there are many fixed costs in the events.

Or, phrase it like this: who would have believed back in 2002 that the sport would be HALF the size it is now ("now" being 2002) in ten years? So naturally it's equally unbelievable that the sport will be half the size it is now in another ten years. Here's what I would guess that looks like: the "big" events average 25 cars. And there's only 6 of them. Then there's another 8 events that get 15 cars. All the other events have been weeded out by finances. The average tow distance has doubled. Entry fees are up 50%. The retention rate of drivers goes up, because there's 50 of us that will just do this forever regardless, but the new blood drops off a cliff. Has this trend started yet? Well, nearly a third of the events in the country this year had 15 or fewer cars, go back just five years and there was only one.

So there's really a choice between two options... after looking at over a decade of data, watching participation decrease, decrease, decrease, there are basically two ways I see to go:

1) do nothing.
2) try something new.

I'm not a purist. I'm a fun-ist. I want to go have fun out in the woods racing around on closed roads. If I have a choice between not doing it at all, or doing it on the same day as some guys with motorcycles and some guys in weird trucks and some guys with hovercrafts, I'm going to chose "doing it at all". And I'm not going to wait until the water fills the boat before I start bailing.

Solemnly ,
Anders

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Grassroots rally. It's what I think about.

Somewhere along the line, rally went from a semi-affordable way to beat on a car to just as or more expensive than road racing. I've always been more comfortable hammering a car on dirt, but frankly LeMons/ChumpCar pretty much tops out my budget nowadays, so that's where I'm trying to go play now (although the costs are creeping up there, too).

Hopefully the economy turns around and the insurance industry gets outed along with the banks by some Occupiers, so sh!t happening at an event goes from lawsuit fodder to nothing more than "misadventure".

plus from what i understand, safety was not as serious as it is now. Figure expensive neck restraint was required, cages were not as complex, etc. Gas was cheaper... Insurance was cheaper... And as an organizer i see many counties wanting money to use roads because they are hurting so they figure we can pay to use roads, AND THEN pay to maintain them after...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/2011 11:27PM by Gravity Fed.

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Gravity Fed
plus from what i understand, safety was not as serious as it is now. Figure expensive neck restraint was required, cages were not as complex, etc. Gas was cheaper... Insurance was cheaper... And as an organizer i see many counties wanting money to use roads because they are hurting so they figure we can pay to use roads, AND THEN pay to maintain them after...

Aside from the road fees, which I can't comment on since I've not been an organizer, but I'd bet have not changed that dramatically, nothing you have listed results in MAJOR increases in price.
Cage complexity is really not much higher than what was being built years ago.

I'd RallySolo at any event that offered it, unless it was really long and with night stages. I'd get way too bored and no one would be there to here me sing Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler at the start line. 95% of codrivers are just giving directions anyhow. I know, I've watched plenty of in-car.

There is a stage tracking system being independently developed by a friend here in Denver(not StageTrack also from Denver). We talked about using it to 'read' notes based upon location. I'm sure it could be simplified to simply flash a signal at the driver on the cluster when there is a caution coming up.

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NoCoast

Aside from the road fees, which I can't comment on since I've not been an organizer, but I'd bet have not changed that dramatically, nothing you have listed results in MAJOR increases in price.
Cage complexity is really not much higher than what was being built years ago.

Entries in Western Canada are almost at their highest in a decade. In fact, the new millennium saw very small turnouts, numbers peaked in 2007-ish, dropped in 2009, and started to come back up in 2010 resulting in a very good 2011 year (this is a VERY vague description as there are numerous variables that are unique to each event and the effects they have on entry numbers).

I personally feel that we in the west have a lot of "buy in" at the moment in the series. Fast competitors that can benchmark themselves against each other, two stable regions (RallyWest and RallyBC) and events that are solidly done.

I also made sure to point out at our AGM this weekend that it is quite simple; people under the age of 25 typically can't rally. If they are their only source of income/resources, they first have to get college/university out of the way. Then they have to pay off their debts. Finally, they can start to think about expensive hobbies if they don't have kids/wife/other obligations. It's life now-adays for the average person.

This is a big generalization, and the US market is not the same as Canada... but overall, I don't think it's a money thing for once. As I typically point out, the US is 10 times larger than Canada, but you don't have 10 times the rally participants. Why? There certainly isn't a per capita deficit for you guys that makes your middle smaller than ours ratio wise (or is there??).

Edit-
That last sentence is worded poorly, I mean the middle class size as a ratio of overall population so I edited it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2011 02:00PM by HiTempguy.

Well, yeah, Canadian rallying has been the biggest beneficiary of the internet. I mean, how would you even know that there was rallying outside of Calgary back before the internet if you lived in Edmonton or Red Deer or similar? The newspapers pretty much only show the hockey results up there and do you guys even have a mail service?
Just kidding. I'm allowed to. I'm from Wyoming and was a rally fan for years and wasn't until I moved to Colorado and had useable internet that I discovered there was even rallying in the USA.

At the risk of ruffeling feathers (me ruffle feathers??)

RA just had 4 regionals with over 100 entries in a months time. So if we're doing clever phrases "There would be no "gRAssroots without RA".

Grassroots would be better served figuring out a NRS insurance plan for small events than wierd classes and worrying about tricking the ocassional road racer into switching horses.

As to the event decline I can share some uncomfortable insight into PNW events. We were unceremonially kicked out of Green Diamond land due to the actions of one self proclaimed know it all organizer. Those excellent centrallized roads were lost for no reason other than someones ego. That loss is devastating to PNW rally. We now have a very limited set of roads to share between events. We also have a dwindling number of organizers and much of the regions enthusiasm has gone by the wayside. Some of which is economic related. Wild West was dropped due to poor planning and the same organizer was responsible for that loss.

DooWops was Ray Damitio's event. I passed on taking it over, just don't have the time. Ron Barker courageously tried and lost money, plus he has other chickens to pluck. Ray was so passionate about that event and local ralliests it will be nearly impossible to replace his efforts.

So that is our sad story and none of that is the fault of RA or NRS but certainly will not be impacted by either RallyMoto or Rally Solo. Sitting still suffocates a shark for sure, but gimmicks rarely do anything but waste further time and energy. Still I applaud Anders for reaching, I appreciate his efforts and drive, just don't agree with the program. But I'm an old fart and don't matter much any more in the big picture and I can live with that.

Carry on....

Maybe we should try to compare what's different for Canadian rallies and US Rallies ?

might also need to compare economies . Has Canada had a huge RE boom & Bust cycle? what % of Canadian mortgage owners are under water? 21.2% , its 58.3% in NV

how much does it cost to insure a Canadian rally vs a US rally?
how much do the roads cost to rent for a Canadian rally vs a US rally?
how much does fuel cost ?
what's the Canadian unemployment rate ?
what's the Canadian Employment rate ? 71.5%?? (Wikipedia old data from 05) the US has a 64.2% as of Oct 31st

What type of exposure does Rally get in canada vs the US?
what social standing is Rally in with in Canadian society vs US ?
Ie if i asked 10 random people what rally is, in Canada how many know vs in the us ?

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