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

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MConte05
Higgins/Block/Lestage in SP cars. .............it's that they are just world class drivers! Everyone seems to forget this point.

Like JVL has harped before, the only way to be a champion like that, is a LOT of practice and a LOT of hard work, something Block/Higgins/Pastrana/Lestage do through racing as much as they can. You really cannot expect to have a legitimate championship where 90% of the drivers race 2-4 times a year and hardly any test in between.

http://www.rallybase.nl/index.php?type=profile&driverid=249

http://www.rallybase.nl/index.php?abbrev=Can&dc=b&type=drivernation

http://www.rallybase.nl/index.php?type=profile&driverid=20533

http://www.juwra.com/block_ken.html
http://www.juwra.com/drivers_k_to_o.html



Or perhaps the words "world class" means just whatever you want them to mean....maybe..


WAIT!!!

That's it! Calling mediocre and non-exsitant stuff Whirled Class will save rally.

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
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World Class, at best, is tough to define or defend. (Is it top 10 in results, is it within x seconds per Km of winners?) I don't know that I'd point to a website that's been all but stagnant for 6 years as any measure of who is, or isn't, world class - but hey... whatever floats your boat.

The difference, I think, is that Block and Higgins are both professional drivers either in Rally (Higgins) or in something that very much resembles rally (Block) and both have budgets that spend as much on a single event as most of us would spend on an entire regional championship.

While L'Estage isn't, technically, a professional driver... he's about as close as you can get to it and also runs an effort with a significant budget behind it.

While some might see them as being mediocre, It's impossible to compete at their level without making a concerted effort to train, practice, get seat time, and have the right equipment to do it with. You can take any Seb you want, put them in a well prepped xRatty, 240 or M3 and they won't come close to Higgins, block or L'estage in their current cars.(Opinion, of course, since there aren't any real comparisons to be had)

I know this thread is much, much more about mocking ideas, trends, and efforts of people trying to improve the state of the sport in North America, but...

What will save rally is organizers focusing on making their events the best they can be for everybody involved.

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First Rally: 2001
Driver (7), Co-Driver (44)
Drivers (16)
Clerk (10), Official (7), Volunteer (4)
Cars Built (1), Engines Built (0) Cages Built (0)
Last Updated, January 4, 2015

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john vanlandingham
Blame is for idiots. losers.

Antionne is out, blew his wad trying to keep up with the big boys. That pretty much sums up rally these days. As I drove around today, I was shocked at all the stores that are open...Bed Bath and Beyond, Toys R Us, Dicks.... etc, etc. Our country has turned into one big plaza that's open 24/7 and we live in a commercial. Is it a big shock that to be involved in any sport these days requires money? A good friend of mine coaches womens softball and some of the high end teams require a non-refundable deposit just to try out.... $1000.... that's crazy.

Rewind to 30 yrs ago and people ran what they had, serviced out of a van or pick up and had a great time doing it. To be completely honest, I think guys like Higgins, Pastrana and Block are sad...cold decking a bunch of club racers is pretty lame. Do the Dallas cowboys play High school teams in Nebraska?

After spending the weekend crewing for a friend, I've had this topic on my mind and I've been stewing on it all week. What's really frustarting is that I'm sure there are some really talented drivers out there with zero money that could destroy Bligginstrana if they had decent equipment and a little bit of cash but if a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its ass when it hops (No offense to LeStage)

The Rally dilema reminds me of the campaign finance problem in a way.....

You have good/fast drivers.
You have monied drivers.
You have a combination of the above.
You have a rule set that rewards the last one.

We, all of us, will benefit from the very fastest guys being slowed down. If the max speed rule is enforced then the organizers and the rest of the pack are the ones paying the price for the dollar war. We lose the roads that are fine for the rest of us. So by slowing the top guys down, by whatever method, we might save some stages. We might reduce the benefit of over spending. We might see some of the 'next five' push a little bit and be pretty even. Yes Higins will be faster but maybe a flat tire will hurt a bit more if he doesn't have a 5 minute lead.

I know there has been talk of limiting tires. I don't know if that is limiting new tires or used also. A spec tire of a bit harder compound and a fair price for the average Joe might be nice.

Happy 4th btw..we just had to give Benedril to one of the dogs as the big booms are starting.

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heymagic
If the max speed rule is enforced then the organizers and the rest of the pack are the ones paying the price for the dollar war. We lose the roads that are fine for the rest of us. So by slowing the top guys down, by whatever method, we might save some stages.

I'll weigh in on this: I think it's ridiculous. You have some tiny number, between 1 and 3 racers at an event, who are, by the nature of their high budgets, causing problems for the entire rest of the field. And RA is doing nothing about it.

To clarify: by "causing trouble" I mean that Higgins and Block have machinery that is so fast they are causing stages to become 'illegal' in the eyes of RA, once those guys go past a magic number of X miles per hour. And all those chicanes that you, the racers are dodging? It's mostly for those guys. And all those chicanes that you, thankless volunteer, are lugging around and monitoring and reporting on? It's mostly for those guys.

Fast cars are cool. We all love fast cars. However, raise your hand if you would like to pull up to a stage and be told "Sorry, you have to transit this stage. Block just broke 80-something mph average." To be clear, this isn't what happens, the stage is cancelled for NEXT year.

Guess how many organizers in the country have other roads available to use that are twistier than the roads they are using now? ZERO.

This is not a mind bending problem. Sanctioning bodies have been slowing down cars for as long as cars have been racing. There's no mystery in how to slow down cars, it's EASY. Who here doesn't know how to make their car SLOWER?

The most obvious:

• Less horsepower (smaller restrictor)
• More weight
• Less traction (limited number/type of tires)

Pick some or all of the above, create a "pro" class, and slow down the cars. Yup, there's "Open", and "Open Pro". Only Open Pro gets on TV and in the press releases. You win in an Open car? Congrats, you just got bumped to Open Pro, here's your restrictor. You break the 80 something mph average? Congrats, you just got bumped to Open Pro, here's your restrictor.

Remember, we are racing other people. We are not trying to set a theoretical land-speed record. The total lowest time doesn't matter... only the time RELATIVE to the other racers. So if you reduce the potential of the top cars by 15%... they are all still RACING just as hard.

Slowing down cars that are going so fast they are causing problems for the event is one of the things that you expect your sanctioning body to take care of, in all forms of auto racing. Talledaga has drivers dying and cars flying into the crowd... does anyone expect the track to change it's configuration? No, the NASCAR mandates those pop-up panels on the roof and that keeps spun cars from getting airborne.

Anders

ps: for the curious, NRS has neither the speed limit rule nor the ridiculously fast cars racing to need the rule. If it comes to it, the above is a pretty clear guideline to what the solutions we implement will be.

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Grassroots rally. It's what I think about.

I go back to what I said back when the New World Order started in 1998/1999.

Make the pro guys/teams pay a shit load more in entry fees to cover the increased cost for the "unwashed". Also, their fees should be large enough to ***PAY*** workers. The manufacturers should not have free workers.


If the manufacturers don't like it... tough shit. Go start your own rally organization.

Thanks Anders, I think that pretty much covers the real situation in my mind.

Jens,
We basically have some support form Subaru and Ford. They or their dealers do put funds into the sport AND RA national fees are pretty much double what the regionals are. I'm yet to be convinced that either Ford or Sube get enough sales of new cars from rally to leverage any huge money. Currently Audi is the one showing old rally clips. Rally is basically an invisible sport to most Americans so how could car sales be affected to a large degree? If there was a way to emulate the Aussie program with several brands really competing then maybe more support would happen. Currently if we 'abuse' the couple teams running we will lose them. Even if we didn't there would be enough increased income form 2 or 3 teams to worry about. If we lose them we have the same effort and involvement to put on an event , we lose a couple entries and a whole bunch of excitement and fans (many of those fans are converted to volunteers or competitors).

Us old pharts are not what it is about these days, hard to admit but we're history. Rally changes with the ralliest competing. We get to somewhat guide the direction of the sport and we get to make it happen (organizing) but rally has to reflect the views and desires of the people paying the bills...todays competitors.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to influence anyone. My rally days are long over. Other than feeling sad if I think of the NWO, I couldn't care less anymore regarding me.

However, the new blood can't rally unless they have tons of money and if they keep looking to TV and some other gold ring it ain't gonna happen. The only people left will be the rich.

Whatever.... it doesn't affect me anymore.

Good luck, kids.

I was trying to point out the is no NWO. We have basically two very well funded efforts that are messing things up with their efforts. We don't have enough manufacture support or teams to make a financial difference if we tried to raise their fees to find the golden egg.

TV or internet seems to be the battle cry of todays generation. They want to be seen (guessing) and they want instant results. That has changed from when you, JV and myself looked forward to mailed results, Sportscar magazine and Dusty Times .

Maybe a dedicated YouTube channel with all vids posted to it from individuals would save rally?

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heymagic
Maybe a dedicated YouTube channel with all vids posted to it from individuals would save rally?

So, This might be kind of easy. You tube wouldn't work, But maybe a BlogSpot type site where people contribute via email, and the content/video links gets posted might.

It would survive completely on other people's input though. Would people support it?
It sounds too easy, are there pitfalls I'm not thinking about?

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Enablers, All of you.

Quote
BobOfTheFuture

Quote
heymagic
Maybe a dedicated YouTube channel with all vids posted to it from individuals would save rally?

So, This might be kind of easy. You tube wouldn't work, But maybe a BlogSpot type site where people contribute via email, and the content/video links gets posted might.

It would survive completely on other people's input though. Would people support it?
It sounds too easy, are there pitfalls I'm not thinking about?

This probably wouldn't work right off the back. If you had a Youtube channel going like Gene said that you post videos of rallys, rallycross, and shit about rally on and get that up in subscribers and then added a BlogSpot on top of that where people could submit their videos, then maybe itll launch a bit better. If you networked it all around the Youtube channel and had a Twitter, Facebook and so on, then you could self advertise the videos and get them to spread faster and get more views, in effect, spreading the sport.

People who don't even rally will watch the videos because its cool to watch. Thats the bottom line that we want; more people coming into the sport, but you will only really use the BlogSpot or some sort of messaging board for other ralliest to submit their videos. All this project would be is some networking done by someone who has way to much time to spare to manage it all.

Wouldn't it be funny if 38 pages of all sorts of silliness we actually had a good idea?? So how do we 'blogspot' and whatnot?

I can sit at home and watch gun videos for days or weeks and not se them all. Brent watches a lot of the Aussie stuff during the day here at work. That is actual productions and done very well. If we could condense our footage of events and even people stories as well as builds that might be very cool. We could show how to build a car, do a route book, work a control and even wreck the car while later fixing it. Much of that stuff is out there already but on a bunch of different FB pages or forum posts. Anders?? The rest of you tech savvy kids?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogger_(service)

Thats the most popular blogging used, and a bit of unneeded history about it. Places like Jalopnik are kinda like blogs; they post stuff on them for other people to read and can be contacted by the readers for material to publish and so on. This is a loose comparison since Jalopnik is more geared towards motorsports as a whole, reviews of things like track and driver training, and racing as a whole; rather then a blog dedicated to reporting about rally, video footage of rally and how to videos, and all other things rally related.

Really if someone wanted to blog, all they would have to do is create a Google+ and use blogspot.com to get the blog rolling. Just finding videos to put on the blog, reviewing materials, maybe a few press like reports on rallies and events in the area of the blogger, and so on. There are other blogs like Tumbr.com, but god forbid anyone going into tumblr and not becoming a Grade A panze who's afraid to get dirty.

Like you said Gene, there is a lot of info on the web about rally, but you have to do a lot of digging around and piecing things together on your own; so it would be nice to have a blog that has all of that in it already. Adding videos and some extra reading material would be a huge plus as well, and if it's updated frequently it would draw a lot of people into it, especially if its been networked with a youtube, facebook, and a twitter as well.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/05/2014 05:48PM by McSlider.

I can help with initial funding if needed. It will need to be a nondenominational effort. Would be really helpful for noobs to see how to build a cage or 4 link a car or build rear turrets etc. We can talk all day here but a short video would be priceless.

Well, I said Youtube wouldn't up front work due to the fact others couldn't post to it, and videos are usually too large to email whole.

But, the idea of things being mailed to a email associated to a web blog would also run into the same problem.

The large file email problem can be solved with something like 'dropbox' or maybe google drive, though I haven't tried that portion of it yet.

As for getting it rolling, it could get rolling just from the people on this thread. We all have friends on social media, and all have at least SOME good video to start it up.

We maybe could make a youtube, Share the username/password with a select few on both coasts (people who are ready to take some time after rallies to empty the Dropbox and put up the videos) and then people who are involved share away.

I think its do able. Name it something simple, like 'Rally Fans North America', Have a strict tagging process so its easy to search specific cars from fan videos ie: I want to see if someone posted their cell phone video from the RX7 I was in at STPR. Search tags 'STPR 2014 MAZDA' and go.
Put a note all over all the videos: 'Have a video to share? Email to XYZ or drop of at dropbox/other service'. Want a cell phone photo guy at your event to do the same? Put a graphic on your car.


Again, Sounds WAY to easy. There has to be a catch.

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Enablers, All of you.