ARC "control tyre" IDEA

[sheps]

I could not believe that they could and or world have done this incorrectly...

[rallyfiend]

They did put one out to registered competitors. The article on rally.com.au says that that information is going to ARCom for consideration before being published.

[Jme]

I will never forget a NSW Karting series I entered which used a control tyre which needed to be purchased at the track, as part of the entry fee.

Anyway, 1 driver dominated the first 2 rounds in "freakish" circumstances.

At the 3rd round an offical walked up the dummy grid with a durometer measuring the softness of every tyre. Every tyre of the 34 kart field read either 44 or 45... except 1 kart, which read 31 for 3 tyres and 30 for the 4th.

Guess which kart...

Oh... and it was a "factory" entry and the driver got hammered in the last 2 rounds.

What's to say a similar thing can't happen with a control tyre in rallying? It's obvious that the powers that be like the dollars, and want the factory teams to be successful. It's also common knowledge that some tyres, despite looking in most part the same, are quicker.

I guess my point is that the "control" mechanism isn't the tyre, it is ultimately the people we as competitors trust to ensure that our sport is even-handed. Our "best interests" have been in their hands for years and they have repeatedly failed to deliver.

Somebody please convince me that this "control tyre" thing is different... cause I have my doubts.

[sheps]

Yes a control tyre make's competition closer but not really. When we have a bloody stupid rule with a maximum of 12 Tyres when 4 can get you through with 1 or two spares...

Please tell me all the privateers that use 12 Tyres @ 480 a tyre. Yes it’s fair to not have the factory teams on special Tyres but does nothing when they let them have that many Tyres that its out of control for a privateer to afford/justify 12 Tyres when 4 work. And work well.

Hay but let’s look after the minority not the majority

[Steve Ashton]

Originally Posted by Ric Cary

Believe me when I tell you a control tyre supplier was ready to sign and pay the money several weeks ago, until a whoo up was given, the question was asked "where's the tender document" blank looks!!! "where's the various tyre suppliers offers" blank looks again.
But x is ready to sign and pay now........ no consultation, no tender, no deal, was the message passed to those who were ready to railroad it in.
So all the lip service in the world isn't going to change it, it will happen maybe not quite as BS laden as the Elf deal was but its coming. If you think its about saving competitors money rather than helping the RallyCorp coffers ( who one might think are having difficulties holding up there end of the funds that they are due to return to the sport) you are sorely mistaken

I would like to put a few facts on the table about this issue as it seems people are becoming confused about the process. The proposal for a control tyre expression of interest was first formulated by Rallycorp earlier this year. The reason for it was twofold, one being that there is an imbalance in the availability of certain types of tyres, which was creating an artificial perfromance barrier in the competition, and the second being that Rallycorp wanted to find out what benefits could be obtained through a control tyre arrangement, so that the benefits could be weighed against the disadvantages and then an informed decision could be taken about whether or not to proceed.
The proposal was first put to the ARC Working Group (ARCWG) which is the body that deals with all these issues for the ARC, and makes recommendations to either Rallycorp or ARCom for decisions in each bodies resepctive areas (sporting for ARCom, commercial for Rallycorp). The proposal was to proceed with an expression of interest as above. The timing was important, because there were four tenderers for the AVESCO control tyre tender, all with budget available for this type of activity, and obviously three were going to be unsuccessful. Rallycorp therefore wanted to have a proposal before the tyre companies as soon as that tender was decided. It is important to note that this was not a request for a decision to introduce a control tyre, it was simply a proposal to gather enough detailed infromation so that an informed decision could be made, and that detailed and meaningful consultation could take place with stakeholders, including things such as price, availability and benefits to the championship (eg marketing spend, sponsorship opportunities etc). Unfortunately the current ARCom Chairman took a different view and at the ARCWG meeting arranged for the proposal to be referred to a subcommittee of the ARCWG for further consideration. This subcommittee then went back to the ARCWG with a recommendation that the Rallycorp proposal should proceed. This recommendation went to ARCom, where it was again delayed on the basis that more consultation was required in advance of sending out the EOI. Rallycorp then arranged for on line surveys to be conducted, one with the registered competitors, and one for any interested person. The results of these surveys are on rally.com.au. It is Rallycorp's view that these surveys indicate that on balance there is sufficient support for the control tyre concept that the EOI should proceed. It should also be noted that Rallycorp does not require ARCom or ARCWG permission to issue such an EOI, rather it has refrained from doing so out of courtesy to ARCom. Unfortunately it is now very late to allow a tyre company to actually implement a proposal for 2008 were it to be accepted and ratified, however we still believe it should be vigorously pursued so that all the information is available prior to making the final decision. This will be Rallycorp's recommendation to the ARCWG and hopefully through the ARCWG to ARCom.

In relation to some of the totally inaccurate comments made by Ric Cary, I confirm that
1 there is NO deal in place with any tyre supplier, nor has anything been discussed in any detail with any tyre supplier. Nobody is any position to "sign" as claimed, at least to the best of Rallycor's knowledge. SOme preliminary discussions were held in May and June to ascertain whether or not there was any interest based on the numbers of tyres and rough logistics involved. These discussions indicated that it was worth proceeding further to gauge the detailed interest and offers.
2 There WAS a detailed EOI available at the time of the first discussions with the ARCWG
3 The proposal is NOT necessarily about making more money for Rallycorp, or about saving competitiors money, rather it is about exploring a commercial opportunity to see if it could deliver a nett benefit to the ARC and its stakeholders. Why would any logical person not want to do this?
Lets quit fiddling around and find out what deal is on offer. If it's not a nett benefit, then why proceed?
regards
Steve Ashton, Chairman, Rallycorp.

[sheps]

Steve, a few questions..

Where would I stand if I have already put a deal together to run a new car in the 2008 series backed by a tyre company that is not your control tyre?

Where do the other teams stand that now have to find the money to purchase Tyres that they never had to before @ lets say $260.00 a Tyre 12 a day 6 rally’s a year so $ 37,000.00 for the year not to mention they may be getting 10 or 20 thousand on top of there free Tyres?

Would it not be easier to just ban Tyres that are not commercially available to all competitors?

Would this proposed vision of a control tyre be for 2008 or 9.

[Ric Cary]

Ok Steve,
Thanks very much for clearing 1 issue up, I look forward to seeing the public tender document,Its a shame The current Chairman of Arcom is so obstructive but at least thats been sorted now thank heavens, now what about the other issue total denial as well?

PS any news on the GLR enquiry,
just by the way how does one person ( the Chairman) block something surely its put to a vote of all the ARCOM members and he would be just one vote and is he also amember of the ARC WG

[Ric Cary]

Hi Ric,

Thanks for drawing my attention to being mentioned in a Rallycorp post. The Ashton letter is indeed misleading in many areas - I don't think I've seen a Rallycorp letter that isn't but I guess that's no news to you guys.

Regarding the process, here's how it actually went.

Rallycorp's Simon Larkin announced to the ARC Working Group that they were sending out not just an EOI but what looked to me like a ready-to-go tender document - there was no form of consultation intended at all.

I am not a member of the ARCWG but I had been invited to that meeting (a 27th June teleconference) as a guest as had Larkin - the Rallycorp member on the ARCWG is actually Michael Thompson.

I was opposed to Larkin being on this group for many reasons including it being outside the terms-of-reference but he seemed to get himself invited all the time - I was about to address this when he quit so it wasn't worth the bother.

It is important to bear in mind that the 'new ARCom' reformed this ARCWG to comprise event organisers and teams and it reports to ARCom, not Rallycorp. It was expressly designed not to be dominated by Rallycorp who were given their own Marketing Group - which has not met once to my knowledge - much like the old 'Rallycorp' ARCWG in previous years rarely met or kept minutes.

The agenda items contained Rallycorp's control tyre prop and had a rider that the items were confidential and not to be discussed with anyone! That always raises suspicions to me but I tried to keep an open mind.

When Larkin made his announcement, he went through all the advantages of the prop which sounded like a list of advantages for Rallycorp, a very questionable advantage to event organisers and very little consideration if any, to competitors.

There was a figure mentioned of generating income of something like $300k and that this would in part go to event organisers but when questioned as to how that was calculated it turned out to be simply wishful thinking.

Most alarmingly, the issue of a control tyre was deliberately obfuscated with the WRC-spec (confidential-tyre) debate - two very different issues - we could, for example, ban confidential tyres today without bringing in a control tyre that you are forced to purchase from Rallycorp.

Larkin also raised the usual furphies like how a control tyre would elevate Michael Guest to the front of the field, bring Mitsubishi back and so on and Ben Beazley (Britek) spoke about how great a control tyre is in V8s.

I asked Larkin how much of the revenue generated would go to competitors and the answer was that Rallycorp might consider something like a discounted upgrade to ARC entry for those purchasing the control tyre.

There was naturally a number of concerns raised by several members of the ARCWG who had no previous opportunity to discuss the prop, were banned from discussing it as an agenda item and were meant to support the tender document going out (disguised as an 'expression of interest').

After listening to all of this I asked Peter Mac for permission to make a few points and raise some questions.

I told the meeting that a control tyre is normally used in motorsport categories where the cars are of near identical spec and there are full fields - for example V8s, F1 and so on.

However in the ARC, not only do we have a wide variety of cars but we have a mere handful doing the whole series, not a full field of say 40 common-spec, ARC cars doing the whole championship.

Most importantly, we need to be attracting new money into the ARC - not restricting the companies already investing in the ARC, especially when so many tyre companies are involved with state competitors who should be encouraged to enter at least their home ARC - in other words, let's make the ARC more welcoming and inclusive and when we have 30 or 40 cars of even spec doing the entire series, look at performance parity then.

If, for example there are several tyre companies investing 'x' in the sport, taking that x and ruling that it goes to just one company (for a fee to Rallycorp), does not increase investment in the ARC at all. In fact Rallycorp should be out attracting more tyre sponsors into the ARC.

I also raised the concern that it appeared to me that Rallycorp was going to do exactly the same as with the control fuel i.e. force competitors to buy an item from Rallycorp at an increased price. There was no way during the meeting that the figures being bandied around suggested anything else.

I raised the serious point that at this time of year, competitors who have a tyre sponsor are usually negotiating their deal for the following year. If a tyre company had that prop on their desk and at the same time an EOI or tender document for a control tyre was circulated in the tyre industry, it was highly likely the tyre companies would shelve negotiations with the competitors. I therfore suggested any EOIs should be for season 2009, not 2008, to ensure that no competitor is disenfranchised without a decent lead time.

My personal assessment following Larkin's presentation was that the competitors would be funding Rallycorp who would give an unspecified part of that to event organisers if they supported the prop.

I also asked Larkin whether the control tyre would have to be used by all competitors in an ARC event; or just those in the ARC component; or only those registered for the series.

He initially said, "All" then Michael Thompson corrected him and following some discussion in which neither of the Rallycorp people at the meeting could agree with each other, Larkin said that ARCom would have to work it out!

Pretty much as soon as that happened the minuted item was put forward by the ARCWG members (not me as Ashton seems to imply) i.e.

It was moved R Tapper/C <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:City><st1:place>Taylor</st1:place></st1:City> that <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
A working group be established to investigate the desirability of a control tyre arrangement and also the desirability and/or control of the use of ‘confidential’ tyres, and report back to the ARCWG. The composition of the group was recommended be two from each of the following ‘groups’: Manufacturers, Privateers and State with initial appointments being Ross Tapper, Ben Beazley, Neal Bates and Matt Lee. <o:p></o:p>
CARRIED

Within a couple of days, Simon Larkin had been included and I advised Ross Tapper who contacted me for my opinion that I thought the specialist group should be independent of Rallycorp and that I was very unhappy with Larkin's continued role on the ARCWG.

I had no reply to that but subsequently found that Larkin did go on the group and Matt Lee (ARCom's adviser on state competition), who should have been a key point of consultation, was left off (apparently they couldn't contact him...)!

Eventually on the 23rd July, the somewhat flawed, 'independent' group came back to the ARCWG and the group voted (responsibly, IMHO) in its minutes of 24th July to refer the matter to ARCom :

It was moved E.Bailey/I.Stanelis that the tyre committee report be referred to ARCom for a decision by the week beginning 6th August 2007.

Campbell Andrea circulated the report to ARCom and Col Trinder raised some concerns (30th July) including pointing out that the so-called "Expressions of Interest" documents for a control tyre were in fact headed "Request for Tender"!!

ARCom had a face-face meeting on the 4th August and had minimal debate on the control tyre with the outcome as follows:

12. Potential Control <st1:City><st1:place>Tyre</st1:place></st1:City><o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
ARCom received a recommendation from the Australian Rally Championship Working Group that ARCom endorse the issuing of an EOI for a control tyre in the ARC by Rallycorp. The intention of Rallycorp was to gather information to determine what interest there was in the market and what the benefit to the Championship might be, prior to moving forward with a control supply arrangement. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
R925(07) It was moved (R Runnalls/G Becker) that:<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
· The proposed Expression of Interest be withheld until ARCom has the ability to review the implications and to protect those who may already be in negotiation with potential tyre suppliers.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
· ARCom surveys current and potential ARC competitors and state competitors as to the current levels of tyre support they receive and how that may be affected by the introduction of a control tyre.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
· ARCom investigates the ways it could manage the regulations should a control tyre be introduced.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
CARRIED<o:p></o:p>

Please note that as Chairman I do not get a vote on ARCom so again, Ashton's assertions of my personally holding things up are quite dubious.

I think the ARCom outcome was very typical of 'New ARCom' not simply doing as instructed by Rallycorp but following proper consultation and research - you would think Rallycorp would thank us for that unless there is some other agenda.

I can't understand why anyone would not want ARCom to follow the three dot points above.......

However to give you an idea of the sort of stuff that goes on, within a week of our minutes being released, Rallycorp, without consultation, announced that it was doing the surveys and consultation!

This was followed by a phone call to me from CAMS CEO Graham Fountain instructing me not to have ARCom consulting the rally community on this issue as Rallycorp was already doing it and there was to be no duplication....I think you can see yet another reason why you wouldn't bother working in this environment.

Rallycorp has since run its survey and the results of that are supposed to be discussed by the ARCWG and then a recommendation made to ARCom. I have already had CEO Fountain on the phone (before the survey was released to ARCom) telling me what a wonderful survey it is and that there should be no reason a control tyre should not be implemented asap.

To be honest, there is a fair bit of proper research still to be done.

I think those long-term supporters of rallying like the Dunlop guys, Silverstone, Kumho, Yohohama and so on that you see at each state's ARC round, need to be consulted and included to see how those long term companies would be affected.

We should also make sure the state competitors are properly involved as the Rallycorp website is hardly the appropriate way to conduct a wide, unbiased survey.

The rules as to how it would work need to be formulated with widespread consultation, especially with the states.

And most importantly, the implementation needs at least a year's lead time.

Ric, sorry this is such a long answer but it is quite therapeutic to give you a glimpse of what actually goes on compared to the picture presented by Ashton.

If you wish to post my reply where Ashton's was please feel free - but I do understand the issue is probably irrelevant to most competitors in Aust so I'll leave it up to you to as to whether you think they would find it of any interest.

I just reckon if Rallycorp was actually interested in the sport they would be thanking ARCom for making sure this potentially divisive item is done in a proper, consultative manner.

Finally, I think your question about the total flow of funds to Rallycorp should be answered by Ashton - surely the rally community should know if it is propping up Rallycorp in 2007 or if Rallycorp is indeed funding the rest of the sport (something I would find very hard to believe) as it so often infers.

I also note your reference to the GLR cover-up and I can tell you we have no Observers reports, no Stewards reports, nothing but that press release from Rallycorp that it was a fantastic event other than some teething problems....but hey, I heard the real problem with the ARC in NSW is those pesky state people criticising it all the time...funny but no mention of the treatment of previous ARC event organisers like Bob Halpin or Kirk Marks or the Bathurst debacle or the gifting of the Rally of Canberra etc etc. Let's just blame anyone else and avoid the real issues.


Regards,

Ed.

[Kate]

Very interesting.......who's been telling porkies then....

[tortfeaser]

Quite extraordinary. Amazing that both the ARCom and Rallycorp Chairmen think this kind of debate is useful. All it says is that the CAMS Board has failed to rein in its various advisory and commercial bodies. What is the CAMS President doing? Why hasn't he banged a few heads? Fountain is clearly out of his depth.

Whatever the specifics of this particular issue (and its a very interesting one) the processes that have been used are an abomination.

My overwhelming feeling is that Ed is cutting and running before really getting going in the job. And now he has decided to do so, is letting off hand grenades totally unresponsibly. And kind of whining as he goes about it. They did this, blah blah blah. It was in his remit to sort it and he couldn't get it done.

And what has been the result for this particular issue? ARCom/ARCWG don't know what potential deal could be done (and it could have been beneficial for competitors, the market has not been tested), we've got an incomplete/doubtful process for determining competitor views on the issue. We've not got any idea what regulatory framework would be put around a control tyre. And we've got no clear way forward to sort out the unknowns.

As to the GLR thing, why would ARCom get the Stewards' report? And Ed should know the Observer's report can take longer than this to come about. Why hasn't he got on the phone to Michelle Gatton if he's after it? Again, there are real issues to be addressed. Ed's solution is to have a whine and fail to offer any way forward to consider these issues.

[CMD]

Well done Ed, don't blame him for resigning. Who would want to weigh in on all that bullshyt.

Sounds like a job for a opinionated public servant with his own agenda not a competitor, who is trying to do right for all levels of the sport.

[sheps]

I consider Ed to be a friend, and I believe him to be upfront loyal and honest..

I could not blame him from walking away I actually am surprised he stayed as long as he did as it appeared from the outside to be very confusing

Ed well done for staying as long as you did and I am sure you had no chance to actually make changes, as you were in control of something that you could not actually change. Way too many cooks in the kitchen.

[claude]

Originally Posted by sheps

I consider Ed to be a friend, and I believe him to be upfront loyal and honest..

I could not blame him from walking away I actually am surprised he stayed as long as he did as it appeared from the outside to be very confusing where money goes, who is in control, and how cams as a company that work for us the competitors can allow this to continue.

Ed well done for staying as long as you did and I am sure you had no chance to actually make changes, as you were in control of something that you could not actually change.

[Kaptainballistik]

Dont go ED....

I dont think it is a whine, It says he was being told what to do and he did not like it. Who would.

We should make him the head of CAMS... That'll stuff them all!

And on the tyre guys. Garry's tyres have been at most rallies and are really helpful,The Yokohama guys are pretty good too, Why dont we defend them. Its not like they never have done us a favour in the past have they.

Do they want it? Ever thought they want to see their tyres do well just as much as we want our cars/ourselves to do well? If there is no competition, Where is the fun!

[MikeW]

I think Rallycorp should just come out and tell us who they have lined up to supply the tyres and how much money they are getting for the deal. Why else would they be forcing this through if a deal hasn't already been done?

Does rallycorp give any money to CAMS at all? What is in it for CAMs if there is a control tyre? Why wouldn't they want ARCom to look into this impartially as compared to Rallycorp which has a financial interest in having a control tyre?

I feel for Ed, it makes me wonder why we have an ARCom at all if Rallycorp and CAMs do what they want.