Entry Level Events

[Matt Dyne]

Hey Spac, this "run what ya brung" class used to exist in the Road Car Class.

I remember helping on rallies with them when people rallied standard road cars.

I'm not suggesting that it should be allowed again, but certainly, consideration could be given to letting this happen in some form.

People will arc up about how dangerous it is to run that, but how about you run the A-B timing for those cars...it lets them get out there, but penalises them if they are too fast. It would be a nightmare to organise what with A-A for the rally cars and the A-B for the rest, but it's definitely possible. It's possibly like a dumbed down version of the introductory rally.

Miss...I like your points...it shouldn't be about what to ban as we all know that if things are banned, people will spend their money elsewhere...why restrict people who do want to spend more than others...that's not fair.

However, getting more out of CAMS is a great idea. Are people aware just how little CAMS do in the organisation of a local Canberra rally compared to say a NSW event?

Rally rego is a good one too, and save for the Vic permit system, probably able to be standardised across all states with a national approach.

Matt

[Nagari]

Spac makes a good point about being at the back of the field and the lack of "run watcha brung" compeditors. Sure entry fee's are an issue but our attitude towards being at the back of the field and our expectations of what a rally car should have certainly aren't helping.

Suggestions like no expiry dates on 3" harnesses say it all. How is making a $500 3" harness last forever going to make it cheaper than a $179 2" RPM harness that lasts just as long. Fact is 179 will always be less than 500 that will never change. The reality is that we now feel that 3" harnesses are a must. Similarly roll cages how much does a current spec roll cage cost? Last year a 2000 spec bond bolt in was under $1000, that said how many of us turn our noses up at the thought of not having a welded cage.

Its interesting that in the mid 90’s it was common place for people to stick a car on it’s roof, buy another $300 car of the same model, take the cage and harnesses out of the damaged shell and stick them in the new one and be going again a few weeks later. I can feel people’s disgust as I type but 7-8 years ago this wasn’t considered to be so bad. Roll cage snobbery has pretty much put an end to the notion of a one month (or less) re-shell. Now we consider a roll cage to cost $2000 for one shell as opposed to $1000 for a cage that will potentially out live 10 shells

Tyres are another issue, when was the last time you saw someone enter a rally on retreads? My first 2 years of rallying was all done on retreads at 1/3 the price of rally tyres and significantly longer life (so long as you avoided side wall damage) but retreads are still available and now even come on the A017 pattern.

Spac is right the back of the field is much faster wrt the front guys and far more daunting than it used to be for your average “I just stuck a cage in it” car. The are all sorts of fancy AWD turbo stuff down the back of the field now, which would make a 3K powered corolla with a second hand bolt in cage and a pair of 2” harness, a monroe shock in the back left and the pride and joy KYB in the other corner supplementing the standard front struts and a set of 4 spanking new retreads, look pretty ordinary but does that mean that it’s wrong? After all it is legal and stands a good chance of making it to the end. These things were around and not that long ago but we don’t seem to see them any more.

It’s interesting to listen to people get upset, rightly or wrongly, about potentially having to wear a driving suit There was similar up roar when the rules were amended that you had to have a diagonal brace in a rally car, there was people making diagonal braces out of broom stick, poly pipe and all sorts other stuff and covering them in roll cage padding because the 4 feet of aluminum tube and a tee clamp were going to cost too much. Bearing in mind anyone without an aluminum cage just wasn’t serious about weight reduction. “I’m not gonna do it I’ll have to move the passengers seat” were common complaints, people were sitting out events waiting for CAMS to come to their senses and retract the ruling. Now if it’s not tower to tower it’s not worth having. It’ll will be interesting to see people’s opinions on suits in another 5 years, personally, after the Rx5 caught fire at Caltex in ’01 I’ve been a fan of the driving suit.

As for entry fee’s and event expenses we have come to expect a lot now and I think that we do pay a premium for it. The first rally that Boris and I did, was about 88km comp. With less than 2 km transport, shoe cleaner numbers, one stage twice in one direction twice in the other. The event was easy for a small club to run, 000,00,0 and recovery were all the same guy in the same 720 ute, 1 start control, 1 finish control and 5 road closures for the whole event. Not only was the entry fee cheap but you didn’t need a service crew at all, fuel costs were a minimum because there was no transport, Scrutineering didn’t start till 3pm so there was none of this have to get there Friday night stuff going on. Sure it didn’t start in a club and the drivers briefing was under the power lines in knee high grass and the presentation was held on the back of a car trailer with the director struggling to be heard over the top of the generator but we had fun and it was easy to get involved. Infact Trevor Bridge finished 2nd OW (helped greatly by the rain but a great drive none the less) in a stock standard 1200cc Sunny with a alloy half cage out of a 1200 coupe that he had put in the week before. These type of events just don’t seem to happen much any more and why? because nobody runs them because everyone want’s to make their event bigger and better than the last one. Sure the cost of such an event would be more these days but it is a way of keeping costs to a minimum. If there was enough of these type events open to anything complying to schedule A and R then I think that they would get a good following amongst the lower budget teams.

Rallying should be about driving cars fast on dirt roads not just driving fast cars on dirt roads. Coming from a small club on the coast one of the big problems is that it’s not worth buying a licence to do one small rally a year, if people could do 4-6 of these little rallies a year I think that many of our members would be very interested. We have a couple of juniors coming through motorkhanas and khanacross for whom this type of events would be excellent.

As for imposing limits on the number of tyres what does that really achieve. Take the stanza for instance it has inherent handling issues and the only way, short of a re-shelling into an IRS 200b is to overcome that is to keep throwing tyres at it. Posing a limit on the number of tyres per event won’t make it cheaper for me, it means that I’ll sit out a couple of events until I can afford to ditch my shell and put the running gear into a 200b or it will push me into upgrading to something that has a better rear end. What is definitely not going to happen is that I’ll drive the car below it’s limits just to preserve tyres. I rally because I like to improve my driving and explore the limits of my ability, where ever that may lie, if I’m holding back because I can’t afford to wear the tyres then why bother. Imposing tighter rules never makes it cheaper, people will always spend what they were going to spend anyway, closing up rules just means that they will get less value per dollar.

Perhaps SKDAC, LCCC and BMSC should look into running a mini rally series in 2006, along the lines of one stage 4 passes 90km comp, max 4km transport, no fancy numbers, OW placings only, 20-25 car fields with priority entry to ungraded drivers in 2wd’s/NA sub 2L 4wd’s. Maybe A017 pattern retreads as a control tyre

[Mark]

Pete,

Let me guess, you get lonely during the week days right?

If someone wants to do the 4 times over a stage bit like Pete was suggesting at the end of his post, might I suggest Sparrows...There is at least 17.5km's of decent (?) stage in there. No road closures necessary. Just chain to stop people shortcutting. Plus a big paddock with 300m transport max to and from the stage. Sparrows is like Hyles, just twice the size and slightly smoother and some better spectating spots.

Scott Harbers service crew said he was running Maxsports on the rear of the Corolla at the weekend to answer your retreads question.

Mark

[fro]

Pete,

I've been thinking about this as well.

The first event that I was heavily involved with (Fro's First Forest Foray) was a mid-week rally that I ran back in 1999(?). Basically, a 26-ish km stage in Padovans, run twice. Transport would have been less than 40km, start and finish at Uriarra Settlement, start at 7pm, finished by 10:30pm.

I struggled to get 10 cars to enter, and did a lot of things very ****tily (like trophies and results) but really I was biting off way more than I could chew. Daniel Gillogly ran one a couple of months before that one as well. I had to bump the entry fee up on mine, 'cause Daniels' entry fee was $80, and that event made a small loss.

I've been thinking about something along the same lines again, similar to what you describe above. Two stages, run twice. Just under 90km competitive. Run on a Saturday afternoon, start at 12 noon, finish by 7pm. Padovans with some funky bits, and a West-East variant.

And run early-ish in the year. Somewhere within the slow months around RoC... And using Dell-style reverse priority entry, where the less experience you have, the more likely that you'll still be in the entry list. Limit of 40 for the field. Fro's Follow-up Forest Foray. maybe give Dyne-O-Matt a shot at actually getting a trophy this time.

But at the moment, it's just a thought. I've got a few other things to finish off first.

[rowdytoot]

Hold that thought fro, we'd be there with bells on ...

Rowds

[Spac]

Yes, Pete was talking about Jerawangla - probably 1996 (?). I went to my first one as a (very) novice controllie in 1998, and did it as my first rally in 1999. Apart from Banyard in '98, and Skinner in '99, I don't recall an Canberras making it to any Jerawangla Rally.

Fro, how about:
*East West, one 25km stage, run twice in one direction and twice in the other on a Saturday arvo/evening. It *may* be possible to slightly alter the roads between runs in the same direction (like when you've got one of those 'triangle' intersections, you can go the long way one of the times).

*Service park could be at the end of the freeway, to really enhance the 'no stress' atmosphere. We could still offer the Uriarra P&C the chance to run the BBQ, so we wouldn't be dumping on them at all.

*Event starts at 4pm, with scrutineering not finishing until 3:30 or so (meaning that almost everyone will be able to make it to the event, even if they work on Saturdays). You could possibly avoid any tar transport, meaning that all arguments about ugly cars are null and void.

*Entry fee around $180~$200 (if this is possible?)

*Shoe-polish numbers. Remember, this is about competitors, for competitors and that glitz and glam have no place!

*Open it up to Sch R compliant cars (no requirement for anything else like PRC or GpN), so you avoid quibbles over the eligibility of the light bracket, or whether that series of L18 ever came in that particular bodyshell.

Basically, it would (attempt to) slot in under the Dell. No stress, no fuss, just letting people get out and have a rally-blat without any drama.
And I think it would have a nice place in the TA, TRE, Club-RS, Dell, Tranbell, Caltex, NatCap, RoC status progression of local events.

[tamsey]

Maybe this thread should be split, one for possible event types and one for suggestions for ACT Rallying Community feedback points.

[fro]

Spac, if that's what you want, you run it.

I hate having to deal with reversing stages. It's basically setting up the stage again from scratch, and its a pain in the butt. Besides which, I quite like most of Padovans. And they make a neat loop.

Numbers... I don't know what they'd be, but they wouldn't cost me more than $50 in total.

I wouldn't want to start at 4pm, there's issues with dusk. I'd be more tempted to move back to a mid-week style, night rally. I quite like the dark.

And for the convenience of actually running the rally, Uriarra as Rally Command rocks. At any level, you need radios, and power then becomes a requirement.

But it's all thoughts at the moment. I've got other fish to fry in the mean time.

[Dirty Sanchez]

Is there any reason why you can't run a rally (or rally tri-series) with cheap entry fees, cheap control tyre, discounted entry fees, A to B timing and no ROPS? Thats the way to get new people into rallying

[fro]

The "no ROPS" is the tricky bit.

Don't worry, Sanchez. I'm working on something that will go part of the way to what you're after, but not the whole way there.

[tortfeaser]

Originally Posted by Spac

Fro, how about:
* <bunch of stuff about an event from Spac>

Less than $175 should be doable - the DELL does $195 pretty easily. Sparrows sounds like a good idea.

Tell you what Spac, I'll put my name down as C3 for one of these if you'll help out. Need to increase the number of potential CofCs. The deal would be that I'd do the first one, you do CofC for a second one later in the year.

How about the first week of March next year (avoid fires, still daylight saving), and maybe mid-week. Second one could be mid August.

Aim for as cheap as possible, Sch R cars. Dunno about the unseeded people getting preference - there's no reason why someone with a seed should miss out on midweek fun.

[fro]

Originally Posted by tortfeaser

Aim for as cheap as possible, Sch R cars. Dunno about the unseeded people getting preference - there's no reason why someone with a seed should miss out on midweek fun.

Why should unseeded people miss out on an entry level event? Wasn't that one of the points of this discussion? Encouraging relatively new people and backmarkers by giving them an event aimed at them...

[tortfeaser]

They needn't miss out either. First in, best dressed.

I didn't think it was about entry level, rather that it was about low cost, have a blat. Is having a blat limited to those without seeds?

[tamsey]

Originally Posted by tortfeaser

Less than $175 should be doable - the DELL does $195 pretty easily. Sparrows sounds like a good idea.

Already on it Marc but we have to wait and see next year John F has said. Thats why we didn't run the rallysprint in Sparrows, had it all ready to go but got rejected at the last minute.

Back on subject. Maybe both clubs and any others interested (eg. SKDAC) should have a meeting to come up with points that an elected (show of hands) few can then take to the next ARCom meeting or send it off. But we all need to join together on this to help our sport from deminishing.

[Spac]

Jamie... Very good question... The short answer is "probably", but first we must ensure we've read the rules properly - it seems odd that Fro (and myself, but mostly Fro) worked out that the stepping stone already exists and meets most of the criteria, while others with a lot more experience did not.

Watch this space. Matt D (unwittingly) and I have both already dropped big hints in this thread.