I'm a little surprised by the negative impression and possible misconceptions of rallycross that (some) folks seem to have. Perhaps we're talking about different kinds of rallycross maybe? Afterall, with the new GRC series and the proliferation of videos of european style rallycross out there, I suspect some folks may be worried that I was talking about some sort of semi-insane X Games style door-to-door, 30m jumps kinda thing. And I even recognize that some regional versions of rallycross seem more like mini rally stages, which can be intimidating to be sure. But to clarify, given the context of the GRM Challenge, I was talking about something more along the lines of the SCCA's version of rallycross (and their course rules), which is much more like autocross on dirt; the SCCA rules even discuss it in a similar way with regard to cars and course setup. In fact, in their own course rules, SCCA states "A RallyCross event is also open to novices in any vehicle that can pass safety inspection"; we're talking regular street cars here folks. The point is that rallycross as I'm talking about shouldn't seem so extreme to folks that it would or should alienate autocrossers by any means.
dculberson wrote:
The problem is that swiss army knives aren't very good at any of the jobs they do. The challenge has cars breaking into 10 second quarter miles and some really amazing autocross times. It would seem like a step backwards to slow things down.
I see whatcher sayin', but I guess I just don't share the feeling exactly. Why is it necessarily a step backwards to ask folks to do something different that might not be as measurably fast. Fast is relative; the metric and times would just determine the new "fast". And comparatively, I think flying down a gravel road with trees 10-20 feet from your doors @ 70-90mph might could feel faster than running a 10 second 130mph quarter mile on a nice track.
Perhaps I'm just being overly hopeful, but based on my talks with folks, the appearance and success of rally in the X Games and the new GRC series, and the obvious general enamor with Ken Block's gymkhana videos, I think rallycross has potential to grow significantly in popularity in the not-so-distant future.
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BTW, to all the autocrossers out there... consider the next time you go out to an auto-x and there are 50, 60, 70+ cars you get 4, maybe 5 runs at maybe a minute long, that many rallycrosses have much fewer numbers of cars, you often get 6-8 runs, and the courses are often upwards of 2+ minutes long.
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