In reply to gearheadmb :
I keep thinking about doing something like that. Get a helmet, make sure your car is not scrody dangerous, what to expect, etc.
But then I remember that I hate "talkie" videos and it is hard to make something you don't like.
I am not saying it's a bad idea, just that I know I'm not the one to do it.
In reply to irish44j :
Awesome answers, thanks! I wasn't clear on the cost question; what I really was after is whether I can drive an event in my beater - hard - and count on getting home in it, or if I need to trailer the car to and from the event.
ProDarwin said:Don't forget there is also a main WDCR SCCA region page which has a calendar for "all events", but the Rallyx events do not appear on the calendar.
Its needs to be crystal berkeleying clear where to look for this kind of info. What you currently have is a mess to someone who is just checking to see what events are upcoming.
The types of people who are casually interested, even in spectating, aren't going to do a research project just to find out when the next event is. Especially those who don't used facebook that much.
Its not unique to DC region sadly.
+1 on this; I'm not about to open a Facebook account to see race scheduling!
gearheadmb said:Trying something new for the first time can be pretty intimidating. Before my first event I was terrified I would make a fool of myself. Maybe a video for people that are about to participate in their first event to watch on YouTube or a few articles to read would be helpful. Just a quick explanation on classing, tech inspection, understanding what the cones mean, how to work the course, etc. so that they don't feel so clueless when they show up to the first event. Rallyx for dummies basically.
I'll second this, my buddies, who are regular car guys, had absolutely no idea what they are doing once they got to an autocross. Sure they knew their way around cars and driving on regular streets, but at an actual organized event they felt caught out a bit. A few had a real fear of being slow too.
Dave M said:In reply to irish44j :
Awesome answers, thanks! I wasn't clear on the cost question; what I really was after is whether I can drive an event in my beater - hard - and count on getting home in it, or if I need to trailer the car to and from the event.
All depends on your beater. We trailer our beater but it has no title. It has always drove back on the trailer under it's own power, but we have broke an engine mount so I was glad we had a trailer. A healthy car should be able to drive home, but hard rallyx will help you find the weak links. Check your ball joints, tie rod ends, and motor mounts. Have a spare tire.
In reply to gearheadmb :
Some people can break a crowbar in a sand box.
Thr last 2019 event at Bitzer's Farm was the first time I'd ever seen Jeremy break his 2.5RS in like a decade or so of competition. A control arm rusted apart, which is a thing that happened to GD chassis Subarus no matter what, rallycross or not.
I felt really bad about it because at the prior event I mentioned that I was a bit jealous of his car's gravity-like reliability. So in a way it's my fault.
He had it put back together with a new axleshaft and new arms in time to come up to the NEOhio event and set up a course.
Dave M said:In reply to irish44j :
Awesome answers, thanks! I wasn't clear on the cost question; what I really was after is whether I can drive an event in my beater - hard - and count on getting home in it, or if I need to trailer the car to and from the event.
I just took my daily out, and wasn't too worried about it ending up broken. Like others said it really depends. Keep up on basic upkeep, and you shouldn't really have anything to worry about. This was my first event. I had a blast. 
The number of people who break their cars is low, and it's pretty much always the same people. Usually people who modified their cars in ill-advised ways.
When WOR had the loaner car program, we had an Altima that saw as many as nine people in it, doing 10 or 12 runs each. Every other run was the Altima. It aged gracefully and died of terminal transmission abuse (after quite a few years) after a line rusted and pretty much anything oily was used as ATF. I wouldn't have thought to use used motor oil as trans fluid, but it worked for about a season that way...
If you have an older car, the first event you take it to will make you acutely aware of how worn out the bushings and motor mounts are. If you aren't abusive it will be fine, but you will want to fix them before the next event.
In reply to ProDarwin :
The benefit of driving vs. towing is that you have a kind of post event shakedown, and you have incentive to fix things that may be worn out.
As opposed to what I think of as the "trailer trap", where the car gets put on the trailer and completely ignored until it is time to pull it back off the trailer at the next event. These are usually the people who have problems, too...
It's not specifically part breakage. If you drive responsibly it's really not too hard mechanically. Though a lot of times it's hard to ride the line of driving responsibly while still being fast. But the real issue is the dirt. EVERYWHERE. Every single crack and crevice getting stuffed with dirt/mud/gravel. The interior coated in a fine layer of dust that you can never fully remove no matter how thoroughly you try. And the interior squeaks and rattles... Not to mention trying to work on the car and always getting a faceful of dirt no matter how well you cleaned it in preparation for said work. At one point it had been like three months since the last rallycross event I'd done, externally the car looked perfectly normal, but every time it rained it looked like it had been sitting underwater because the dirt in every single tiny body gap (around the headlights, side markers, bumper/fender seams, etc...places you can't clean without disassembling the car) washed out and turned into dried mud down the side of the car. I guess what I'm saying is if you absolutely hate having nice things them it's not a problem.
Trailering for me is more about convenience and confidence than anything else. Also we used it to limp a car that was broken when we got it through a full season of competitive use before the clutch finally completely gave out a few car lengths before the finish line on the last run of the season.
Jumping in late here but I run the Iowa Region rallycross program. We're a small region averaging 26 cars per event, but we TRY to host an event every month, year round. I've mainly used Facebook to get more attendance. As Josh says, sharing the events in car related, but not necessarily racing related FB pages seems to work well. I share our events in pages like "Car Spotters of Iowa", "Mopars of Iowa", and so on. Yes, this leads to me having to answer a bunch of moronic questions (Can I race my chop top Honda Odyssey? It has a roll bar!) but it definitely brings in a few people. I also started buying FB advertising for the three weeks prior to the event. I invest only the equivalent of one person's entry fee, figuring if the ads bring in one person, I've already broken even. Crunching the numbers, the ads increased our average attendance by roughly 3 drivers.
Most recently, I've started doing daily posts in the FB event page for the two weeks leading up to the event. These can all be scheduled in advance, so I'll sit down for a couple hours and crank them all out. I include novice guides, run videos, pictures, tire guides, etc trying to be overly helpful. I've even started doing driver profiles on racers in an attempt to show that all sorts of people rallycross. You can see an example of this by checking out the page for our most recent event here. These daily posts increased our average attendance by 4 drivers, so I figure it's worth my time.
Just to add a bit of back story, I started the program in 2015. 2016 was our first full year and we rode a wave of "newness" to average 22 drivers. 2017 we dropped to sub 20 an event. 2018 I started the paid ads and we averaged 22 drivers. 2019 was my first full year of the daily posts and we bumped up to 26 drivers average.
I do make sure that all my events are on MotorSportReg with lots of information as well (links to rules, novice guide, minor waiver, etc). I also check the "Find Events" page on the SCCA site to ensure that they have my events correctly entered. I usually have to have the location corrected on at least one a year. The Iowa Region SCCA page is a very dated design, but I also make sure all my events are listed for those who don't Facebook.
I've also been on the RallyCross National Championship Committee now for 4 years, so I can add some insight on a few of the complaints about the Sportscar magazine. First, there's a HUGE lead time for getting information into the magazine, like 3 months in advance. The only way to have your region's event's listed in the schedule in the back is to file your sanction forms way early. I know this can be hard for small regions that don't have things locked down until the last minute, but big regions should be able to file their sanctions all at the start of the year and have all their events listed by the March of April magazine.
As for the rallycross articles, it took a lot of badgering on the part of the RXB to even get monthly rallycross articles included in Sportscar. They're all being written by Matt Wolfe out of the Detroit Region. He's repeated asked for others to help him out with content on these, so if you have an idea for an article or are willing to write one, reach out to him!
In reply to dps214 :
Dust and dirt is 100% why my RX-7 has no carpeting. Some dipwad cut a giant hole in the back for the suspension links to extend into the cabin, and didn't seal it up other than bungeeing a mudflap over the giant hole, so the car fills with dust. And if you ever ran on the old Detroit region horse track courses at Fowlerville and Adrian, that dust has a distinctive aroma of having been processed by a horse. So in the interest of making it easier to de-stank the car, the carpet came out. I regret this, of course, and it was easier to get another car to solve that problem.
Modern cars have cabin filters, they do a remarkable job of keeping the inside of cars dust free assuming that you have not removed the entire HVAC system because Mod says you can even though having effective heat is great when it is cold and having effective air conditioning is the different between good and life sucks in the summer. (You can tell who has working A/C at a RallyCross in August. They're the ones who don't look like they're about to pass out) That aforementioned new car? A certain person told me that I was going to get it from him. I hemmed and hawed and finally said, okay, does it still have air conditioning? He said, man I'm in Alabama, of course it still has air conditioning. So I said okay, you sold me!
In reply to FooBag :
I will admit that I have not read an issue of SportsCar in a long time aside from looking at the Tire Rack ad in the front flap.
If Matt is writing articles, I will start reading. His command of spoken English reminds me a lot of the AvE guy, and he's an awesome competitor and general contributor to the RallyCross community.
Dave M said:In reply to irish44j :
Awesome answers, thanks! I wasn't clear on the cost question; what I really was after is whether I can drive an event in my beater - hard - and count on getting home in it, or if I need to trailer the car to and from the event.
kind of depends on what car it is and how hard you are willing to beat it. But let me put it this way: I've been running a 1985 BMW, with fairly stock suspension other than shocks and springs, for about 10 years and over 50 events. Though I trailer more often now since it is a stage car, I always used to drive it to events, and always was able to drive it home a few hours.
It's definitely true that certain cars are tougher than others, and certain people's driving styles put more strain on their car than others. The one nice thing about rallycross is there is usually somebody there with a trailer who is willing to tell you home if you drive their car home on the street. and depending on the car you have a lot of people have spare parts or the ability to help fix it. I carry AAA as well just in case.
But I would say only about 10% of the people that come to our events do it on trailers and it's mostly because their cars are not very comfortable for long-distance driving. Or for convenience.
FooBag said:Jumping in late here but I run the Iowa Region rallycross program. We're a small region averaging 26 cars per event, but we TRY to host an event every month, year round. I've mainly used Facebook to get more attendance. As Josh says, sharing the events in car related, but not necessarily racing related FB pages seems to work well. I share our events in pages like "Car Spotters of Iowa", "Mopars of Iowa", and so on. Yes, this leads to me having to answer a bunch of moronic questions (Can I race my chop top Honda Odyssey? It has a roll bar!) but it definitely brings in a few people. I also started buying FB advertising for the three weeks prior to the event. I invest only the equivalent of one person's entry fee, figuring if the ads bring in one person, I've already broken even. Crunching the numbers, the ads increased our average attendance by roughly 3 drivers.
Most recently, I've started doing daily posts in the FB event page for the two weeks leading up to the event. These can all be scheduled in advance, so I'll sit down for a couple hours and crank them all out. I include novice guides, run videos, pictures, tire guides, etc trying to be overly helpful. I've even started doing driver profiles on racers in an attempt to show that all sorts of people rallycross. You can see an example of this by checking out the page for our most recent event here. These daily posts increased our average attendance by 4 drivers, so I figure it's worth my time.
Just to add a bit of back story, I started the program in 2015. 2016 was our first full year and we rode a wave of "newness" to average 22 drivers. 2017 we dropped to sub 20 an event. 2018 I started the paid ads and we averaged 22 drivers. 2019 was my first full year of the daily posts and we bumped up to 26 drivers average.
I do make sure that all my events are on MotorSportReg with lots of information as well (links to rules, novice guide, minor waiver, etc). I also check the "Find Events" page on the SCCA site to ensure that they have my events correctly entered. I usually have to have the location corrected on at least one a year. The Iowa Region SCCA page is a very dated design, but I also make sure all my events are listed for those who don't Facebook.
I've also been on the RallyCross National Championship Committee now for 4 years, so I can add some insight on a few of the complaints about the Sportscar magazine. First, there's a HUGE lead time for getting information into the magazine, like 3 months in advance. The only way to have your region's event's listed in the schedule in the back is to file your sanction forms way early. I know this can be hard for small regions that don't have things locked down until the last minute, but big regions should be able to file their sanctions all at the start of the year and have all their events listed by the March of April magazine.
As for the rallycross articles, it took a lot of badgering on the part of the RXB to even get monthly rallycross articles included in Sportscar. They're all being written by Matt Wolfe out of the Detroit Region. He's repeated asked for others to help him out with content on these, so if you have an idea for an article or are willing to write one, reach out to him!
A lot of good ideas there. And I supposedly will be in touch with the editor of the magazine to see about what I can contribute, but maybe I should hit up Matt as well.
Another option would be for someone who actually knows how to do web design and can host a page to set something up cool and have provided content from a select number of people, just to spread the word about Rallycross in general .
Knurled. said:In reply to FooBag :
I will admit that I have not read an issue of SportsCar in a long time aside from looking at the Tire Rack ad in the front flap.
If Matt is writing articles, I will start reading. His command of spoken English reminds me a lot of the AvE guy, and he's an awesome competitor and general contributor to the RallyCross community.
Basically I will just flip through to see if there's any rally cross contents, Read it real quick and then toss it. I almost think it would be worthwhile to have an online version instead of a print version. Would probably cost a lot less too.
Knurled. said:Thr last 2019 event at Bitzer's Farm was the first time I'd ever seen Jeremy break his 2.5RS in like a decade or so of competition. A control arm rusted apart, which is a thing that happened to GD chassis Subarus no matter what, rallycross or not.
I tell people this same thing: If your car breaks, it was probably going to break anyhow.
I will say that over driving at a rallycross can speed the process up by a few weeks- but so can hitting a pot hole or speed bump too fast.
In reply to Brett_Murphy :
I'm also the guy who broke a Ford 9" with a nonturbo Mazda 13B. Had to rebuild the rear like three or four times last year, too,.
Crowbar in a sandbox? No problem! I can break that.
irish44j said:Knurled. said:In reply to FooBag :
I will admit that I have not read an issue of SportsCar in a long time aside from looking at the Tire Rack ad in the front flap.
If Matt is writing articles, I will start reading. His command of spoken English reminds me a lot of the AvE guy, and he's an awesome competitor and general contributor to the RallyCross community.
Basically I will just flip through to see if there's any rally cross contents, Read it real quick and then toss it. I almost think it would be worthwhile to have an online version instead of a print version. Would probably cost a lot less too.
There actually is a digital version that's accessible to all. http://www.sportscarmag-digital.com/ What's convenient about it is that all the back issues are there and you can actually link to specific pages. There was a rallycross issue (we got a whole 8 or 10 pages!) back in '17 that had some decent content, so I've linked it for my FB event posts from time to time.
I agree that a rallycross specific website could be good. It would definitely require a number of people who really care to manage it and keep adding content.
Jim Rowland has some good information on his website. Some might be getting out of date.
https://medium.com/@JimRowland/scca-rallycross-toolkit-3711bb2e836d
I mentioned the novice schools we had here. Kevin Allen, who is our best driver but mainly does Stage rally now, put this together a number of years back as a learning aid. He detailed how he had his Impreza RS set up, then went on to explain a bit on how to drive and why certain things mattered more than others.
One of the biggest points in this was "If your car is easy to drive, you'll be able to drive it consistently."
Kevin Allen’s 2000 2.5RS Rallycross Car Info:
Parts are OE or OE-equivalent except for the following…
Whiteline anti-lift kit – helps the front end follow the contour of the ground & maintains traction under deceleration and acceleration
2004 USDM STi struts and 07 WRX springs – cheap, great damping, spring rate is just right for rallyx & raises the car about ½”, close enough to stock design to work (with minor modifications) on the RS, comfy on the street. The rear suspension is mounted to the car with Group N tophats.
Eibach camber bolts added to front strut lowest mounting point, full negative camber with factory bolts and added bolts, zero toe – maintains camber when cornering, which keeps the tread – not the sidewall - on the ground
Eibach camber bolts added to rear strut upper hub mounting location at full negative camber; the STi struts add + 1° of camber in the rear, so these take them back to approximately where they were with the stock bolts
17mm rear anti-roll bar from 06 WRX – not too big to allow independent suspension travel but much less roll on the street than with stock 13mm bar; well-balanced on rallyx courses
SuperPro polyurethane steering rack bushings – minimizes side-to-side movement of steering rack when changing direction
STi Group N engine & transmission mounts + pitch stop – removes almost all slop experienced when applying/ lifting off throttle
DIY rear diff support bushings – reduce clunking of rear diff when applying & lifting off throttle
Forester XT short shift lever – shorter throw, closer to steering wheel
Kartboy shifter bushings (full set) – more precise shifting
Rear subframe lock bolts – keep the rear subframe from moving around & messing up the alignment
Lightweight bumper beams in front & rear – they drop about 25 lbs at each end (better steering response/rotation)
Lightweight battery – Odyssey PC625 – drops about 25 lbs from in front of LF tire
DIY cold air intake with K&N filter in stock filter box
stromung midpipe with 05 Forester XT axle-back – better sound (but quiet on the highway) and a few hp (?)
Exedy street performance clutch and ACT lightweight flywheel – man, this thing revs hard now!
Subaru 4-piston front calipers (the gray ones) with Hawk HPS pads – great feel, great braking
Hawk HP+ pads in rear – more aggressive than front pads for more rear bias
Rocker switch on dash to turn off ABS – and unlike the WRX, the RS ABS can be turned off and back on while the car is still running
03 WRX front seats – lots more support, but they could be a lot lighter and slightly lower. CG Lock installed on driver’s seat
Rally Armor mud flaps – protect the paint from big rocks and stuff
Steel DIY skid plate I bought used from a friend – covers the oil pan and exhaust manifold
Raceline RL-7’s with 195/65/15 Kumho R700 rally tires for rallycross and 2000 2.5RS wheels with 205/55/16 Avon Tech M550 A/S street tires for daily driving and playing around in the dirt (they also make great stock class rallyx tires). Rally tires make a huge difference in grip and times on dirt. If they’re allowed in your class, use them.
Wanted list:
Lightweight hood
Roll bar for time trialsWhat you actually NEED to be competitive in an old-skool 2.5RS…
1. Mad driving skills.
2. The best tires for the conditions to be encountered and legal according to your class rules, preferably on a spare set of 15” wheels.
3. Reliable engine and transmission, no busted or semi-busted drivetrain parts that are going to cause a mechanical DNF. And if the class rules say you can replace engine mounts, replace them with Group N mounts.
4. No busted or semi-busted suspension parts. Should have relatively fresh struts of the type allowed by the rules. If the rules say it has to be OE, then you replace your worn-out OE struts with new OE struts; if the rules say adjustable rally struts are allowed, then that’s what you should use – if that’s what the competition has & they’re beating you by a very small margin.
5. Some way to keep you in your seat so you can drive the car 100% - whether it’s a harness, a locking lap belt, a locking stock belt or a CG lock.
6. Lots of practice.
Driving tips for rallycross: how to be fast without breaking your car.
Walk the course a LOT (and know it – don’t just walk around carrying on a conversation with somebody or looking at the pretty flowers). If the course designers need help with setup, be there to help. Make mental notes about where you have to be careful, where you can really push it, where it will probably get rutted, and any other useful things that might help later, when you’re actually running the course.
If the course is going to rut pretty quickly, line up at the front; if there’s mud, cut grass or something else that hinders grip that will disappear as the cars cycle through, line up at the back. You may have to hear some complaints about it later from those who were at the other end of the line, but if they really wanted to win they’d be there right in front of or behind YOU. So just smile and nod.
Be careful (but not SLOW!) on the first run, then attack on the next run, using your experiences from the first run to determine where to go faster. Compare your times to those of your competition to determine whether you can be safe on the runs that follow, or you need to pull out all the stops for at least a few runs. It’s much less stressful to get an advantage on the first course and protect it on the second than to have to come from behind to win.
Don’t hit cones! Autocrossers sometimes need to drive within an inch of the important cones to win; rallycrossers need to stay away from those cones, because they don’t get “throw-away” runs. Try to be within a foot or so of the important cones – it’s very easy to hook a rut or catch traction in the wrong place, and feel the car suddenly head right for the cone. If you run it over, that’s 2 seconds. If you lift or brake and steer away from it, that’s a time penalty, too.
Don’t just look ahead, THINK AHEAD. Remember the mental notes you made while walking the course and review them as you come up on the corners they apply to. But definitely look ahead as you enter a corner – you may see something that will require you to change the line you had planned to take, or maybe just a change in speed.
Remember that at least 75% of the people out there will either not know what they’re doing, not care what they’re doing because they’re just there for fun, or just keep making careless mistakes. So you’ll have to drive around their mistakes. The most common mistake people make is entering a corner too fast and too straight &/or turning late and understeering all the way through it. This will kill their times, and it will damage the corner with front tire ruts. Sometimes, if the corner is big enough, there will be ruts one or two car widths from the inside cones, with lots of loose dirt on the outside of that. In this case, you can just slow down early and drive on the undamaged, grippy area next to the cones to minimize distance. Sometimes the corner will be tighter, and there will be deep ruts to deal with. In this case there’s usually no room to go inside, so if you’re confident you won’t break something on the bottom of the car or debead a tire, you just have to slow down and drive in the ruts. Don’t bounce the car around, though, because if the tires are off the ground you can’t use them to accelerate. (Duh.) And if you can keep the tires out of the bottom of the ruts by driving slightly up on the outside of the ruts, do that. Sometimes you can then late apex the corner by letting the car come off the “banking” and going diagonally across the ruts at the exit instead of following them through where the hacks understeered out of the corner. If the corner opens onto a long “straight” and there’s not a huge amount of loose dirt or rough terrain on the outside, it may be better to go slightly deeper into the corner, around the ruts, and then use a really late apex to be at full throttle earlier so that you make better time on the straight. This works better with AWD cars, but can work well with 2WD cars if you do it right. Just remember that you will have to cross the ruts at the exit to make this work.
Get the car turned early! The understeer problem mentioned above is a great way to debead a tire, a great way to make sure you waste as much time as you can while in a corner, and a great way to come out of a corner at the slowest speed possible. If you turn the car early, you’ll set yourself up to hit the next corner at a good speed, and if there are several corners linked together that get progressively faster (which is ALWAYS the case on the courses I design), you’ll be flying when you come out of the last corner. If you understeer through every corner in the sequence, guess how fast you’ll be going… (slow).
Sideways is slow. Think about what the tires are doing while you’re counter-steering at full throttle through a turn in an AWD car. The fronts are pulling you in the right direction, but the rears are just pushing you toward the apex. If you’re in a FWD car, you’re dragging the rear tires and slowing the car. If you’re in a RWD car, the fronts are just rolling along, while the rears are pushing you toward the apex and momentum is carrying you through the corner. Try to keep all the driven wheels pointing in the general direction you want to go. This will mean that you turn early, center the steering wheel and accelerate. If you throw the car into a slight drift, all you have to do to change direction is lift, turn in the new direction and then get back on the gas. You should be making very small steering corrections if you’re making any. If you’re constantly turning the steering wheel back and forth at huge angles, you’re not helping yourself any.
Don’t hit the ruts or rough spots too hard – try to minimize the impact by braking a little and/or using a diagonal crossing if you need to cross them, or by entering at a shallow angle if you need to be in them. If you break the car you won’t win, and you won’t be having fun as you’re pushing or towing it off the course. You may add a little time by being careful, but it’s better than a DNF. And if you hit the rough spots too hard and make the tires come off the ground, you can't use them to accelerate, so slower will be faster anyway.
Remember that the longer you make the course, the longer it will take to drive it – and over 6 runs, you can add a lot of distance. So be efficient with your line. Ever had the cruise control set on the Interstate and been following the car in front of you at the exact same distance for miles, then when you hit a curve you change to the inside lane and suddenly you’re gaining on them? If not, try it sometime. Then remind yourself of that when you’re coming up on the next corner at a rallycross.
Car setup for rallycross
Suspension travel… More travel is better, until your CG gets too high. Stock Subaru STi suspension has around 6-7 inches of travel, and has felt great on every course I’ve run.
Damping… If your dampers are worn out, you’re going to be oscillating from full bump to full droop all over the course. Get some fresh dampers, but not something that’s built for tarmac. (Konis aren’t designed for rallycross, they’re made for relatively smooth tarmac – I know this from experience.) Extremely stiff dampers are going to make the car bounce around, so use something that keeps the suspension from oscillating on the faster stuff, but doesn’t make it too bouncy on the slower stuff.
Springs… Soft springs can allow the car to bottom out on big bumps, really stiff springs won’t allow enough travel. Use something medium-stiff. For Subarus, that would mean something like the stock STi springs. And DON’T USE LOWERING SPRINGS!!!!!
Bushings… Worn out bushings can break, cause too much movement & affect handling, etc. and should be replaced.
Engine/drivetrain… Handling is way more important than a little extra power, but if your engine is dying or your drivetrain is busted you’re not going to get very far. Make sure everything is working. Stiffer engine and transmission mounts are a good thing.
Brakes… The brakes should be able to slow you down while on course, and stop you after the finish. Make sure they’re capable of that. Disable the ABS.
Seats… Need to be supportive and comfortable.
Restraints… Should hold you in place while the course tries to throw you around. CG Lock works great. Don’t install shoulder harnesses without a roll bar.
Anti-roll bars… Aren’t very important as long as they aren’t so big that they prevent your suspension from moving independently.
Weight… Decrease grip, and weight really makes a difference. The less the car weighs, the better.
Underbody protection… Isn’t usually needed at rallycrosses, but you should look under your car and see if there’s anything that looks like it might be important, then if necessary, take steps to keep it from being ripped off. : )
Tires… Are the most important thing on the car. Different surfaces require different tread pattern and compound, so I’ll just say that for loose dirt you need tires that work well in loose dirt.
As far as general car behavior, the easier the car is to drive the more consistent you’ll be at making it do what you want it to do. If my 2.5RS was any easier to drive, I could sit in the shade and watch it run the course by itself.
That's a lotta words... 
Walking the course is pointless if you are second heat ( or third/fourth/fifth in the case of Detroit region) because everything will have changed by the time you make runs. It is only good for your first run anyway, once a course starts getting burned in, that is the course you drive, not a theoretical best line.
I like to walk course once or twice if it's available, mostly just to get a sense ahead of time of what the overall size/shape/speed of the course and general surface conditions are like to figure out starting tire pressures. (We've been screwed over before by guessing wrong initially and not being allowed enough time during driver changes to correct it) But yeah, as far as actually figuring out the course, it's the parade lap and looking ahead.
Brakes are an interesting thing in rallycross. The 944 we started with never had great brakes, it was borderline sketchy to drive on the street. But on dirt it was great because you could just plant your foot to the floor and it would stop hard but not lock up unless a wheel was unloaded. The Boxster required a little bit of finesse on the brakes at times because they actually, ya know, worked properly. I'm not sure I agree with disabling ABS but that's probably on a vehicle to vehicle basis.
We also ran a full season with a broken clutch disk and never had any issues, including winning the event where it finally broke for good, because it was nice enough to do it crossing the finish line on the last run of the day. It even had enough momentum to coast into paddock and half way onto the trailer.
Knurled. said:That's a lotta words...
Walking the course is pointless if you are second heat ( or third/fourth/fifth in the case of Detroit region) because everything will have changed by the time you make runs. It is only good for your first run anyway, once a course starts getting burned in, that is the course you drive, not a theoretical best line.
You're not looking at it from a beginner's point of view. Getting an indea of what the overall layout is for the course is a lot more important than knowing the best line when you're first starting out. I was thrilled when I could remember the main elements and where they were.
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