Pete. (l33t FS) said:EvanB said:Just when I was getting excited because Detroit region was starting up rallysprints next year.
I wonder what will happen with the cage requirements.
IIRC detroit was only planning on level 3 events, so unless it takes forever to sort out the new rules, those events will probably go on about as planned.
In reply to dps214 :
Indeed, but still, if they change the cage requirements, it'd be nice to know sooner than later.
I mean, yeah, in theory we wanted the car done by now, but it is what it is.
So after the town hall meeting...
I ask it again, this time louder for the people in the back.
In reply to Captdownshift (Forum Supporter) :
What was discussed in the town hall meeting and what did the board say about the future of the rallycross program?
Here are some sanitized and somewhat biased bullet points
I think that's a pretty good summary. The member comment that stuck out most for me was "I believe you mean well". That's actually about how I feel about Hayward in general, though he seems to be taking things a bit more seriously lately.
I also wish there had been some elaboration on the rollover issue. I'm sure this isn't the only problem, but a big part of the solution is to either do away with or seriously restrict UTVs. The current safety restrictions aren't nearly enough.
I wonder if there is any correlation with rollovers and national championships in a course design/safety steward sense. As (nearly) all rollovers I have witnessed or heard about have happened at nationals.
I wonder if the the rollover situation would be improved by allowing for longer courses with more available real estate that doesn't rut quite as quickly, relying less on abrupt direction changes and more on steady state cornering, perhaps even requiring normal solo/road race rollover protection that is perfectly adequate for the muted speed and terrain that this middle step between autox in a field and stage rally should be...
Wait...
I am in roughly the same position. I have seen rollovers about every 15-20 events or around one every 2 years not counting nationals and not counting side by sides.
I think nationals is a weird outlier where there is pressure to not change the course and usually too many cars for the surface. I am not sure what to do there.
I wonder if the SxS class could be rolled into constructors. It forces more serious cages, lower suspension, and does less to encourage newbies with stock SxSs to show up. We would have to figure out what to do with the plastic firewalls on SxSs though. They are "safe enough" for rallycross but not safe enough for the constructors class. I have heard they are a pain to swap.
EvanB said:I wonder if there is any correlation with rollovers and national championships in a course design/safety steward sense. As (nearly) all rollovers I have witnessed or heard about have happened at nationals.
The RXB meeting minutes (fastracks) usually make at least some reference to incidents when they happen. In the past few years there have been quite a few non-national rollovers.
In reply to ojannen :
The Constructors and UTV classes have the same height/width restriction.
Should be noted that Stock class cars have rolled, too.
dps214 said:Pete. (l33t FS) said:EvanB said:Just when I was getting excited because Detroit region was starting up rallysprints next year.
I wonder what will happen with the cage requirements.
IIRC detroit was only planning on level 3 events, so unless it takes forever to sort out the new rules, those events will probably go on about as planned.
That is correct, about Level 3 events being the plan.
lol, the vast majority of rallycrossers don't give a E36 M3 about National events, and national events definitely do not "grow" the sport. Rallycross is a budget motorsport, only a few people want to tow halfway across the country to compete against a couple big-dollar hotshoes with 10 sets of tires and a bunch of locals (to wherever it's being held). There are literally about 5 people in our (relatively large) region, so about 5%,, who talk about nationals and/or go to nationals (which is fine if that's what you want to do, I"m not complaining about that). But the people who pay for 95% of the events literally do not care at all about nationals one bit. None of the new people who join us each year say "it was because of National events." None. Zero.
That said, supporting new programs is nice. I think most of the established programs would prefer Big SCCA just stay as far away as possible, since their involvement is usually not very helpful, from what I hear. Every event I've ever been to run by the national office has been poorly-run and less fun than normal regional events. We've hosted an East Coast championship and a number of NEDiv championships over the years, and literally nobody from our region ever wants to host one again. Just provide the insurance that the entry fees pay for, and stay away otherwise. So yeah, focus on new programs if they can do so helpfully. IDK what that actually means, though. Seems to me most of the "new" regions (and current ones) happen by a ton of local legwork, not because of any "national help."
PS - maybe other regions are different, but Constructors/UTV don't do anything around here. We have 1-2 UTVs per event at most (always the same 1-2), and I dont' think we've ever had anyone show for constructors class, ever. And again, we're a fairly large region. So let's stop sweating those classes so much and concentrate on the actual core of the program - the guys in 20-year-old $1500 cars who actually show up to events and pay the entry fees to keep the programs alive.
As to rollovers, they're gonna happen. Cheap cars that may not handle well. Some people are terrible drivers. Debeads. Broken suspension parts, etc. The one rollover I saw personally this year at an event was from a tie rod breaking and was not because of the course. No amount of tech inspection or rules or course design would have prevented it. In 10 years doing this, I think I've only ever seen one rollover that I would say was "course-related" (and even that one was because the 1st-place driver was being super-aggressive). Most of them were just bad driving rolls that happened in places where nobody else was having any issues. The only way to get rid of rollovers is to get rid of rallycross.
--
However, I though we were talking about Sprints here - was that not discussed?
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
There is a rallysprint specific meeting planned for January. We discussed some rallysprint stuff anyway.
Someone on the board of governors "discovered" rallycross and rallysprint and has gone on a crusade to limit SCCA liability. A few rallysprint events were held with the wrong sanction and now rallysprint is gone. Rollovers are considered the #2 national office concern after nationals for what I can only assume are the same reasons. I am a little concerned that this meeting was the precursor to the press release that starts with "The SCCA National office has decided to refocus our efforts on our core products ..." as they drop the rallycross program.
I think rallycross has a problem where it is fully disconnected from the scca national office. The regions I am aware of use the SCCA license to get better rates for insurance and that is about it. The problem with the plan is we don't have any representation on the board of directors. I am part of the problem too as I don't go to SCCA meetings or vote in any elections.
Sprints were attempted to not be talked about, sounds like there will hopefully be another town hall in a few weeks about it.
UTVs are very hit or miss, I don't think most big regions really benefit from them but they can be a big help to smaller regions. Lately OVR has struggled to hit 20 entries per event, I can think of at least 2-3 events in semi-recent history where the UTV class was basically a quarter of the field and they would have struggled to put on the event without them. I'd guess there's quite a few other regions in similar situations, but I don't know for sure. That all said I think by now we have enough evidence to come to a conclusion on them, one way or another. IMO they need to either go or have the safety requirements seriously reworked, especially if rollover incidents is the #2 biggest concern of leadership.
As to rollovers, I'm sure it's based in general liability, but there is also an optics issue. It's a pretty big barrier to entry if the only thing anyone knows about rallycross is "your car is going to roll over at some point". In the same way that the club does a good job of keeping quiet the incident rate at autocross events and a lot of people are under the impression that it's basically impossible for anything bad to happen...but that's a different discussion.
I was thinking about this more today, honestly I kind of think rallycross and maybe especially rallysprints would be better served by a sanctioning body other than SCCA, or at least a completely separate entity within the club. And that's not even really an insult to anyone in leadership or the BOD. As you referenced, it's a sport with generally a completely different mindset that appeals to a different segment of the population than any of the rest of the club's divisions. No matter how good the board or leadership is, I think you need to have a completely different outlook and approach to managing these programs.
It is telling that Southern West Virginia holds events closer to Columbus than OVR does. Joes's is an uncomfortable hike because of its location.
But speaking of Nationals, a very large percentage of WOR/OVR regulars have been to Nationals, and on a regular basis. Seemingly very few people from neighboring regions go, though.
I don't have hard numbers, but I'd bet the ratio of nationals participants to total participants is comparable or maybe even lower in autocross. I could be wrong, but I don't think the point of national events or nationals is to grow the sport, other than maybe through the media and publicity that the events might generate. The point is to provide a more competitive event for the more serious competitors. I do think they have value if that goal can be accomplished, but not in their most recent form of basically a regional event with some extra words in the title and some extra hoops to jump through for the host region.
In reply to dps214 :
It's a nice idea of course. Everyone wants to know who the best of the best is. But again, realistically rally cross is a budget oriented sport and a lot of the best drivers that I've ever driven against are not guys that have a couple thousand dollars to spend to tow halfway across the country, take a week off work, pay hotels, etc all for a dozen rallycross runs. Sure, there will be some people who are doing it for a week, adventure or getaway, but the utopian dream of having an actual true national championship for what is inherently a regional Motorsport for budget competitors simply is not plausible in my opinion. The crowds that run solo and road racing tend to have a lot more money and therefore can more incredibly say that a lot of their top people are going to these things. SCCA needs to stop pretending that rally cross works the same way as the tarmac events full of people with Porsches and Corvettes and late model vehicles.
I do think there's a way that it could be done decently, but yeah it's definitely never going to be something comparable to the solo national series or championship.
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
But those are the people with money and people with money buy things from series sponsors.
As one writer I know put it, in the days when Stock class autocross was full of people on gumball Hoosiers on "stock" vehicles just to keep up with all of the other people in "Stock":
adding up all of the people who showed up to Nationals in Stock, there was over a million dollars worth of tires that didn't really need to be there, so the real winner is Tire Rack. (paraphrased; the forum this was in is long gone)
Ten-fifteen years later, Stock got a 200TW rule. Which didn't really change the expense factor, on the face of it, but you can theoretically drive on 200TW tires to and from events. Not a good idea on A6s.
An aside, when I started, there was no classing the way we have it today, everything was pretty open as far as prep goes, just a grid of over 2l/under 2l and 2/4wd. And a "4x4" class, which was pretty nebulous: we had one person enter a new STI in O4 and a 323 GTX in 4x4. (Oh yeah, you could enter more than one car per event...) You could buy Kumho rally tires (R700?) from Tire Rack.
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