>Only 22 ProRally entries at Cog, 13 finishers, and now
>Gruppe N appears to have succumbed to technical protests
>again, no?
I'm looking forward to folks bragging up their top 10 finishes.
>
>A relatively successful NASA season, not too many ProRally
>class championships hotly contested this season, worries
>about future insurability of SCCA rallies, new strata of
>price levels for upcoming Club events, and increasing talk
>by CenDiv types (among others) of migrating to CARS events.
>These seem to all be indicators of bad road ahead. Could it
>be that SCCA sponsored performance rally is losing its
>relevance in North America?
Yep, the baby is sick and has been getting sick for a long, long time. I think we need to rally in a completely different way. I would look towards successful rally regions in the world and see what makes them successful. Then we would need to, and this is the tough part, swallow our stupid American pride, and copy them.
I think rally could be big over here, not that I want it to be but I think we make excuses why it isn't that aren't always true. It just needs to grow, in the right way, with the emphasis on benfits for the organizers and competitors. See below
>
>Perhaps the classic nature of LSPR will encourage enough
>support to sustain ProRally into 2005, although not much
>left to decide in the way of class championships this year
>won't help.
LSPR will be a blast for all the competitors who haven't gotten so serious that they forgot how to have fun.
I've been critical of the sorry state of things.
Load your pistols, light your torches, I offer a from the hip, unscrutinized solution:
Costs need to be addressed not only for competitors but for organizers.
I think that 2 people from each rally organizing committee need to meet in 3 areas across the country, one west, one central, and one east and have a huge video conference with each other and discuss how to implement Lurch's vision for a new business model for events. Take every idea that comes up seriously and explore them. People have beaten more difficult challenges in the past. I would definitely have Ray Hocker around.
If there are events to be run that aren't such a lifeforce sucking experience to put on and can be more affordable I think that the competitors will follow.
Here is another idea from the brainstorm expert. Remember in a brainstorm there are no wrong ideas, that's why I like 'em.
Regionalism.
Screw all this traveling across the country. It is the variable that drives up cost the most. Let's develop local rally clubs with stronger events that embraced Lurch's vision. Let's get rid of the emphasis on the national level club. Let the SCCA or NASA provide only the things that the local clubs cannot provide for themselves. Maybe this is insurance maybe this is a uniform class structure. I would like it to be as little as possible
I want sustainability and growth of the sport at the club level, from the ground up. Emphasis on Organizers and Competitors.