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There has been an interesting discussion in the Canadian Forum on weather the arrival of more experienced Brits is good for the sport or unfair to the local drivers.
http://www.specialstage.com/forum/cgi-bin/DCForumID4/119.html
I think we can all agree that we would like to have fair competition but it is harder to get agreement on what that looks like. Some people look to the spend to win type programs and call those unfair, others see the inconsistent application of rules and see unfairness. Finally some see the arrival of real professional drivers and see that as unfair to the privateers who need to work during the week to pay for the rally car rather than get paid to tune and test during the week like a pro.
What I see is opportunity; to mold rallying to our needs, to have strong leadership emerge, and to have the powers that be regain the respect and trust of the membership at large. So come-on PRB and PRD (how about PRx's for short) how about putting out some real vision on these issues before the end of the year. I will even make it easy and write a set of solutions below - feel free to copy.
Level playing field - right now it is far too easy to spend ones way to performance in any of the classes. We need a one make class or a few one make classes. Lets set some goals in this area and get going on it.
Rules - We can all see the rule book needs some attention and the procedures need help too. So get going, clean up some of the messes like is it legal or not to remove the radio in a Production car? Then apply all the rules in an open and transparent manner under written procedures. When something does not work - fix it and publish the fix. If someone is speeding in service but it can not be proven as there was no measure of speed, then say oh well we screwed up this time but next time here is what we are going to do to prevent speeding in service.
Pro vs Amateur - I have been though this many times personally. For some reason in sailing I got classed as a pro. This limited my ability to just go out and have fun doing a little race from time to time with friends since sailing has all kinds of regattas and classes that do not allow pros. See the weekend warriors like to be able to win and collect hardware from time to time.
I think there is a good comprise here, we can have classes that do not have pro's and classes that let everyone compete, both at every event. I suggest that Production and Production GT could be armature classes and the rest of the classes be open to whom ever wishes to show up. The PRx will need to come up with some sort of system to fugue out who is pro and who is not. This will become an area of many loopholes and much creative reading of rules but none the less it should not be that hard to do. The main point is everyone should get to participate.
Ok everyone run with it. My feelings are not going to get hurt - I know full well the forum can be a snake pit sometimes, so write your true feelings out.
Derek
http://www.specialstage.com/forum/cgi-bin/DCForumID4/119.html
I think we can all agree that we would like to have fair competition but it is harder to get agreement on what that looks like. Some people look to the spend to win type programs and call those unfair, others see the inconsistent application of rules and see unfairness. Finally some see the arrival of real professional drivers and see that as unfair to the privateers who need to work during the week to pay for the rally car rather than get paid to tune and test during the week like a pro.
What I see is opportunity; to mold rallying to our needs, to have strong leadership emerge, and to have the powers that be regain the respect and trust of the membership at large. So come-on PRB and PRD (how about PRx's for short) how about putting out some real vision on these issues before the end of the year. I will even make it easy and write a set of solutions below - feel free to copy.
Level playing field - right now it is far too easy to spend ones way to performance in any of the classes. We need a one make class or a few one make classes. Lets set some goals in this area and get going on it.
Rules - We can all see the rule book needs some attention and the procedures need help too. So get going, clean up some of the messes like is it legal or not to remove the radio in a Production car? Then apply all the rules in an open and transparent manner under written procedures. When something does not work - fix it and publish the fix. If someone is speeding in service but it can not be proven as there was no measure of speed, then say oh well we screwed up this time but next time here is what we are going to do to prevent speeding in service.
Pro vs Amateur - I have been though this many times personally. For some reason in sailing I got classed as a pro. This limited my ability to just go out and have fun doing a little race from time to time with friends since sailing has all kinds of regattas and classes that do not allow pros. See the weekend warriors like to be able to win and collect hardware from time to time.
I think there is a good comprise here, we can have classes that do not have pro's and classes that let everyone compete, both at every event. I suggest that Production and Production GT could be armature classes and the rest of the classes be open to whom ever wishes to show up. The PRx will need to come up with some sort of system to fugue out who is pro and who is not. This will become an area of many loopholes and much creative reading of rules but none the less it should not be that hard to do. The main point is everyone should get to participate.
Ok everyone run with it. My feelings are not going to get hurt - I know full well the forum can be a snake pit sometimes, so write your true feelings out.
Derek
