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A few facts which may be of interest... (Opinions are at the end.)
1. I asked a lawyer (who is not a rallyist) to research if there were any pending legal actions against SCCA related to rally accidents. There are; and the dollar amounts are very significant. (The licenses associated with the legal search services used to find these actions do not allow me to republish the results publicly, but you can ask your own attorney to do the same, or to use the free legal research tools that may be in place at your local public library, community center, etc. to find out the specifics if you like.)
2. The Wellsboro PA Gazette newspaper quotes John Buffum indicating that there is a legal action pending against SCCA as a result of the spectator deaths at the Sawmill Club Rally. The full story is here: http://www.stargazettenews.com/local/Thlocal11.html. The story goes on to quote John further: "There is a proposal on the SCCA table from Doug Havir and Rally America," he said. "They are going to work with SCCA and essentially take over. I'm going down to (SCCA headquarters in Topeka, Kan.) Thursday and Friday to hammer out the small points, like who's going to do the licensing? And what rules are we going to use?"
3. SCCA may not have insurance sufficient to cover the full amount of these claims, if these legal actions against SCCA prevail. Why? Because SCCA has self-insured to an extent as a way to lower their insurance premium costs. On the Wisenberg Insurance web site, SCCA is quoted as follows: "We saved a lot of money because of Wisenberg?and their assistance with a lot of our really unusual risk management problems has been invaluable. It's unusual to have an insurance agency tell you not to buy insurance and to self-insure, but that's what they did." You can see this quote by going to http://www.wisenberg.com and clicking on the "Our Clients Speak" menu link.
4. Others have questioned Pete Lyon's role at SCCA. Here's what I could find out: Peter B. Lyon, JD is the Director of Risk Management and Legal Affairs for Wisenberg Insurance, according to the Wisenberg web site. Mr. Lyon is also listed as holding the position of "Risk Manager/Legal Cousel" on the SCCA web site. Mr. Lyon is also listed as a "primary member of Risk Analysts team" on the Wisenberg web site. Risk Analysts is described on the Wisenberg web site as a Wisenberg subsidiary offering fee based insurance consulting and analytics services. I have been unable to determine whether both SCCA and the Wisenberg entities are directly compensating Mr. Lyon, and if so, whether such an arrangement is usual and customary in the commercial insurance profession.
Now for the opinions...
I have been involved in rallying both here in North America and overseas as a worker, top-ten competitor, organizer, spectator, crew member, driving instructor and tech inspector for nearly thirty years.
During that time I have witnessed tremendous advances in the performance levels of rally cars. For example, look at the stage times on stage 1 (the Stony Fork creek crossing) at STPR, a stage that has been consistently run for a number of years. Whole minutes have been taken off of a stage that is only 6 miles long.
During this same time, our investment in competitor training has not kept pace with the increased performance levels of rally cars. If anything it has declined. PRO events used to be a stepping stone for competitors from the so-called "brisk" TSD rallies of the '70s and '80s, so at least most competitors new to PRO rallying had some rallying experience already under their belts. No longer.
It is therefore inconceivable to me that we will be able to obtain event insurance at reasonable cost unless and until we make significant changes to stage rallying as it now exists. Furthermore, rallying has become much more expensive for the competitor, and I believe we should work hard to lower the competitors' cost to go rallying.
If it were up to me, I would make the following changes:
1. Eliminate speed factors; return to a seeding system where lower-seeded drivers can only compete in 2WD, Production or Group F class vehicles until they complete 1,000 stage miles.
2. Reduce the number of classes to Group N, Production GT, Production and Group F. Have a three-year grandfathering of all existing cars that have a logbook and have been entered in a rally in 2004 or 2003. These grandfathered cars would run in their own, single, class, if they didn't fit anywhere else, but this class would not earn Championship points. That's right, eliminate Open class. I love it, but it's time...
3. Create an East Coast and a West Coast series, similar to NASCAR's junior-level series and to what Canada is doing. Make it cost-effective for a competitor to win a series championship.
4. Make it clear that tech inspectors are there to enforce class rules compliance, as well as safety items. Consider having a mid-rally tech spot check at an unannounced regrouping control.
5. Work with CARS to create something approaching a unified rule book, so that rally cars can readily run in both Canada and the U.S. seamlessly.
6. Work with (not behind, in spite of, or against) the insurance carrier to develop a fresh safety plan that reduces event risk and our premiums. Accept that enhanced spectator control, ambulance provisioning, radio communication etc. are now on equal footing with having a good route book and are simply a reflection of the times in which we now find ourselves. As a competitor, I want an ambulance at every stage; I want a cohesive radio net where everyone will know where I am at all times.
7. Cap stage speeds. Competitors exceeding the max allowed stage speed are scored as if they drove at the maximum stage speed; no better. Slow stages down with hay bale chicanes (and autocross-like time penalties for moving a hay bale), taking the long way around triangle intersections, etc. Eliminate stages with an average speed that cannot be reduced to, say, 60 miles per hour max.
8. Enforce a tire allowance of four tires plus one for each 25 miles of event stages. Tires would be painted/etched at tech, and inspected at every start control. If the event has 100 stage miles, you get eight tires, no more.
9. Minimize the number of different service area locations, even if this means increasing the ratio of transit to stage miles. Keep service times short to keep wealthy competitors from changing whole suspensions/diffs, etc. as a routine maintenance item. Let's go back to building bulletproof, highly reliable, 1970s-Safari-style prepped rally cars instead of the high-performance, but relatively fragile thoroughbreds we often see these days.
10. Worry more about lowering our costs, having fun and making rally safer than finding a series sponsor. If we can't afford a "PRO" series right now, then let's have a great Clubman's series until the new regime(s) sort things out over the next year or two and we are ready to market ourselves properly.
Interesting days, friends... I hope we make the most of this terrific, albeit unsettling, opportunity with which we have been presented.
With best regards to all,
Mark
__________________________________________________
Another Message From... L. Mark Stone
1. I asked a lawyer (who is not a rallyist) to research if there were any pending legal actions against SCCA related to rally accidents. There are; and the dollar amounts are very significant. (The licenses associated with the legal search services used to find these actions do not allow me to republish the results publicly, but you can ask your own attorney to do the same, or to use the free legal research tools that may be in place at your local public library, community center, etc. to find out the specifics if you like.)
2. The Wellsboro PA Gazette newspaper quotes John Buffum indicating that there is a legal action pending against SCCA as a result of the spectator deaths at the Sawmill Club Rally. The full story is here: http://www.stargazettenews.com/local/Thlocal11.html. The story goes on to quote John further: "There is a proposal on the SCCA table from Doug Havir and Rally America," he said. "They are going to work with SCCA and essentially take over. I'm going down to (SCCA headquarters in Topeka, Kan.) Thursday and Friday to hammer out the small points, like who's going to do the licensing? And what rules are we going to use?"
3. SCCA may not have insurance sufficient to cover the full amount of these claims, if these legal actions against SCCA prevail. Why? Because SCCA has self-insured to an extent as a way to lower their insurance premium costs. On the Wisenberg Insurance web site, SCCA is quoted as follows: "We saved a lot of money because of Wisenberg?and their assistance with a lot of our really unusual risk management problems has been invaluable. It's unusual to have an insurance agency tell you not to buy insurance and to self-insure, but that's what they did." You can see this quote by going to http://www.wisenberg.com and clicking on the "Our Clients Speak" menu link.
4. Others have questioned Pete Lyon's role at SCCA. Here's what I could find out: Peter B. Lyon, JD is the Director of Risk Management and Legal Affairs for Wisenberg Insurance, according to the Wisenberg web site. Mr. Lyon is also listed as holding the position of "Risk Manager/Legal Cousel" on the SCCA web site. Mr. Lyon is also listed as a "primary member of Risk Analysts team" on the Wisenberg web site. Risk Analysts is described on the Wisenberg web site as a Wisenberg subsidiary offering fee based insurance consulting and analytics services. I have been unable to determine whether both SCCA and the Wisenberg entities are directly compensating Mr. Lyon, and if so, whether such an arrangement is usual and customary in the commercial insurance profession.
Now for the opinions...
I have been involved in rallying both here in North America and overseas as a worker, top-ten competitor, organizer, spectator, crew member, driving instructor and tech inspector for nearly thirty years.
During that time I have witnessed tremendous advances in the performance levels of rally cars. For example, look at the stage times on stage 1 (the Stony Fork creek crossing) at STPR, a stage that has been consistently run for a number of years. Whole minutes have been taken off of a stage that is only 6 miles long.
During this same time, our investment in competitor training has not kept pace with the increased performance levels of rally cars. If anything it has declined. PRO events used to be a stepping stone for competitors from the so-called "brisk" TSD rallies of the '70s and '80s, so at least most competitors new to PRO rallying had some rallying experience already under their belts. No longer.
It is therefore inconceivable to me that we will be able to obtain event insurance at reasonable cost unless and until we make significant changes to stage rallying as it now exists. Furthermore, rallying has become much more expensive for the competitor, and I believe we should work hard to lower the competitors' cost to go rallying.
If it were up to me, I would make the following changes:
1. Eliminate speed factors; return to a seeding system where lower-seeded drivers can only compete in 2WD, Production or Group F class vehicles until they complete 1,000 stage miles.
2. Reduce the number of classes to Group N, Production GT, Production and Group F. Have a three-year grandfathering of all existing cars that have a logbook and have been entered in a rally in 2004 or 2003. These grandfathered cars would run in their own, single, class, if they didn't fit anywhere else, but this class would not earn Championship points. That's right, eliminate Open class. I love it, but it's time...
3. Create an East Coast and a West Coast series, similar to NASCAR's junior-level series and to what Canada is doing. Make it cost-effective for a competitor to win a series championship.
4. Make it clear that tech inspectors are there to enforce class rules compliance, as well as safety items. Consider having a mid-rally tech spot check at an unannounced regrouping control.
5. Work with CARS to create something approaching a unified rule book, so that rally cars can readily run in both Canada and the U.S. seamlessly.
6. Work with (not behind, in spite of, or against) the insurance carrier to develop a fresh safety plan that reduces event risk and our premiums. Accept that enhanced spectator control, ambulance provisioning, radio communication etc. are now on equal footing with having a good route book and are simply a reflection of the times in which we now find ourselves. As a competitor, I want an ambulance at every stage; I want a cohesive radio net where everyone will know where I am at all times.
7. Cap stage speeds. Competitors exceeding the max allowed stage speed are scored as if they drove at the maximum stage speed; no better. Slow stages down with hay bale chicanes (and autocross-like time penalties for moving a hay bale), taking the long way around triangle intersections, etc. Eliminate stages with an average speed that cannot be reduced to, say, 60 miles per hour max.
8. Enforce a tire allowance of four tires plus one for each 25 miles of event stages. Tires would be painted/etched at tech, and inspected at every start control. If the event has 100 stage miles, you get eight tires, no more.
9. Minimize the number of different service area locations, even if this means increasing the ratio of transit to stage miles. Keep service times short to keep wealthy competitors from changing whole suspensions/diffs, etc. as a routine maintenance item. Let's go back to building bulletproof, highly reliable, 1970s-Safari-style prepped rally cars instead of the high-performance, but relatively fragile thoroughbreds we often see these days.
10. Worry more about lowering our costs, having fun and making rally safer than finding a series sponsor. If we can't afford a "PRO" series right now, then let's have a great Clubman's series until the new regime(s) sort things out over the next year or two and we are ready to market ourselves properly.
Interesting days, friends... I hope we make the most of this terrific, albeit unsettling, opportunity with which we have been presented.
With best regards to all,
Mark
__________________________________________________
Another Message From... L. Mark Stone
