[Topi]

Rally - lifestyle activity in US
January 20, 2003
The growing popularity of forest rallying in the US is drawing competitors - and spectators - from a new public. Unlike Europe where rallying competes with other motorsport disciplines for its participants, in the US the vast majority of rally competitors have never considered any other form of motorsport.

"Most of our new competitors are coming from snowboarding, skiing or mountain bikes into rally," says Pro-Rally series Director Kurt Spitzner. "We've surveyed them and the broad opinion is that rally is a "lifestyle" activity, rather than being perceived as an alternative to racing."

Rally is the fastest growing sector of Sports Car Club of America's (SCCA) activities; the number of licence holders for rally has grown from two to ten percent of the SCCA total since 1997. Last year 15 teams ran the full ten event series. Although not required to register their intentions before the season the same number is expected in 2003, some of them fielding two entries. Just four teams entered the full series in 1998. Last year ProRally event organisers had to deal with unprecedented numbers of spectators, and big crowds are again expected this year, stimulated in part by the TV coverage on the Speed channel.

The nine event series spans the country and involves competitors in vast distances between rounds. Spitzner reckons that the distance between the events totals 24,000 miles, without returning to the team base. A centrally based team returning to base regularly would cover about 80,000 or considerably more if the base was on either coast.

The first round of the 2003 SCCA ProRally series, the Sno*Drift Rally is based in Atlanta, Michigan and runs 24 & 25 January. David Higgins will be defending his Champions title in the newly formed Mitsubishi USA Team. Main opposition is likely to come from 2001 Champion Mark Lovell (Subaru) and his team-mate Ramana Lagemann while Tim O?Neill will give a Ford Focus its US debut. Dodge joins the Manufacturers Championship with a Gp 2 Neon, and British Champion Jonny Milner will contest the Group N class.

Source: World rally news

 

[Lancia037Rally]

>"Most of our new competitors are coming from snowboarding,
>skiing or mountain bikes into rally," says Pro-Rally series
>Director Kurt Spitzner. "We've surveyed them and the broad
>opinion is that rally is a "lifestyle" activity, rather than
>being perceived as an alternative to racing."


HA! Surveyed nobody. Anybody get this survey? What BS.
Kurt has admitted that his marketing #s are figures he has made up as he has done no research but if anyone wishes to challenge them or do the research themself, he will gladly accept their figures.
Now he has coducted an imaginary bogus lifestyle survey as well.

Must be nice to travel at the expense of all the club's members to events like the L.A. Auto Show with only the intent to brown-nose one manufacturer team while making up fictous surveys to justify work you are actually not doing.

 

[Glenn Wallace]

oh the humanity

 

[Gravel Spray]

Hey Kurt, Punk is dead too.




pete:7

 

[daphne]

I don't understand....

Last year 15 teams ran the full ten event series. Although not required to register their intentions before the season the same number is expected in 2003, some of them fielding two entries.

15 "teams" ran the full series last year. If these "teams" might field multiple entries in 2003, then "team" must mean something like "Subaru Rally USA", "Mitsubishi", "Hyundai", and maybe even "AV Sport".

Can anyone name the 15 "teams" from 2002? Am I misreading these lines?

 

[Adrian Wintle]

RE: I don't understand....

Last year 15 teams ran the full ten event series.
>Although not required to register their intentions before
>the season the same number is expected in 2003, some of them
>fielding two entries.[/i]
>
>15 "teams" ran the full series last year. If these "teams"
>might field multiple entries in 2003, then "team" must mean
>something like "Subaru Rally USA", "Mitsubishi", "Hyundai",
>and maybe even "AV Sport".
>
>Can anyone name the 15 "teams" from 2002? Am I misreading
>these lines?

Daphne;

Remember that it's 'marketingspeak' it doesn't have to be consistent, even within the same sentence. It does seem to be written to (un-?)intentionally mislead the casual reader as to the strength of the series, though.

Of coure, it could just be that they used the same proof-reader who did the rulebook...

Adrian

 

[Adrian Wintle]

RE: I don't understand....

>>Can anyone name the 15 "teams" from 2002? Am I misreading
>>these lines?

Since, according to Ed Brennan's statistics, only 8 drivers ran all the events (not counting Pikes Peak), I find it very difficult to come up with 15.

Adrian

 

[RallyGTX]

Personally, I find his comments insulting

Matt Manspeaker
Seattle, WA USA
89 323GTX - Open

 

[warwick]

I don't know enough about the US series to comment on the the other parts of the article, but I think he's right about the following:

"Most of our new competitors are coming from snowboarding, skiing or mountain bikes into rally," says Pro-Rally series Director Kurt Spitzner. "We've surveyed them and the broad opinion is that rally is a "lifestyle" activity, rather than being perceived as an alternative to racing."

At least, that's very much the feeling I'm getting up here in Canada. Pat Richard - ex competitive snowboarder, just happened to ratbag old cars on the fireroads around Whistler...myself coming from mountain biking...Chad from skiing, etc. A lot of my friends who aren't into traditional car racing are REALLY into watching rally, and want to get into it. This is something marketers of the sport should harness to bring more people into it. We just need some solid "surveyed" numbers to back it up.

 

[Kartwheel]

RE: I don't understand....

>It does seem to be written to (un-?)intentionally mislead
>the casual reader as to the strength of the series, though.


SAY it aint SO!! Intentional misinformantion?!? Not from him!

 

[randyzimmer]

Dude Spitzwater

Hey, when Kurt threw me out at RIM I thought he also said I was rude.
I may have been mistaken, maybe he called me a DUDE!
For those who don't know, Ed's site is at:
--
http://www.rallyracingnews.com/scca/prorally-stats02.html
--
Ed doesn't count Pike Peak because it wasn't a true event so 10 events? 15 teams? 2 cars each? That means all the Pro entries at Sno will compete at all the rounds each driving 80,000 miles.
As far as being a rally newbie, Jon Bottoms, Bob Henderson and myself have raced quite a bit before rally, that should offset quite a few newcomers that came straight to Pro Rally from that survey.
Dan, Doug and Doug, this guy is a pathological liar, not just a dictator/PR guy. You really have your work cut out for you cleaning up his wake.
Good luck guys.

 

[Lancia037Rally]

Why would it matter what the driver's other interest are? More importantly is the interest and demographics of the spectators and fans and the associated potential sponsors. I'm surprised more mountain bike, canoe/kayak, ski/snowboard manufacters, outdoor outfitters such as LLBean, or specialized clothing companys such as Patagonia or NorthFace have not started choosing rallying as a marketing tool and started sponsoring rallyteams. When I thruhiked the Applachain Trail, I had support from a boot company and backpack manufacturer and they got practically nothing in return. I wrote a nice letter commenting that their equipment lasted the whole distance while other hiker's did not but it was hardly effective as a marketing tool for them yet they were happy to be providing fianancial support.
I can see it now, some rallycar doing the press stage and Parc Expose with a pair of BrandX mountainbikes on the roofracks. Why not?

 

[Morgan]

RE: Dude Spitzwater

So what if he fudges it a little, I see no harm in what that says, it is just a different approach. He is trying to make the sport appeal to companies outside of motorsports, like sporting goods, LL Bean type companies. Plenty of people have exaggerated or worded press releases to their advantage in order to make something sound better than it really is, do you really want him to tell it how it really is?

BTW Isn't motorsports a lifestyle activity? Most people I know that are involved in motorsports eat, live and breath it

 

[Trevor Donison]

RE: I don't understand....

>>>Can anyone name the 15 "teams" from 2002? Am I misreading
>>>these lines?
>
>Since, according to Ed Brennan's statistics, only 8 drivers
>ran all the events (not counting Pikes Peak), I find it very
>difficult to come up with 15.
>
>Adrian

I'm actually surprised the number 38 wasn't used. This is the number of "worthy" participants that ran at least 5 events.

If you look carefully at the ProRally statistics from 2001 to 2002, you will see that the number of entrants was DOWN, and the number of entrants that participated in X number of events was also down. Seems to me that the Resurgence of ProRally took a small step back in 2002. Could escalating costs have anything to do with it?

 

[Kartwheel]

RE: Dude Spitzwater

>So what if he fudges it a little, I see no harm in what that
>says, it is just a different approach.

It would not be a problem if he did not have a long trail of Orwellian doublespeak and outright lies in his past. This is just a continuation of, as Randy so aptly out it, a "Pathalogical" problem.

 

[Morgan]

RE: I don't understand....

>If you look carefully at the ProRally statistics from 2001
>to 2002, you will see that the number of entrants was DOWN,
>and the number of entrants that participated in X number of
>events was also down. Seems to me that the Resurgence of
>ProRally took a small step back in 2002. Could escalating
>costs have anything to do with it?

Maybe for some but there were plenty of people willing to pay the price. If you look, the expensive Mitsubishis made up 23% and Subarus made up 34% of the entries with the next being VW at 9%.

 

[Morgan]

RE: Dude Spitzwater

>>So what if he fudges it a little, I see no harm in what that
>>says, it is just a different approach.
>
>It would not be a problem if he did not have a long trail of
>Orwellian doublespeak and outright lies in his past. This is
>just a continuation of, as Randy so aptly out it, a
>"Pathalogical" problem.


That's true! but in this instance it has no negative effect (that I can see) on any of the competitors, so it is really just a waste of time to be flaming him about this, or is it that people here will look for any excuse to go after him?

 

[Kartwheel]

RE: I don't understand....

Dude, you still dont get it. Nobody is against letting someone spend as much as they want, what we (the unworthy) are against the systematic and intentional efforts of the powers that be to EXLUDE those who cant/wont. I dont care one bit how much someone else wants to spend, good for them if they want to spend $100k on an independant Open class car, but why try to force others to do it also just so some clown can look good in fabricated press releases?

 

[Lancia037Rally]

RE: Dude Spitzwater

>Plenty of people have
>exaggerated or worded press releases to their advantage in
>order to make something sound better than it really is, do
>you really want him to tell it how it really is?

I don't want to be lied to especially with the results being that anyone associated with SCCA rally may lose their credibility when we are caught.
In the quote Kurt says there was a survey. If there was, what else was asked? Who was surveyed? What were the results?
If none had been done it would have been safe to say there was a trend but don't lie and say you've done work that you have not.
Marketing is doing research and then stating the results to your advantage. Not just making up what sounds good.
Other #s he has provided have been bogus to make rally look marketable. If a team uses them to attract a potential sponsor, then the team would be dishonest.

 

[Foghorn]

RE: Dude Spitzwater

>So what if he fudges it a little, I see no harm in what that
>says, it is just a different approach. He is trying to make
>the sport appeal to companies...

Let's see, substitute the word "Enron" for "the sport" and "investors" for "companies" and it sounds amazingly like what a former company's position was.

Just because the scale is different doesn't necessarily make the means justify the end.

Kent Gardam