hi alan,
i hear you... as one of many who have invested everything of myself for a few years, i dont want to say i'm disillusioned because it implies an admission of defeat or betrayal of confidence, but it's close to it. and i know how hard you have worked in the past to cultivate your own rally projects.
my opinion is, north american rally has always seen a cyclical process of highs ad lows... right now, i'd say we're coming out of the post-scca dumping of rally, thanks to doug havir, who was there to pick up whatever was leftover. unfortunately, the nasa-john shirley group had hoped to take over the reins as well, but i suppose in the end lost out to doug. the result of which has been the current irl-cart syndrome, which has certainly at best diluted or at worst, weakened the whole scene.
there is certainly plenty of potential. just as quickly as michelin departed as series sponsor, another may appear. i dont know what kind of money michelin brought, but i suspect it wasnt huge anyway. the problems we are facing as far as cost seem to be rising insurance, road fees, and note production. the cost of rallying, or any other racing is not going to go down, thats just life. i will say, coming from road racing (1990-1998) to rally was a real eye-opener as far as costs and logistics. i could run a two-day formula ford race meeting by myself, for less than $1000. in the near future i would find myself spending $5000 on a rally weekend, and thats doing all the build and prep on my own, running a very basic car on used tires.
with road racing, its fair to say i became , and there's that word again, disenchanted with getting protested and torn down all the time by angry rich guys who were spending big bucks on fancy engines only to be whipped by some punk in an old zink Z-10. i was getting small sponsorships which nearly paid my expenses, but i thought there was a chance I could be a professional driver. i was looking for more.
about the same time, i had found a vw golf for my brother that already had a rollcage in it, hoping he was going to go to drivers school and then go road racing with me and my gang.
as fate would have it, chris called me one day and said those fateful words, 'i'm building a rally car'
chris and me happen to have an english mother, so at an early age we knew about minis and all the great things about rallying. when other kids were playing baseball, we were sliding sideways our mothers car around the family friends farm at early ages, dorking around with rusty (really rusty) cooper esses, and the like, so it was pretty natural.
in time, i began to see the light. i started helping my brother out on rallies, and pretty soon, the deal was done to put prorally on speedvision. my brother and i both ran the mount washinton hillclimb, and both got good coverage on tv. i saw that road racing offered nothing like it, and so began to believe rally was the way to go. here was a forum where the emphasis was on driving, which i was pretty good at, and not on how much speed you could buy for the straightaway. we had some good results overall with my old 2wd RX7.
bla bla bla.
after three years giving everything of myself physically and monetarily, and that includes quitting my work to concentrate completely on getting sponsorship, guess what! it didnt work.
it cost me my time, my money, and possibly my marriage, which ended in the middle of it all.
but while i'm close to it, i refuse to be disillusioned about the future of rally. i just tend to be a bit more realistic.
there is plenty of potential, but first things first. we've got to somehow all work together, i.e. competitors, organisers and sanctioning bodies, schedules, etc. as i've said before, and most important, we need to be sensible in how we see ourselves and how we present ourselves to the international community. when you try to portray a sporting event as something bigger than it is to a worldwide audience, the only one youre bullshitting is yourself.
so, dont be discouraged alan, just be realistic. keep working on your rally projects, as i will. there will always be another rally, and we will be there...
...even if we have to go to england or ireland or asia, so be it.
...and if we have to go thrash some formula fords around in between?
so be it.
