Been watching these newbie discussions, lots of ideas.
One thing we cannot afford to do is turn off potencial new teams to the sport. The current automotive market has produced cars that are pretty damn fast stock. It's hard to justify(in my mind anyway) "racing" a car that is half as fast/powerfull as my wifes Forester XT. My point is, that we are going to see people contunially approch this sport with one option in their mind, to rally a WRX, or Evo, or eclipse. A guy that drives a Evo for a streetcar is not going to dig even a potent g-2 car, if these people cannot rally what they are motivated to rally, they will do something else with their car, time and money. Some people interested in rally are enthusiasts of a brand first, and rallist second, they do not care about what is the correct progression to make them selves the best possible driver. They only want to rally their WRX or Evo for fun.
It's obvious the human element is really the issue here, a lower classed car does lessen the potencial danger, but this notion is highly questionable as we all know it boils down to the human, making a mistake. Any car is dangerous with an idiot.
One thing that did strike me as interesting was brought up by Doug Havir. He pointed out that we need to identify the "manics", as they are most likley to be the problem.
What if we were to require a newbie, regardless of car class and prevoius motorsport experiance(which by the way is NOT an indicator of danger) to have a "sponsor", not a money paying sponsor, but a person within the rally community that has vouched for, and will tend to, the new team during the teams first 9 co's. Kind of a shaparone.
As in, Jerry the racecar driver, has seen WRC on TV. He took a couple buddies to a local event and was hooked. But before Jerry can get into an event, he needs to find a liecenced guy/gal within the rally community that has already finished the 9 co's, and is willing to be responsable for the new team during probation. The Sponsor or "shaparone" reports to event steward on progress and issues during the events. Steward can then make notes and voice concerns to the team, and the RA staff for future monitoring. Like, "hey that #so and so is on the entery list for rallywamo, at our event last month they were shetchy and did this, keep an eye on em"
Something like this might work for everyone. We the rally community have to put effort into this, the above senario allows us to shape the >culture< of rally with regards to what is correct and incorrect behavior. We must be proactive, not make rules ala SCCA, and let them be words on paper to cover our ass later.
Peter