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Single Make Series Memories
Not rally-related but a true-life experience...
I ran in the old Rabbit/Bilstein series that supported Super-Vee and CART or Can-Am and here were some of the things that attracted me...
It was a car that was almost tough enough to survive a season and the things that it needed to not fall apart in front of all those fans were written in the rules as mandatory and made very affordable to buy (shocks, tires that didn't blow up and oil pan baffles).
The cars were nearly stock and the rules were policed but not well enough for my liking. (VW did not supply built cars).
There was some room to make some side money. I offered roll cages and seats and prepped some cars and did some testing and instructing/coaching.
If the rules were changed, a package showed up to update the car if you'd run most of the season the previous year. (example: crank and pistons arrived when cars went from 15 to 1600cc. When went from Scirocco to Rabbit, press and test cars were made available).
There was an entry class and a supporting purse for locals to try out the class in a junior spec. (example: an SSC rabbit could run in the pro race without the Bilsteins and wide Goodyears {both were associate sponsors} and you could collect overall money plus a bonus. If you liked the series, you were invited to upgrade and run the rest of the races.)
The purses were OK, if you spent wisely and finished 5th or better, you could pay expenses and do alright. (example: 1979 dollars: 1st=$2,000, $10,000/race, 15th got entry fee back) Top 3 got to go to Germany for a race and the same for the Germans who came to our season-ender (except I got screwed out of it).
Ran with real pro races in front of real people and real race teams. I got to mingle with real pro drivers and see what it was really like during real race weekends.
----
some not so good things:
There was no serious resale value once the class evaporated, the cars were too modified for showroom and they went into Showroom Stock Enduro (SSE), a catch-all Regional class for orphans from Renault Alliance Cup, Playboy Challenge, Firehawk and others, so the cars were still usable somehow.
The class was a 3rd class filler, if there was a lull, like when the INDY cars guys didn't want to qualify with the sun in their eyes, it was, "Rabbits grid in 10 minutes!"
Rich guys could still outspend with back-up cars, blueprinted everything, crews, transportation, real hotel rooms and testing made racing with a car driven to the track and slept in a little lopsided but possible (I won one race and finished in the top 5 usually).
---
Sure, everyone wants to race for free, but if the competition is good and you feel you are good enough, you take the chance. If the series isn't policed and promoted half-assed (Rabbit/Bilstein was boarder-line in that aspect), why bother (examples of promotion disasters: Shelby can-am, Panoz GT-1, Pro SpecRacer-Renault, then Pro SRF, Toyota Racer).
rz
Not rally-related but a true-life experience...
I ran in the old Rabbit/Bilstein series that supported Super-Vee and CART or Can-Am and here were some of the things that attracted me...
It was a car that was almost tough enough to survive a season and the things that it needed to not fall apart in front of all those fans were written in the rules as mandatory and made very affordable to buy (shocks, tires that didn't blow up and oil pan baffles).
The cars were nearly stock and the rules were policed but not well enough for my liking. (VW did not supply built cars).
There was some room to make some side money. I offered roll cages and seats and prepped some cars and did some testing and instructing/coaching.
If the rules were changed, a package showed up to update the car if you'd run most of the season the previous year. (example: crank and pistons arrived when cars went from 15 to 1600cc. When went from Scirocco to Rabbit, press and test cars were made available).
There was an entry class and a supporting purse for locals to try out the class in a junior spec. (example: an SSC rabbit could run in the pro race without the Bilsteins and wide Goodyears {both were associate sponsors} and you could collect overall money plus a bonus. If you liked the series, you were invited to upgrade and run the rest of the races.)
The purses were OK, if you spent wisely and finished 5th or better, you could pay expenses and do alright. (example: 1979 dollars: 1st=$2,000, $10,000/race, 15th got entry fee back) Top 3 got to go to Germany for a race and the same for the Germans who came to our season-ender (except I got screwed out of it).
Ran with real pro races in front of real people and real race teams. I got to mingle with real pro drivers and see what it was really like during real race weekends.
----
some not so good things:
There was no serious resale value once the class evaporated, the cars were too modified for showroom and they went into Showroom Stock Enduro (SSE), a catch-all Regional class for orphans from Renault Alliance Cup, Playboy Challenge, Firehawk and others, so the cars were still usable somehow.
The class was a 3rd class filler, if there was a lull, like when the INDY cars guys didn't want to qualify with the sun in their eyes, it was, "Rabbits grid in 10 minutes!"
Rich guys could still outspend with back-up cars, blueprinted everything, crews, transportation, real hotel rooms and testing made racing with a car driven to the track and slept in a little lopsided but possible (I won one race and finished in the top 5 usually).
---
Sure, everyone wants to race for free, but if the competition is good and you feel you are good enough, you take the chance. If the series isn't policed and promoted half-assed (Rabbit/Bilstein was boarder-line in that aspect), why bother (examples of promotion disasters: Shelby can-am, Panoz GT-1, Pro SpecRacer-Renault, then Pro SRF, Toyota Racer).
rz
