Sorry guys, I know I'm opening Pandorra's Box but I beg to differ.
Hate me if you want but I always say how the cow eats the cabbage.
Rich you say;
"Personally, I have never liked the hype and publicity considered necessary to grow the sport through greater public awareness and access. I prefer small hometown events. If ProRally sponsors need spectators let them pay for it, including paying for extra-ordinary Spectator Safety measures and liability insurance."
Sorry but you are mistaken, you may be independently wealthy, you may not need a sponsor to support your rally efforts but most club rallyists need all the financial support they can get to continue rallying. Ban spectating and it will really become the Secret Car Club Of America, that would only hurt the exposure. We need spectators, but we need to educate them, we need to educate the safety workers as well, keep in mind we still don't know how the accident happened so whatever we are saying here is relative.
Randy you say;
"Rally too expensive? Roads get rutted? Speeds too high? Get rid of the FIA rules and make a north american series they can copy from us.............
.........Downsides? Fewer europeans making a living mapping anti-lag ECUs, fewer tire sales, fewer special parts sales. Stage times reduced by 10%, fewer pops and bangs and flames. (or are those more good things?)
A divorce from FIA car rules (of which only GpN is affected so far)."
I'd say look into the FIA rules with even more attention, they have been there done that, so far they only had one knee jerk reaction in a similar situation. Better look in CARS rules, look in Sweden's, Finland's, Germany's, England's, make a synthesis, tailor the regulations to suit the conditions we have here there is no need to reinvent the damn wheel there, is nothing wrong with asking for help, when the powers to be drop their arrogance and know-it-all attitude we'll all start moving forward.
Do you think there is anything wrong with making a living by mapping ECU's. There is a demand therefore there is a supply. Yes it will hurt for a while but some other opportunity will present itself.
Do you remember what happened when FIA banned GrB ? They thought it was going to solve all the problems, BTW this is the knee jerk reaction I was referring to. So, we stopped driving 400+ hp cars, what do we have now, WRC, so what if you have 300 hp, you pull 450lb torque, is it safer now because GrBs are abolished ?? Look at Portugal, still the same stupid (sorry I can't call them brave)spectators at the same corner, same jump. But the rally improved 75% as far as safety is concerned, you have incredibly strict safety marshalls, almost like gestapos.
Accidents will happen, that's the nature of the beast. IMHO the best course of action is to learn from them, find out if there was any negligence, if it could have been prevented, improve don't destroy.
I know you have been racing since Mobby Dick was a minnow, so have I, so have a lot of others, there are lots of people who can handle powerful cars, I am just against the idea of letting newcomers drive high horse power AWD cars, we need to prevent them from competing with more car than they can handle (I know it doesn't apply to the case at hand, Peter Malaszuk was seed3). It's a lot more beneficial to learn to rally in a low HP 2WD car, heck it's the right way.
You said, "This solves a bunch of problems and makes us look safer" frankly speaking I don't want to LOOK safer, I want to be safer as much as possible.
Here's an idea (I know I'll be the bad guy again), stop blind rallying, allow recce, and don't give me the stage notes, fair opportunity mumbo jumbo. I don't like to race with someone else's notes, racing doesn't have to be fair. Let every driver make their own notes if they chose to, especially in club events, teach drivers and codrivers how to effectively and safely prepare notes.
That's all I have to say about it.
Cheers
M.Samli
Vive le Prole-ralliat!
