How to revitalise rallying?

How to revitalise rallying?

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Twincam16

Original Poster:

27,646 posts

257 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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As above really, I just thought I'd throw this open to the PH Massive.

Back in the '90s, rallying was my favourite motor sport bar none, and I can remember rushing home to catch Top Gear Motorsport with Tony Mason to see the coverage of the day's action. Nearly every manufacturer seemed to be involved, we'd get full round-up coverage at the end of each day, the drivers were recognisable superstars (Colin McRae was as well-known as any premiership footballer back in 1994), they sold loads of computer games off the back of it so there was clear interest among young fans as much as adults, and rallying was huge.

I'd like to see it back where it was. Any ideas?

My 2p:

-Merge the IRC and WRC. More rounds, more cars, more manufacturers and more drivers can only be a good thing, plus I suspect the likes of Mikkelsen are more than capable of holding their own against Loeb et al.

-Base the cars on road-legal production models. I don't mean some expensive, economically unviable homologation run. Set the rules so the cars on the rally stage have to be capable of being bought and specced if you had deep enough pockets. Take Ford for example - You can buy a Fiesta and take it to Mountune for modifications. Whether in-house or privateer-based, this process should always be possible for road cars. They needn't specifically have to sell a certain number, and obviously this will help shift a load of hot hatches by association. I'm almost tempted to suggest they can only use 4WD if the production car has it.

-Bring back touring stages. Rather than having everything packed into a small area or even an arena, they should have stages all over the country with transfer stages run to regularity rules in between. Physically spreading out the action means they can scoop up more spectators.

-They need a major terrestrial/digital broadcaster behind them. This needn't necessarily be a front-line channel (BBC1/2, ITV1, C4 etc), simply because I recognise that it's not going to grab as big an audience as, say, the football or the athletics. However, the superb entire-day's-motor-sport coverage we get on ITV4 on BTCC racedays suggests there's capacity for it. Perhaps a 'rallying roundup' could be added to the end of the BTCC programme, or they could do a more substantial show on non-BTCC weekends. Still, ITV4 proves there's mileage in non-F1 motor sport coverage.

Over to you - how do we get rallying back to where it was in the '90s?

anonymous-user

53 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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due to the nature of the event, long distances through woods etc, its such a labour intensive branch of motorsport that its difficult to do much to revitalise it save for tinkering about with the eligibility criteria.

they need to make it as easy as starting sprinting becuase thats what it effectively is albeit on loose surfaces. personally, i would introduce a class for single seater buggies using sat nav or something. organisers need to make it more cost effective for comeptitors and reduce the need to have half a dozen mates and things to help out.
if that means purpose built stages 2-4 miles long in a forest or something then that might be the answer.


Twincam16

Original Poster:

27,646 posts

257 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
pablo said:
due to the nature of the event, long distances through woods etc, its such a labour intensive branch of motorsport that its difficult to do much to revitalise it save for tinkering about with the eligibility criteria.

they need to make it as easy as starting sprinting becuase thats what it effectively is albeit on loose surfaces. personally, i would introduce a class for single seater buggies using sat nav or something. organisers need to make it more cost effective for comeptitors and reduce the need to have half a dozen mates and things to help out.
if that means purpose built stages 2-4 miles long in a forest or something then that might be the answer.
Thing is, I often find myself out on walks thinking 'this track would make for a cracking rally stage'. There are plenty of places they could be run - perhaps in conjunction with the National Trust? - and there are all manner of historic rallies which manage to use forest and gravel stages all over the country - so why are the modern cars confined to Wales and Ireland?

I like your buggy idea. It goes back to my idea re. eligibility - you should be able to buy a hot hatch from a showroom, take it to someone like Mountune or Prodrive, and emerge with something identical to that used by the teams. That way, it's easier for privateers to get involved and fill the grid. Also, the onus isn't going to be on the manufacturers to justify homologation runs - they'll become the bread-and-butter of the (usually British) motor sport preparation outfits, but you'll still be able to buy one to use on the road if you go to the right place. Also, it lends the various manufacturers' cars extra credibility that they can play up to with tribute editions that can be great to drive but don't necessarily cost them too much to produce - I'm thinking of Skoda's Fabia Monte Carlo edition here.

I think part of the disconnect between rallying and its audience has happened as a result of the cars. Back in the Group A era, because of the homologation rules there was a notion that you could buy (or aspire to buy) one of the homologation cars and emulate your heroes. Nowadays, whenever you see a 4WD turbo rally Fiesta in action, yes it looks great, but you know you can never buy one, so it loses some relevance.

However, if they were rallying in what essentially was a Fiesta ST, all stripped out with an entire Mountune catalogue thrown at it, that attainability comes back, and you go out and buy a Fiesta ST because of it.

I guess rallying needs the equivalent of F1's downsizing from traction-controlled V10s and Schumacher/Ferrari dominance to V8s and cheaper cars allowing more teams to take part. I suppose the NGTC rules in the BTCC are similar - although the cars aren't exactly similar to those you can buy in showrooms, the rules are such that you couldn't just run a total silhouette car. The drive has to go to the same end, the bodywork can't be too radically altered, and generally speaking there's usually a turbo petrol engine fitted to a model with an aggressive bodykit somewhere in the range cashing in on it.

The BTCC has gone from a tiresome Vauxhall-dominated procession to one of the most exciting motor sport series on the planet in a scant few seasons. Rallying could learn from this.

Nick M

3,624 posts

222 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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Apart from the debacle of TV coverage (I wouldn't know where to watch rallying even if I wanted to now...), meaning it has dropped out of sight for most casual observers, and the lack of competition due to the absence of manufacturers (linked to TV coverage), my main gripe with rallying is the cars and the fact that they're too good !

At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious, the appeal of rallying (and in a similar vein, touring cars from the Super Touring days) stemmed from it being done in cars which:

a) you could associate with road-going cars;
b) you could realistically aspire to owning; and
c) you actually *wanted* to own !

Ford, BMC, Vauxhall, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Lancia, etc., etc. - all rallied cars in various different eras which you could buy and run on the road without breaking the bank. Even Group B, with all it's attendant excess, inspired people to buy cars like Audi Quattros and Peugeot 205s, and even the homologation versions weren't *that* expensive (I remember my dad's friend trying to decide between a Sierra RS500 and a Metro 6R4).

But these days, with rally cars bearing no direct relationship to anything you can buy from the few manufacturers taking part, people can't associate the cars they see on stage with the cars in the showroom. You could buy an Escort Cosworth, or Lancia Delta Integrale wiht 4WD and a big turbo, but now the closest you'll get to a Fiesta rally car is a 2.0 FWD thing with some go-faster stripes !! It's just not the same.

So, maybe to turn it round the other way and end this with a question, maybe one way to revive rallying is for manufacturers to go back to building some 'homologation special' versions of the rally cars so people can buy what they see on the stages ? That way if people see 'rally cars' on the road it might spark their interest to check out rallying again, and maybe even buy a car which is, at the end of the day, what rallying is about, i.e. marketing.

John D.

17,670 posts

208 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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There has been some talk of introducing a kind of GT category with Porsche GT3s and Aston DB9s competing with other similar NA RWD cars. Would be fantastic IMHO but there's a lack of appetite from the manufacturers I think.

A bit of proper noise and arse out cornering would surely tick a few boxes for fans.

Nick M

3,624 posts

222 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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John D. said:
There has been some talk of introducing a kind of GT category with Porsche GT3s and Aston DB9s competing with other similar NA RWD cars. Would be fantastic IMHO but there's a lack of appetite from the manufacturers I think.
Probbaly because those brands don't necessarily want to be associated with rallying - Porsche and Aston have built their brand reputations from racing, with dalliances into rallying being sideline projects born out of specific circumstances / opportunities, e.g. the Dakar Porsche 959.

EDLT

15,421 posts

205 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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The problem with production class cars is that the Fords and Citroens will just be replaced by Subarus and Mitsubishis. If you want more variety you either have to allow more heavily modified cars, putting the sport back where it is now, or banning 4WD making WRC much (much, much, much) slower than IRC/PWRC and every national championship.

To get a variety of production cars AND keep 4WD you'd would have to stack the rules in such a way that it favours small 4x4s/soft roaders. scratchchin

But most of all rallying needs to be made cheaper for competitors. Look at the BTCC, they're replacing the expensive S2000 cars with cheaper NGTC spec cars and suddenly they've gone from three different models to around ten.*

Having events in smaller areas has actually improved TV coverage, spreading the rally across and entire country will either reduce the amount of cameras per stage or push up costs. To get rallying back onto a terrestrial/freeview channel you'd have to somehow convince the commercial rights holder than rallying isn't as popular in the UK as it once was and they need to stop asking for huge amounts of money to show a niche sport.



­*Although I'd argue that it could be made cheaper still and more entertaining if they binned the sequential boxes and used a H-pattern one. The same applies to all motorsport, flappy paddles were a terrible idea.

Twincam16

Original Poster:

27,646 posts

257 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
Nick M said:
So, maybe to turn it round the other way and end this with a question, maybe one way to revive rallying is for manufacturers to go back to building some 'homologation special' versions of the rally cars so people can buy what they see on the stages ? That way if people see 'rally cars' on the road it might spark their interest to check out rallying again, and maybe even buy a car which is, at the end of the day, what rallying is about, i.e. marketing.
Well, I'd argue that rallying is as much about endurance and development as marketing, but that's by the by.

I think part of the problem with the 'homologation' era was that it cost the manufacturers too much, so they pulled out in droves. Think about it - if you've got to set aside part of your production line to build 200/500/1000 'special' versions of a car you already build, it starts to look unforgivably expensive on the balance sheet.

However, if the car had to start life as a production-line showroom car (albeit the hottest version), and the transformation from road car to rally car was handled by an outside tuner (in the manner of the BTCC), then it'd be easier for manufacturers to manage and market their 'rally specials' (they'd just have to build 'tribute' versions of their hot hatches), what would look like hard work to a manufacturer becomes a great lifeblood contract for a third-party motor sport preparation firm, and punters could buy these cars in the showroom knowing they were only an overhaul away from being the cars on the rally stage - then they'd be simultaneously cheaper for the manufacturers, better news for Britain's motor sport sector, more appealing to buyers and easier to compete in.

Furyblade_Lee

4,107 posts

223 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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Rallying has bewildered me for the last 10 years , not least since Citroën winning pretty much everything and not being able to buy an even remotely exciting or real performance Citroën from their showrooms.

The only way to get a show back on track would be to do what Alan Gow did with Supertouring Touring Cars in the BTCC, get as many manufacturers involved and cost reasonable ( but even that inevitably spiralled out of control with costs )

I'd love to see a generic off the shelf floorpan, with RWD or 4WD transmission ( preferably RWD ) and control suspension and rollcage installed. Any manufacturer can then purchase one, add it's own N/A or turbocharged powerplant and it's own silhouette bodyshell mimicking one of it's current models. Aerodynamics controlled too. BUT the cars must be to a set price and privateers must be able to purchase a car off the shelf from whoever they want. Maybe a limit of £300k for a car?? And engines like in F1, have to be lifed to last a certain time, have rev limits, and breath through restrictors.

The spectators don't really know to the eye if cars are 1/10th faster of slower to the eye, all they want is the noise, jumps, slides, colour and drama of a rally car. And these cars need to look exciting, hint of group B where you clearly know what the car is but know it is special. Visual road car replicas could then spawn with regular FWD and tuned turbos to hint at old-school homologation specials.


Unfortunately in today's climate the good old days of bottomless pockets are long gone.

EDLT

15,421 posts

205 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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Furyblade_Lee said:
I'd love to see a generic off the shelf floorpan, with RWD or 4WD transmission ( preferably RWD ) and control suspension and rollcage installed. Any manufacturer can then purchase one, add it's own N/A or turbocharged powerplant and it's own silhouette bodyshell mimicking one of it's current models. Aerodynamics controlled too. BUT the cars must be to a set price and privateers must be able to purchase a car off the shelf from whoever they want. Maybe a limit of £300k for a car?? And engines like in F1, have to be lifed to last a certain time, have rev limits, and breath through restrictors.
That wouldn't be much of a saving, a WRC car already costs between £300,000 and £400,000 depending on who you ask. A simple spaceframe and standardised suspension doesn't need to be high-tech if everyone is using the same thing.

Furyblade_Lee

4,107 posts

223 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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Yes, but I doubt you could go to Ford and buy an off the peg car for 300k to the same spec as them. You will always be a step behind I'd imagine, maybe even a year? And the running and development cost of each car must be horrific, trying to find time in suspension etc. If that was all standardised, even in a £300k car, running costs , development and on even servicing should be slashed.

Twincam16

Original Poster:

27,646 posts

257 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
EDLT said:
Furyblade_Lee said:
I'd love to see a generic off the shelf floorpan, with RWD or 4WD transmission ( preferably RWD ) and control suspension and rollcage installed. Any manufacturer can then purchase one, add it's own N/A or turbocharged powerplant and it's own silhouette bodyshell mimicking one of it's current models. Aerodynamics controlled too. BUT the cars must be to a set price and privateers must be able to purchase a car off the shelf from whoever they want. Maybe a limit of £300k for a car?? And engines like in F1, have to be lifed to last a certain time, have rev limits, and breath through restrictors.
That wouldn't be much of a saving, a WRC car already costs between £300,000 and £400,000 depending on who you ask. A simple spaceframe and standardised suspension doesn't need to be high-tech if everyone is using the same thing.
Also, wouldn't a spaceframed R/4WD version of a FWD car have the same problem as today's WRC cars, in that they're nothing like the cars you can buy in showrooms?

300bhp/ton

41,030 posts

189 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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I agree rallying used to be my all time favourite thing ever!!! I too grew up watching the likes of Mäkinen, McRae and Kankkunen and I still absolutely love watching 70's and early 80's era rallying.

For me it's two thing that I think have been lost:


-fun
-variety


Today's regs mean all the cars are a mix of boring techo gadgetry and all pretty much look the same. So much so it's hardly worth actually having different teams. I also hate how far removed they are from production cars too. For me this was the crux of it, knowing you could buy and drive something similar if you wanted too.


All they need to do is allow greater variety and creativity and restrict it to actual proper production cars.


As much as Grp B was fantastic, I think it sort of highlights the trouble rallying is now in. As in highly specialist purpose built machine designed only to rally. I much prefer watching Mk2 Escorts, SD1 Rover's, TR7 V8's and the like.

Vocal Minority

8,582 posts

151 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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The problem isn't nesc the cars - it is the lack of manufacturer invovlement and drivers. - Also interest in this country will have cooled due to the fact Messrs McRae and Burns are no longer of this mortal coil.

I am all for the reduction of costs by making the cars more basic. I understand the major cost in modern rallying is all of the clever electronic jiggery pokery. If the road car don't have it, the rally car shouldn't. Though mechanical parts, eg. engines, clutches, gearboxes, suspension can be beefed up for spectacle's sake - this is relatively cheap.

And everything is relative.

Nick M

3,624 posts

222 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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Furyblade_Lee said:
Rallying has bewildered me for the last 10 years , not least since Citroën winning pretty much everything and not being able to buy an even remotely exciting or real performance Citroën from their showrooms.
Exactly - as a marketing exercise it's failed if people can't buy a car they actually want.

And as an engineering exercise it's pointless as little or none of the technology is transferred over to the road cars they sell.

So, something of a lose lose situation...

dtrump

2,120 posts

190 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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Furyblade_Lee said:
Rallying has bewildered me for the last 10 years , not least since Citroën winning pretty much everything and not being able to buy an even remotely exciting or real performance Citroën from their showrooms.
That has always been one of the biggest head scratchers for me

Why no hot citroen? 8 championships and no meaningful loeb special which you can buy (as far as Im aware)

Even if it was a limited run of 50 worldwide and cost 150k, if the spec was right, theyd shift the lot imo

Nick M

3,624 posts

222 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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Vocal Minority said:
The problem isn't nesc the cars - it is the lack of manufacturer invovlement and drivers
I'm going to disagree, in that I think the problem is (at least in part) down to the cars. They don't excite me !! They're clearly being driven quickly, but the drivers no longer seem to be on the back foot - they're not having to fight to control the cars, to tame them even, just being smooth and quick and efficient. Boring.

I know people hark on about Group B being the peak of rallying, but in terms of spectator interest it was - it was huge, it was exciting, it was scary and it was dangerous as fk ! And expensive too. But as a marketing exercise, until things went tits up in terms of safety, it allowed certain brands to reinvent themselves and to sell cars which, while bearing no relation to a Group B car, wouldn't have been sold without their rally program.

When Group A was elevated to the top category people bemoaned the slow cars, but the budget savings allowed more manufacturers to compete and there was real competition between Lancia, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Ford, Nissan, Mazda, etc., all of which created spectator interest - the competition helped fill the gap left by the sheer spectacle of Group B. And they all were cars which, in some shape or form, could be bought and driven on the road.

It all started to go tits up when the cars evolved into stange hybrids which weren't available to the general public - the screaming Pug 'kit cars' which in 2WD form gave some 4WD cars a run for their money on tarmac events, the evolution of the Mitsubishi Lancer into some odd looking thing which you could no longer buy, 4WD citroens when there wasn't anything remotely like it you could buy from a Citroen dealership.

About the only manufacturer of late to have come close to using their brand and involvement in rallying in a way the public could relate to was MINI, but then they fked that up good and proper.

So, I look at rally cars now and can't help feeling they're all very clever, and quicker than a Group B car, but they utterly lack any excitement or spectacle which would encourage me to follow rallying with more interest.

ArnageWRC

2,043 posts

158 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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Good question – and interesting discussions. I’m a huge fan, but even I’ve become completely disillusioned with the WRC. Mainly lame events & not powerful enough cars....
Nicky Grist was on The Rally Show 2 weeks ago (Monday nights 7 o'clock, worldrallyradio.com) – he was talking about maybe re-writing the whole regs/rules of the sport. The events aren’t memorable – all identikit events round a central service park – which don’t connect with Joe Public (remember the Sunday MickeyMouse stages on the old RAC?).
Remember 10-15 years ago and the forest car parks would be full of Imprezas, Escort/Sierra Cosworths, Celica GT4s, Sunny GTi-Rs, etc How many DS3’s or Fiesta Zetec-S do you see? Who really wants to buy one of them?
What is good for the WRC isn’t neccessarily what the Manufacturers want – and that is the main problem – they’ve got what they’ve wanted over the last 10 years – and taken the sport down a blind alley.
Jean Todt needs to get tough with them – either it’s his way or the highway!! Is the R-GT formula the answer?

I’ve said before that your Rallyfans seems reasonably happy with the current cars – whereas your general Motorsport fan thinks they’re rubbish – too much grip/traction, and not enough power!!

Nick M

3,624 posts

222 months

Monday 21st May 2012
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Actually, there is another facet of the 'spectacle' which is missing, and that is the rallies themselves.

Back in the day, there would be the Monte Carlo, a snowy rally, one in the wilds of Africa, some scary tarmac rallies and the Acropolis which resulted in lots of pictures of cars with suspension struts poking up through the front wings wink There was variety of both terrain, road surface and scenery.

But now, while most of those events are still on the calendar, due to the sanitising and standardisation of events, it seems harder to distinguish one event from another. They certainly don't command the same 'wow' factor as once they did. They seem less challenging, too easy. 'Killer' Kielder Forest anyone ?

In the pursuit of making things TV friendly, they seem to have killed off any sense of 'adventure' which was associated with rallying.

Twincam16

Original Poster:

27,646 posts

257 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
ArnageWRC said:
What is good for the WRC isn’t neccessarily what the Manufacturers want – and that is the main problem – they’ve got what they’ve wanted over the last 10 years – and taken the sport down a blind alley.
That's why I reckon my idea would work. The 'constructor's championship' would effectively be fought between independent garagistes starting with a showroom model. Given the fact that manufacturers would continue to build hot hatches anyway, it wouldn't actually affect their overheads at all - it would channel interest towards the showroom and they could continue to give us great-looking rally-inspired specials like this:



People would watch the rally, like the car and buy the showroom model knowing that if they wanted to they could get a load of extra bits fitted to make it just the same. It's like homologation in that it has to be proven the car can be built and road-legal, but it doesn't carry the detrimental economies-of-scale cots for the manufacturer.