Rally America: Internet Saves U.S. Rallying?

I had no idea either, as much time as I spend on the interwebs seeking out good info for M/A I had never come across this Rally America info until Autoweek had a blurb.

 

If both of you ever get the chance to visit up in Northern Vermont I'd love to give you a tour of rallye central .

ps... I designed Vermont SportsCar corporate identity back in 1996 and they proudly still use this to date. My neighbor runs rallygrafix.com and supplies and applies all the vinyl (whoa that's a lot of vinyl) to all the Subaru's at Vermont SportsCar and Antoine's cars over at Libra Racing.

 

They run (or have run) an event just up,the road from me. The bad part about these races for fans is that you normally can only watch from a single spot for the days racing as you never have enough time to get to another spot for the next stage before the roads close. Definitely some great action, but having to stand around and wait for the stage to start, then get to see the cars race by around 30 sec's apart and then maybe have a chance to get to a later stage before the roads close if you are lucky. This calls for some real dedication.

 

If the marshals (maybe US rallies use a different name for those controlling the stages) let spectators stand right alongside the landing point of jumping rally cars, protected from the cars by just a wire fence, I can see the rallies getting a lot of publicity of entirely the wrong sort quite quickly.... Even the spectators in that clip were playing run-away when cars landed slightly off-line. Maybe the organisers feel "there's no such thing as bad publicity"?

 

Well being from the old dark days & rallying when Phil Berg & I were young pups I have to say I personally liked the way it was done in the good old days.

We used no pace notes, & we did blind rallies. Although sometimes local knowledge helped a bit. Drive as fast as you can & read the roads the best that you can. If you didn't read the roads well you were slow or you crashed out. Simple concept really. We also ran most of our rally miles at night. I don't think R/A does too much of that, but I'm not sure. Lost touch with US rally after SCCA dropped it like a hot potato.

It always amazed me at the turn of speed the hot shoes of my day did at night on a stage that was strange to them with only their rally lights, their reactions & car control keeping them from a bad time in the woods. Buffum, Millen, Wolfe & Jones were my idols then & still are.

Things really went south as far as I'm concerned when Subaru brought the Brits over to cherry pick the US rally series. They were fast & oh so talented, but they could not drive without pace notes. So instead of letting the Brits learn the ropes the old fashioned way, the SCCA decreed that we would now have pace notes. Wonderful for the Brits not so much for the US teams who had never used them. Screwed the whole sport IMHO.

I was never a top seeded driver, but I had worked my way up to seed 4 by the time I retired from rally to go racing on the pavement. It was the time of my life.

Today with the costs of things not many folks will get the chance to drive a rally car in the heat of competition, & that is sad.

My only regret is I gave up rally for track racing.

Sorry for my long rambling post.....

 

You still have a chance Crash. MINI will sell you a ride. :lol:

Jim

 

Send me some money Jim.... Lots of money!!!

 

That job can be all yours Steve, because I'm NOT getting in a MINI Ralleyman with him. :lol:

Jim