Printable View
Using VW SA Polo S2000 homologation.Quote:
Originally Posted by br21
Anyway, besides getting a lowest price, to allow feasible private tuners homologations would also mean to have a larger diversity of models and brands in rally; I can't understand why people can't find that positive...are you all pleased with having only a handful of R2's and other with R5's?
Complete asphalt developement was done in Belgium. VW SA was behind the paperwork but not doing any asphalt development.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rally Power
Feel free to bring any example which supports Your theory that this can work. We've seen more than 10 years of trying with plenty of private or semi-works projects some even of reasonable quality (Proton S2000) but none succeeded.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rally Power
No, it didn't work because it brought cars useful only for fun lowing gentlemen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rally Power
I’m amazed; apparently you’re satisfy with having only a bunch of R2 models, costing close to €100K, and a handful of R5’s, costing over €250K, as only valid options for top national and international rally series.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirek
The reason of not being possible to get examples of successful privately developed rally cars examples is quite obvious: FIA rules are meant to undermine private tuners. Even on RGT (a manu free class), only a few teams managed to cope with FIA expensive bureaucracy.
Above all, I’m talking (and that seems to be also MN article purpose) about making the sport more affordable for beginners and privateers, by having a larger range of rally cars provided by private tuners, alongside those developed by manus official tuners, having top drivers and teams in mind.
It's You who said so, not me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rally Power
But anyway, both R2 and R5 are among the very most succesful formulas FIA has ever established and there is nothing more stupid than to change what is not broken. Now the problem with R2 is that there is a need for new technical formula following latest trends in car manufacturing, i.e. the move to the turbo engines because no manufacturers produce 1.6 NA engines anymore. But R2 were around for 10 years and they were hugely successful in that period.
No, the real reason is that creating successful cars needs huge money and plenty of very good people. Even if the privateer manages to create good car he can't offer adequate services to the customers. As an example the story of our localy developed Fabia R2. The car was build with quite serious financial backing. It had very good engine and gearing and overall good potential and it was homologated but it was proven to be near impossible to create functional customer support structure, i.e. spare parts delivery, engineers on demand etc. Also despite all the effort the details is what makes the best the best and that's where the manufacturers were always ahead. In the end the cars nearly disappeared which made them another example of this ever repeating story.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rally Power
Since I started to follow rallysport I keep hearing the same but the successful periods of my time in the sport were never symbolized by low cost and cheap cars. In fact it was exactly opposite. The most successful periods were always those with expensive and very spectacular cars which brought crowds to the stages and stirred the attention of the media. Speaking for CZ the by far worst period was when gr.N was the top category and the most successful was when WRC cars were allowed (by the public attention by far) and later again with S2000/R5 cars. I believe that applies for plenty of other countries. Everybody was claiming that WRC cars were crazy expensive yet in those times many teams could afford them because the public and sponsors were interested in them. On the other hand You could see how miserably the British experiment with cheap and affordable national championship ended.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rally Power
Anyway back to the topic. What the sport needs is not non-factory R5 cars. It needs update of R2 formula to bring new cars based on the latest generation of stock cars. And it needs a big support from FIA towards projects like Opel Adam cup which is absolutely perfect platform to start rallying with.
This is not about having cheap rally cars instead of expensive ones. This is about finding ways to make possible to have both, as currently only the expensive cars are available.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirek
Having light R2 and R5 categories would be interesting, especially if private tuners could get involved on their homologation.
They have R1 spec cars already being built which are fairly basic version of the R2/R3 cars.
R2 cars can be had for 55-70k depending on options so not quite 100k.
R1 formula isn't really working. There is definitely a lot of space for improvement there.
Isn't that the problem? All up to R5 formula 3 are not working out of 5. In my math that's bad.
Of course it is a problem but it is not a problem of R5 where this discussion started and what this topic is about.