R-Classes News

[janvanvurpa]

I had this page open for a few hours because I couldn't decide wether to reply or not. I'm still not sure if it is the right thing to do, but here it goes.

Navtheace, you sound like a broken record or a human version of a bot. You seem to post, if not all the time lately, but at least most of the time the same kind of bitter comments regarding the World Rally Cars and the R categories. I understand that everyone has a right to their opinion but this is a bit silly. There have been plenty of counter arguments to your posts but it seems that you've decided to ignore them and come up with the same kind of negative posts.

Regarding your last post. There are manufacture teams only at the highest level. WRC is for the manufactures, all the R categories are more for the privateers and private teams. For example Honda, in Estonia the Honda Civic Type-R R3 has been quite popular among the fastest FWD drivers. And if that is not enough, then please explain me why there are so many group N Lancers and Imprezas in rallying.

Watching shopping carts drive on nice roads isn't interesting for the general audience.

Well he's one of many who are obviously dismayed at seeing ever declining entries...
There's lots of factors and differences from country to country and culture to culture, but the one thing that is clear is with perfect hindsight of course, is they further the sport has gotten away from cars people can directly relate to, the more the cars become technological marvels akin to spaceships, the less anybody give a hoot. Manufacturers, drivers, spectators. (judging from 2 MFGs, 31 entries)

But you're right too. I walked past a new Fiesta yesterday, they're very rare here in the land of SUVs and Minivan, and since I have crawled around one previously studying the build of the road car and looking at the suspension (I make rally car suspension, so it was with a critical eye) I looked for a second and that was it.. Nothing really interesting, just a nice little fwd car hardly different than an old MKII Golf from 1985 (except the engine is only 1,6 16v vs a 1,8 8v, whoopie I know what we can do with the VW motor, I don't know what we can do with the Fiesta motor)
Nice car. but as the young 'uns say "meh"

I've looked at as much British Rally Champ-peen stuff as i could stand---about 6 minutes. Some of the cars sound nice but they sure as hell aren't anything I'm going to spend time thinking about or watching, not when there's exciting stuff like Finland's F-cup a click away...

As for the Honda Type-R, we saw Finnish Junior Championship being nearly a single make cup and i asked the resident Finn who pointed out the class was limited to Homologated cars and max 1,6 liter... That explains that. Who knows what rules set sometimes leads to local dominance..

As for so many Mister-burus and Sububitchis, they're EASY, they do most of the work for you in stock form and they're fun enough for a certain % of guys.. Here in Fortress America™ in the last 10-11 years Sub-a-rats alone have been often little more than half the whole field, but in some more civilised countries they are maybe only 10%...
I saw a couple of years ago a list of individual cars entered in all of Finland for the whole year and the most popular car remained Escort MkII (rwd) followed by Corolla rwd, Starlets (rwd) BMW (rwd), Volvo (rwd), Opel (rwd) then somewhere all versions of Evo.....and 5 Subarus for the whole year.

People who know what the sport is voting with their pocket books because the rules allow them.

Obviously it would be a different picture is the rules makers were stupid enough to require Homologated cars for everybody.
Thankfully their stupidity is limited..

We are not so fortunate in North America.

[Mirek]

I think that the most important point of today is that nowadays car market is no more driven by sport success. Now 9 of 10 people buy the car because it is big enough and cheap. Reliable enough, having low fuel consumption, having big boot or good EuroNCAP rating. Maybe UK is different but from my surroundings I know only very few specimen who bought a car because it is fast and sporty. With more and more expensive fuel it won't change.

Especially in regards to that for any manufacturer it is way less expensive to make a team of fifty people to build few pieces of purpose built rallycar. It brings same marketing value but saves billions which would be needed for serial production of anything useful for rally. Now they can produce just simple cheap cars.

[noel157]

Where did the other R4T/R5 thread go? Or where they combined? If so posts are missing. Confused.

[noel157]

Thanks TB.

Was it always there?

[noel157]

Thanks. No I thought there was only the one thread but I've been reading both but forgot where the other one was.
Perhaps the other one could be combined with this one. Makes sense.

[navtheace]

R1T to be discussed by the FIA on 28th September I have heard.

1.4 turbo category. It will probably be strangled with a 29mm restrictor

[Mirek]

1.4T with 29 mm restrictor is Abarth 500 R3T. For R1 that is nonsense because such car has cca 180 Hp. Normal R1A car has like 100 Hp and R1B something like 130-140 Hp. I would agree to put 1.4T in R2 category but sure not in R1.

[Mirek]

First start and first victory for STI R4 saloon and Toshi Arai. Gaurav Gill (leader) retired with broken clutch, Alister McRae with overheating and Juha Salo crashed. So no S2000 finished.

[kober]

First start and first victory for STI R4 saloon and Toshi Arai. [...] So no S2000 finished.

What's the difference, approximately in seconds per km of a special stage, between R4 and S2000 cars?

[Mirek]

There are so many variables that You can't get some nice single value. There are stages where R4 can be even faster and there are stages where R4 have absolutely no chance.