2010 South African National Rally championships

[Grant_RSA]

Change is good, the classes have needed a revamp for some time, particularly A7.. Entry level class should be interesting and i think will take some careful thought The Vivo is a proper rally car with S2000 uprights etc, so cant really be put into that category, think you may see that kind of car upgraded to A6 or some sort of Super1600 , along with our old car and Wilkens ex Polo the class should become very competitive, a possible downgrade of old A7's to the "A6" is very possible and cheaper to run.This is all speculation on my part.

Sasol leaving is a worry, but i have my suspicions behind that decision and will see if it comes to fruition next year, i may be smoking my socks.

Changes to events are welcome, will be interesting to see where we will be rallying on the 3 events noted to be changed, im hoping we return to Tzaneen for one of them, its an awesome challenging event.

All in all good changes, the 2 Richards involved know the sport very well and i believe this will for the most part be positive.

[Bruce D]

Well I get a lot of inside info from the organiser's side and I know there is worry there. The pace notes thing will probably work out fine, I know the Tour is being designed around that idea and it works very well. The 2nd possible event in KZN will probably be in the Pietermaritzburg area, there are some really good forest stages up there.

What concerns me is the pace note maker becoming the Route Director during the event. The likelihood of that person knowing the areas in the case of needing to redirect the route is not big. He should rather become a consultant to the route director on the event.

Sasol leaving is bad but at the same time I don't find it a shock. Besides their own event they never put any effort into promotion of the events or the fact that they sponsored the championship. Even the TV coverage wasn't really an issue to them. They acted as though it was just a neat way to avoid tax. Certainly if you look at the events VW and Toyota do way more to promote themselves during the events than Sasol did. If you did a poll in the crowd you'd probably find hardly anyone knows that Sasol sponsored the series.

Well I haven't had a MSA licence for many years now and am merely a spectator these days so I can say it - I've known the 2 Richards for many years now and I've only ever known them to have 1 real agenda, the increase of their own wealth. I believe they want to make all the event sponsors pay into MSA's account first and then pay the organising club from there - they did this in off road racing this year and certain clubs are still waiting to see any money at all, some 6 months after the event has happened. Now they don't want to organise the events anymore.

The part that worries me the most is that I feel like it's not broken and they shouldn't be trying to fix it. I hear lots of bleating about costs, but why is the biggest class the one with the most expensive cars? The only reasons the other classes have died off is because the manufacturers are homologating expensive parts that these guys can't afford. I say keep S2000 and drop homologation on the other classes and go back to what we had in the early 90s. 4 classes, A (S2000), B, C, D.

[Grant_RSA]

mmm some interesting points you have,

The notes will be interesting, and something else to get used to , it will cut my travelling and away from home time in half, but i must admit the amount of time we spend on the notes does leave you with a sense ease that you have checked and are happy with what you saw. We are one of the teams that spend alot of time on them and believe it has its benefits, the 40 hours.... i know of only 1 team that probably spends that amount of time.

The route director role i believe will be different from the traditional role, i think he will only have the power to request changes to a route is he deems unsuitable and or dangerous,we sometimes rally on roads that off road would cringe at , and are really not suitable for the kind of pace were running at the moment.i must admit though that the roads in general were alot better this year, could also just be the car were in that makes that difference :-) i dont see him taking on the full role of route director for all rounds, especially taking your concerns amongst others into account.

Sasol, well im not sure what to say, maybe rugby is more lucrative, but im sure they made an informed decision.

Dont know enough about your next point to comment.

Apparently some leeway will be given for older S2000's next year to get them back up to speed technology wise, ie "regional homologation" hopefully will grow the class even more, although must admit its a challenge keeping an eye on 18 guys in your class :-/

btw, looking forward to getting back to Natal, we have some unfinished business on those roads :-)

[Bruce D]

The idea of creating or at least having a chance to modify your own notes is far better. Gives people a chance to develop their own notes systems rather than been forced into a standard one.

I'd just like to see more manufacturers in rallying here now. If they have a regional homologation which lets them compete with S2000 cars then great, bring it on, things will only get better.

Well hopefully I'll get a chance to go and watch this year as I live much closer to the south coast stages than I did. Looking forward to seeing you guys giving it a go again.

[Grant_RSA]

Bruce, have you seen the decisions made by technical working group? Looks like nothing changed except the integration of some classes.

Im sad about the slicks.

[Bruce D]

Yes I've just read them this morning. Slicks are a strange decision as I'd heard that competitors found it just the same amount of money to run slicks as it was to run old gravel tyres. You would have more insight into that than me.

I guess the rule about total tar distance of 30km rules out the possibilty of a all-tar event somewhere along the line, like was mentioned only a few weeks ago. I'm all for a all-tar event but so long as its not a mickey-mouse one like the first day of the Gauteng Rally. Did you guys even get out of 3rd gear? Certainly not from what it looked like on TV.

The 2012 class structure looks logical to me and I'd be interested to see what comes about from the Rallycup class.

The main problem I see here is that there isn't enough stability in the rules. They say it's stable for 2011 and 2012 but already from everything I've heard it sounds like the rules have changed about 6 times in 6 weeks.

I don't see the relevance of the 1.6l turbo engine until such time as local manufacturers actually sell a car with that configuration. To my knowledge the only turbo cars on our roads are the diesel ones and maybe the Volvo T5. On the other hand I watched a video of the new Citroen DS3 WRC testing the other night and it was very impressive to watch. I just remember when Habig went and did those overseas rallies in 94/96 he mentioned how you could just throw turbos at the car like the works teams if you had the money. Do we need that complication and additional expense?

[Bruce D]

BTW My father spent yesterday watching Charl Wilken testing down the south coast, quite an impressive setup, engineers from MSport and they brought out their own driver to help confirm settings. Sounds like Charl was quite a bit out with settings so he could really be something to watch next season.

Needless to say I was ticked off with him when he phoned me to tell me about it!

[Grant_RSA]

mmmm, interesting,

Rally tyres suck on tar period, i believe its a bad idea, some privateers would use 2nd hand rally tyres at some stage whether is be testing or a short stage somewhere, rally tyres are throw away even after a short stage. I'm not a fan of a tar event , our cars dont have tar homologations, so the Ford has a huge advantage when it comes to setup. I am quite happy with the max 30km, albeit some mickey mouse stage in a parking lot.

[Bruce D]

Thats true. I mean there are all-tar events and all-tar events if you see what I mean. Playing around Gerotek all day isn't tarmac rallying IMO.

Two things still concern me. 1) Although I see mention of a SA homologation for S2000, there is no mention whether homologation is allowed on the lower classes. Its time for that to be scrapped. Maybe thats what S1600 and S1400 will be in the future.

2) Talk again of "bringing rallying to the people". Sounds like lots of stages in the middle of towns again that gain no real value to the event. Its been tried before, and is not really necessary. The stages have to be close to a town, yes, but not in it. An example was the Scottair Rally last month where the first stage got hundreds of spectators for just a regional event because the stage is very close to Scottburgh. Not to sound too biased here but the only "spectacular" tar spectator stage I've ever seen is Alexander Park at night in Pietermaritzburg. And thats rallying through a park so you can get up to speed, not doing hairpins around haybales all day long.

[Grant_RSA]

Yes i think were all doing some off season testing, surprising the lengths they going to going to Natal to do setup. :-/

You know we hate the parking lot stuff, but if it keeps the event sponsors, its a sacrifice we need to make for the sport, i just wonder who is going to pick up the bill for the series with Sasol gone.

I see Sasol is round 2 of Africa Championships.