Rally Discussion and Bar Talk Thread

[Fast Eddie WRC]

From 2025-ish...

Yes, strange.

I dont know anything about this forum but it just seems a waste that it's a functioning rally forum that's barely being used.

[ZoomanSP206]

I have a question for the technical experts here:

Back in the days, drivers would often use the Scandinavian flick to set up the car for a corner. It is often said that this changed when Sébastien Loeb introduced a cleaner, more racing-like style, which was faster and subsequently got adopted by the other drivers.

Now I was wondering: Was the cleaner style always the faster one, and people just didn't know better? Or was the Scandinavian flick actually faster for the cars in the 70's/80's/..., but less fast when used with modern-day rally cars?

If it is the latter, what were the changes that led to the advantage of the cleaner style? Would it be possible to undo these changes or introduce new regulations that lead again to an advantage of using the Scandinavian flick, without compromising safety?

[flat_right]

Cleaner style came with the technical development of the cars. There were several issues depending on how far back should we go. So there was turbo lag. Older systems were all or nothing. If a driver braked traditionally and dropped the RPMs, the car would have zero power on the exit for couple of seconds. By throwing the car sideways (or using left foot braking), drivers could stay heavy on the throttle to keep the turbo spooling while using the slide to scrub speed. It was fixed when they introduced Anti-Lag System (ALS) which came with group a cars (I think). Group b had this turbo lag issue.

Also diffs.. early 4wd was quite dumb compared to today. They often suffered from massive understeer (the car wanting to go straight). The flick was a way to force the car to rotate early so it was already pointed at the exit by the time it reached the apex.

Also the suspension was nowhere near what we have now. Tyres didn't have so much lateral grip.

So this faster style is mainly result of different technological advancements.

[WRCStan]

See also this thread from yesteryear, insight from user 'Pentti'

Huge flicks have gone because these silly motorbike gearboxes! You can,t skip gears any more in down shifts.

Which funnily enough I had randomly read only yesterday.

[Jewy46]

What there has been is in "World Rallying" ...

https://www.rallyforums.com/forums/world-rallying.9/

RallyForums was an Irish centered forum that was hugely popular in the late 2000/2010s.
It was brilliant and I used to log in there for all the rumours etc before joining here.

Nice to see it is still there but looks like it's rarely used now

[Steve Boyd]

See also this thread from yesteryear, insight from user 'Pentti'

For those who weren't here while user 'Pentti' was still with us, his real name was Pentti Airikkala and his results are listed here:
https://ewrc-results.com/profile/1326-pentti-airikkala
A great character and sadly missed.

[ZoomanSP206]

Thanks for the explanations!

[PLuto]

It's been flawless for me since last week, very surprising because it's been awful for months before.
There's two spam posts in there too, I guess the report feature is broken even. PLuto?

Sorry for later answer, I have just returned from Sierra Morena (when I am present on events, I dont post info anywhere (except Rally-base) as I have lot of work to do there). I will try to contact Mark (owner of this forum) via email and ask him to check the situation with hosting and errors. But I know very well how difficult is to run this old forums on modern sites (we are running similar on forum.autosport.cz). Every forced upgrade of software on server means another troubles with this old forums systems. And any new try to upgrade or fix the current settings can destroy everything... But like I told, I will try to write to Mark.

[Franky]

Every forced upgrade of software on server means another troubles with this old forums systems. And any new try to upgrade or fix the current settings can destroy everything... But like I told, I will try to write to Mark.

Maybe to have one time pain than eternal suffering? The current forum version was released in 2013 and it can only get worse. Logically all the modifications would be lost but at least everything should run smoother.

[PLuto]

I have answer from Mark:

Hello!
The server had run out of disk space, I have cleared away some old test forums which were taking up space. And I have fixed the user registration options, at least I hope I have.
The server is pretty old now, it has a continuous uptime of 11 years now! I should probably do something with it, my job is working for web hosting company after all, maybe that's the issue!

Mark