Toyota announces WRC plans

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Not by a mile. Finland is the only country in the World where Rally is seen as a national sport. The only two countries I can think of that actually come close is Barbados and Ireland.
Though France has had two great champions, rally by no means a competitor of bigger sports like soccer.

Finland is the rally capital of the world, and by being that, and a country that can manage huge technological engineering feats (like Nokia), Finland can be a great place to run a rally team from.

The national sport of Finland is ice hockey. Rally was the national sport maybe in the 70's and 80's, but not anymore. The regular people hardly knows the names of the Finnish drivers nowadays.

In many ways the Finns are stuck in the 80's and 90's in rallying. They still believe the same path for the success which was used during the years of success. But it's a different world now. Our French friends develop the sport from the hobby level to the top-level sport.

Finland was to be the mental home of rallying, now it is the mental developing country of the rally world. Unfortunately.

[janvanvurpa]

The national sport of Finland is ice hockey. Rally was the national sport maybe in the 70's and 80's, but not anymore. The regular people hardly knows the names of the Finnish drivers nowadays.

In many ways the Finns are stuck in the 80's and 90's in rallying. They still believe the same path for the success which was used during the years of success. But it's a different world now. Our French friends develop the sport from the hobby level to the top-level sport.

Finland was to be the mental home of rallying, now it is the mental developing country of the rally world. Unfortunately.

That last bit is kinda of hard to swallow..espeically when you have F-cup which has such good drivers---and dozens of them---scores of them..
In all of "not even starting to develop country' USA with maybe 300-320 total drivers from a population of 320 million, the best USA can do in the best car a guy can buy (because to get better you will not buy the car, they give you the car) is slower than your best F-cup guys.

If Finland has does anything wrong in rally, they made the same mistake as everybody else and listened to marketing and promotion guys and believed them when they said promotion is the key to happiness..

Competition is the key...frequent, hard challenging, close competition...

[janvanvurpa]

I genuinely think Toyoda made his decision because Tommi convinced him that his way (smaller, more hands on, family team) is better. And now we have to wait and see (and hope) that Tommi was right.

Modern rally with these cars that have zero connection to the road cars they are badged as is now hugely like other mainly meaningless autosports in that it is first an engineering and budgetary exercise in the designing of specialty parts and that is a very portable thing and is done with keyboards...And a keyboard to type and draw on can be in any location..Frankfurt or Nagoya or Puuppola....as long as they have telephone line and electricity..

But that is the basic starting position.

Then to be sucessful you need first experience in knowing what is needed, and judgement in deciding what is good...and that is not linked to location but is inside the heads of people..

Then you need to confirm what you believe inside the head..

That calls for practice and honest assessment of what you do.

In that, being based in Puuppola is an advantage.

[itix]

That last bit is kinda of hard to swallow..espeically when you have F-cup which has such good drivers---and dozens of them---scores of them..
In all of "not even starting to develop country' USA with maybe 300-320 total drivers from a population of 320 million, the best USA can do in the best car a guy can buy (because to get better you will not buy the car, they give you the car) is slower than your best F-cup guys.

If Finland has does anything wrong in rally, they made the same mistake as everybody else and listened to marketing and promotion guys and believed them when they said promotion is the key to happiness..

Competition is the key...frequent, hard challenging, close competition...

That last section makes sense to me. The reason Ogier manage to win so often is because he keeps his calm always no matter what and only focus 100% on the task and he has done that by getting very good at competition and not stressing himself when he is in front.

Also
...about Toyota TMR Gazoo whatever, I think it is too early to say anything. It all depends on who they manage to get as driver in the team. Like Lundefaret often says, the driver makes a huuuge difference. Ogier would still win in the Msport cars... the VW only makes it easy for him. I am pretty sure that there is a lower wall between TMG and TMR than we think. If they are building the engines, I am pretty sure they supply testing data and CADs and other stuff as well.

Does anyone here in the forum know much about Tommis group N building before he stuck his nose into the Toyota operations? How good were his cars? Did/do they have any known issues? Etc etc? That would leave us with an indication of how well they could do.

[janvanvurpa]

Does anyone here in the forum know much about Tommis group N building before he stuck his nose into the Toyota operations? How good were his cars? Did/do they have any known issues? Etc etc? That would leave us with an indication of how well they could do.

Akta er, pojken!

In Group N they could have made the best Group N prepared cars possible and if the basic car has some serious desirn problem there is only so much that can be done..
Example is in Group N Subaru they are stuck with the Subaru EJ20 motor basic dimensions and of course position far ahead of the front axle..
The EJ20 motor (I have built 3 for rally) has a cylinder bore of 92mm...And must breathe thru a 32mm restrictor....
32mm mean the poor thing will not be happy to make revs above some point---a problem for all Group N4 cars...so as we know, they all make the motor into a "mid-range torque monster" and to do that you begin with making much higher static compression ratio and funny turbocharger pressure ratio..
There the size of the bore at 92mm becomes a problem that cars like most modern desigs do not have when they have bore size between 85 to 86mm. Those engines can tolerate much higher cylinder pressure with much less chance of detonation simply from the distance the flame must travel to be complete (in the time allowed).

So Tommi M Rally could do everything perfect on a GroupN Subaru, and still have problem with great results because of things completely out of their control.

So careful and not take things out of context..

( I don't know if you are intimately familiar with the bore/stroke of the typical engines that have done so well in the 2 liter days...but all the best were around 85mm bore and 89 stroke, or many were clustered at 86mm bore and 86mm stroke---I build engines.... )

God Jul till alla rally dårar därute i världen.

[itix]

Akta er, pojken!

In Group N they could have made the best Group N prepared cars possible and if the basic car has some serious desirn problem there is only so much that can be done..
Example is in Group N Subaru they are stuck with the Subaru EJ20 motor basic dimensions and of course position far ahead of the front axle..
The EJ20 motor (I have built 3 for rally) has a cylinder bore of 92mm...And must breathe thru a 32mm restrictor....
32mm mean the poor thing will not be happy to make revs above some point---a problem for all Group N4 cars...so as we know, they all make the motor into a "mid-range torque monster" and to do that you begin with making much higher static compression ratio and funny turbocharger pressure ratio..
There the size of the bore at 92mm becomes a problem that cars like most modern desigs do not have when they have bore size between 85 to 86mm. Those engines can tolerate much higher cylinder pressure with much less chance of detonation simply from the distance the flame must travel to be complete (in the time allowed).

So Tommi M Rally could do everything perfect on a GroupN Subaru, and still have problem with great results because of things completely out of their control.

So careful and not take things out of context..

( I don't know if you are intimately familiar with the bore/stroke of the typical engines that have done so well in the 2 liter days...but all the best were around 85mm bore and 89 stroke, or many were clustered at 86mm bore and 86mm stroke---I build engines.... )

God Jul till alla rally dårar därute i världen.

I work with completely different engines. The ones I have worked with have had a bore in the range of 460 to 900mm and a stroke of 940 to 2920mm... So well let's just say I don't know much about the torque figures of the tiny little sewing machines you talk about

Go Jul på dig med förresten!

Also I don't work with FIA regulated restrictors and my engines can breathe as freely as they want to...

Anyway, back to topic. I am not entirely sure how wider bore and less stroke can give more torque... It seems to me that the logical thing would be the complete opposite. Those motorcycle engines that rev up to 15 000 rpm usually have a pretty large bore to stroke ratio if I am not mistaken.

Still... There has got to be other group N Subaru that you can compare them to and if they have inherit problems, the guy has a problem with his manufacturing philosophy. Does anyone here hold such info?

[Rallyper]

The national sport of Finland is ice hockey. Rally was the national sport maybe in the 70's and 80's, but not anymore. The regular people hardly knows the names of the Finnish drivers nowadays.

In many ways the Finns are stuck in the 80's and 90's in rallying. They still believe the same path for the success which was used during the years of success. But it's a different world now. Our French friends develop the sport from the hobby level to the top-level sport.

Finland was to be the mental home of rallying, now it is the mental developing country of the rally world. Unfortunately.

So wher do you suggest they should have their HQ?

[janvanvurpa]

So wher do you suggest they should have their HQ?

Snipp, Snapp, Snorum, eller Hej Basalorum?

[Rallyper]

Snipp, Snapp, Snorum, eller Hej Basalorum?

Agree. Suomissa that is!

[giù tutto!]

So wher do you suggest they should have their HQ?

To Trollhättan.