Rally2 (ex-R5) News

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Isnt there any trickle-down effect, with older used R5's getting into the hands of less wealthy privateers by now ?

The earliest R5's will be 5 years old next year - how much do they go for ?

In the long-term something has to replace the ageing Evos and Subarus...

[br21]

Mirage is not R5 car, it's R5-wannabe, and still price is high and level is lower than R5... I know that car quite well...
I fully agree with Mirek, it's simply like that... if someone can spend 200k he will also be able to spend 250k for much better car. And running cost is quite smilar if you compare fast and slow R5 cars...
S2000 Polos were build in Belgium, not imported from SA.

[Rally Power]

The Mirage is hardly any success. The car isn't competitive against the top dogs, there is only few of them around and it will stay like that.

How can the Mirage became a success without being homologated? The car showed some speed on gravel but MPart would need to sell more units to have means for a bigger development, and the only way to sell more units is by having Mitsubishi approval to homologate it.

For sure you’ll always need a top manu car to become champ, but there’s room for lower budget cars in any class. Even now the FIA is thinking on having R2 light, as R2 aren’t affordable for beginners. The same could happen in R5, once there are plenty of private drivers desiring to get more affordable 4wd rally cars (R4 will hardly be the solution with a single kit supplier).

Btw, it was told here many times: RGT didn’t work because the homologation process was too demanding and expensive for privateers.

The Mirage R5 is listed as 180k, because that's the maximum price for an R5 allowed under the regulations. Same as the other cars....

Actually, the Mirage looked to be the only one respecting the FIA ‘limit’. Btw, once you don’t believe in that price, can you tell us how much a new Mirage R5 costs?

[Rally Power]

S2000 Polos were build in Belgium

Using VW SA Polo S2000 homologation.

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?

[Mirek]

Using VW SA Polo S2000 homologation.

Complete asphalt developement was done in Belgium. VW SA was behind the paperwork but not doing any asphalt development.

[Mirek]

How can the Mirage became a success without being homologated? The car showed some speed on gravel but MPart would need to sell more units to have means for a bigger development.

For sure you’ll always need a top manu car to become champ, but there’s room for lower budget cars in any class. Even now the FIA is thinking on having R2 light, as R2 aren’t affordable for beginners. The same could happen in R5, once there are plenty of private drivers desiring to get more affordable 4wd rally cars (R4 will hardly be the solution with a single kit supplier).

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.

Btw, it was told here many times: RGT didn’t work because the homologation process was too demanding and expensive for privateers.

No, it didn't work because it brought cars useful only for fun lowing gentlemen.

[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.

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.

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.

[Mirek]

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.

It's You who said so, not me.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

Having light R2 and R5 categories would be interesting, especially if private tuners could get involved on their homologation.

[racerx1979]

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.