Quote Originally Posted by WRXedUSA
So, you aren't anti Subaru like you orginally professed, you're anti R-A.

That partially explains why you're banned from SS. (though I do enjoy your wordsmithery)
I'd say I'm anti hype, and see unjustified hype as the primary thing hindering broader appeal and broader participation.
People have built in BS detectors had many become kind of cynical when they see rather modest driving described as super human feats or whatever, and then they watch on You-tube and good Group H vids from Sweden or F-cup craziness from ''grannlandet till Öster''.

ANYBODY who watches just a little F-cup action needs no explanation and doesn't need to be repeatedly told "This is amazing stuff !!!!" (while yet another car farts thru a corner, revs to 3600 before the driver takes 2 seconds to shift....).

The same thing is seen in the "lower level" playing in a field stuff that Yanks decided bizarrely enough to call "Rally-cross" and which I refuse to have met and spent some time with a couple of guys who did it well: Will Gollop and Per Eklund. It would insult these guys to call playing in 1st and 2nd gear in a stock car anything resembling the crazy and exciting sport that they do. They're NUTS, and I'm impressed.
But many many of the guys playing in dirt lots talk tons of BS calling their stock cars "my rally car" and the casual meets "rallyraces" and brag about how
"I won the Championship" (in a class of 4 over 3 events with a total SEASON time of less than a stage.

As it's the same thing we see in the flashy, lots of pretty website stuff, closely coordinated with Subaru, employing the same "Talent Agency" as Pastrana and whatever the latest newb hero uses to "leverage sports and entertainment", yet they really can't do the simplest of things because they are too closely bound up with Subaru and glitz.
Look at the scandals all around Vermont Sportscar/SRTUSA in the last 15 months which have been suppressed and Rally America attempts to hide with shot-gun new Rules. Look at the unexplained 5 points off last year levied against the Blue Subies.
Look at the unpenalized blatant violation of the red-cross display rule at last years "Snow-drift". It has been tacitly and fragmentarily revealed that the excuse given "A snowmobile driver was riding along a trail parallel to the stage" is hollow and that the obvious reason was to get the stage thrown because the hero boys had a front puncture and were loosing time against Andrew Pinker. And then its revealed that the "unidentified" snowmobile rider is well known, but not named.

Look at their absurd "Don't call, Don't tell" telephone Rule.
Illogically written, impossible to enforce and a shot-gun approach to cure the problem of, allegedly, Vermont Sportscar/SRTUSA people driving ahead of the rally cars and telephoning back to the Team what the road conditions are.
Now there have always been in rally Ice Crews or Gravel Crews doing just that and realistically there's no harm, and nothing I can do to counter it: all I have is used tires anyway.
But they portray Rally America to be a "professional" organisation, and they can't write a rule to save their lives because they can't annoy their one goose that lays their Golden Egg




Here's another enigma for you to cud chew: Kyle Sarasin.
Enigma? hur så?

Any thoughts on him? He drives a open class rule WRX this season.
Mixed thoughts really, first where does a kid 18 afford to drive a GC8 Subie reliably let alone afford the Rally America entry fees which are often over $1200.
Oh wait! I've been told that Rally America owner Doug Havir is paying for the car, and waiving all his entry fees.
Can't understand why he would except to make the "image" of the "product" appeal to the "target demographic" of 12 to 20 year old boys.

But his good results, while I've chuckled at a guy in a 14 year old car nipping at the heels of the alleged "Heroes", it does sorta show that a guy with minimal experience in a basically OK car (and there's no arguing that the Subies as far back as the Legacy work well at what they're supposed to do-----when they're working) can go "about this fast", so either he's REAL GOOD, or the people in front of him aren't nearly so good as the HYPE proclaims. And I think their rather embarrassing result in the carefully chosen WRC events they have dared to enter shows where the problem lies.






Have you seen Duplessis cannonball off a crest yet, driving his Golf like a rented mule? How about him? Zedrils should be your poster child of commitment and progress over just a short time (Nearly matching Shepard this weekend) Or is this just more richboy talent making a mockery of the sport?

I think what we need is more manufacturers to offer contingency and parts trucks. That would solve the subaru problem. Oh wait, we had that, years ago. Mitsubishi went north this year.
Haven't seen any of the Eastern or Midwest guys.
And progress over just a short period of time? Well how do we measure progress? (I won't even begin to address "the short period of time" which is what Americans plan think and expect---and is central to why they do so dissappointingly in those sports that require years of experience and routine--like rallying away from the easy to tow to events here in USA)

I would be impressed if any of the rich guys, either of the Trustafarians from Massachusetts or the lucky weatlthy boys who can put together their 100,000 new cars had the balls to measure themselves in a few simple Finnish F-cup events.
Yeah, simply enter.
But despite sp[ending hundreds of thousands of dolloar to compete in paper thin fields, they studiously AVOID entering events where they cannot be certain that they have bought to best car and parts that money can buy, and therefore be assured, more or less, of what the outcome will be (because they've outspent everybody else by 5 times or more)

Indeed I think that the hype about "the Championship" gets so swallowed that boys think that if they win here it means they are good drivers.

And there it is F-cup which beckons, deep fields 40-60 drivers or more in similar, well prepped cars.

Real competitors would seek out real hard competition, rather than be the Big Fish not even in a small pond, but a Big Fish overhanging a small BUCKET.
Cause USA isn't even a small pond. (My old motorclub AMF Södertälje which was south of Stockholm, had, according to the old quarterly newsletter ''Vrålet'' over 50 entries in the rally KM or rally section's Club Championship in the mid 70s.
50 in the closed to club rally
1 club out of a dozen in Stor stockholm

The absurdity of ken Block's answer when it was posed to him why wouldn't he enter a simpler car in something like a F-cup event was some garbled
"I'm a very competitive person............therefore i want to make sure I have bought much better equipment than anybody I'll be competing against--(in so many words)" shows the confusion in the boys head.
If he was a competitive person then he would seek out the deepest hardest competition he could rather than wasting time beating garage built, shoestring budget, can't afford to crash it type guys we see mostly now.

(I think he knows he'd get his ass kicked so bad that it wouldn't even be funny if he had to drive a simple rwd car fast)

So no, not anti-RA or anti-Subaru (I did build the PNW Region winning STI motor for Dave Hintz a couple of years ago and have built 5 sets of my 50mm suspension for Subies since August), just anti-hype.