Rally - The Motorsport That Comes To You

[Mirek]

First let me wish You a good luck! You'll sure need it.

I would add just one thing. Make the competition a real story. There is nothing more boring than just simple telling results. For that no wall of text is needed but just one table. Make all You can out of all the dramas which naturally happen in every rally event. Don't concentrate only to the professional top crews but show also the adventures of outsiders for whom even the starting ramp is a kind of small victory. People generally love stories about poor heroes fighting against all odds because they can find many similarities with their own lifes and dreams. There are always really good drivers who combine daily work shifts with nights spent in a garage, finishing the car just few hours before scrutineering, facing various troubles afterwards but still making decent competitors. I'm sure You understand what I mean.

[Lundefaret]

Very good input Mirek - thank You!

[RAS007]

My brother and I are in a situation where we could end up taking on the roll of promotors of the Norwegian Rally Championship.
The desicion will fall whitin a couple of months, and there is quit a heavy meeting scedual between the different parties (organizers, drivers, the Norwegian Association for Motorsport, etc.)

Because we are in this situation I have used quite a lot of time analyzing rallying as a product. My line of work is in concept development, and has been as diverce as from TV-series, childrens books, ice cream, rallying/motorsport, to newspapers and magazines.

The process of analyzing this is to lay the grounds of what has the aim of being a sustainable and positive development of the Norwegian Rally Championship.

I have studied a lot of different motorsports to find the common denominators, and to find the differences. The differences is something one could build on to create a "blue ocean strategy", the term is coined from one of the "Bibles" in the field of concept development.
Find a driection for Your strategy that seperates You from Your competition.

After a lot of thinking (sometimes things move a bit slow), I have come up with a tag line that I think Could work well for the development of the Norwegian Rally Championship, and that could easily be transferred to the WRC. And that is: Rally - The Motorsport That Comes To You.

Almoast all other forms of motorsports, or sports as a whole, is played out in arenas. Rallying is not. This means that the "arena" of rallying can be moved to the people.
To build up on this strategy I have started to see in how many ways Rallying can "Come To You", or get close to the spectators, fans etc. I will list up what I have come up with so far, and if You feel that You want to contribute, I would be very glad to recieve more ideas.
If we end up taking over as promotors of the Norwegian Rally Championship I can promise that we will test out ideas that is sugested in this thread. In other words, You will have a real chance to have a say in things.


Rally - The Motorsport That Comes To You.

Geographically:
- Make stages accesible for fans/spectators.
- Make service areas accesible for fans/spectators.

Experiential:
- Use the MINI RallyTaxi to let fans/specators get a feel for the sport by being passengers.
- Use other means to let the fans get an experience, like having a rally simulator present etc.
- Let the fans try out things like changing a wheel in a timed competition in the service area.

Media:
- TV: Make rallying vissible on TV (we are in the prosess of signing a three year deal with the national broadcaster in Norway, if we can do some changes to liven up the competition)
- Magazine: Make a rally magazine that doubles as a program for each rally. Then You can both sell it as a program, and on subscription basis.
- Radio: Make a common guideline for how the radio should work on a rally
- Web: Make a common site for the Championship, so that everything happens in one site, and not on each of the organizers sites.
- Facebook: Make a common FB page
- Twitter: Make a common Twitter account
- Instagram: Make a common Instagram account
- Press releases/planting of stories: Do this out of one channel, both locally, regionally, and nationally

Show:
- Exibit rallycars: Exibit rally cars or relevant objects to make something more of the service park.
- Exibit photo: Make a traveling photo exibition/competition on the service parks to show og "the best of rallying"
- Fair: Have other exibits like ATV, farming, etc etc, to get vendors to make an even bigger show.
- Children: Make activities for children to recruit new fans. This could be RC competitions, etc etc.

Interactivly:
- Let the fans compete them self via a video game (how, when, where is to be figured out.)

These are some idea, if You have more, lets hear them!

One other thing to add, in case you you don't do this already: have a super special stage the night before the event that is easily accessible to the public. You can use that as a venue for some of the other things you mentioned. This used to work really well on some national level rallies in the UK, where the super special was in town somewhere on the Friday night and at the same venue, they would have all kinds of related attractions, before the rally proper started on the Saturday morning. It really helped bring the sport to the public and built a sense of anticipation for the weekend.Just a thought....

[Lundefaret]

One other thing to add, in case you you don't do this already: have a super special stage the night before the event that is easily accessible to the public. You can use that as a venue for some of the other things you mentioned. This used to work really well on some national level rallies in the UK, where the super special was in town somewhere on the Friday night and at the same venue, they would have all kinds of related attractions, before the rally proper started on the Saturday morning. It really helped bring the sport to the public and built a sense of anticipation for the weekend.Just a thought....

Thank You very much RAS007 - a very good idea

One could even have the public as passengers in the cars.

We have a meeting with the top drivers in the international classes tomorrow, and then we will find out if they are willing to drive in one class.

NRK (Norways answer to the BBC) has demanded one class to show on television, and 4WD is by my account (sic.) to expensive.
We are trying to make the top class for 2WD. The idea is to have both in international (R2), national homologated (similar speed to R2), and the rear wheel drive Group H class run in one Norwegian Championship class.
Here we will achieve a lot of diversity, and also - with the national homologation - more money in to the sport via more manufacturers with importer, dealers, and subcontractors like oil and tool companies and so on.

In Scandinavia we had one big success in motorsports some years ago, and that was the STCC, or Swedish Touring Car Championship. The aim is to create something similar, with big focus on developing driver profiles and catering for high visibility for the sponsors.

But to achieve this the drivers needs to understand that they all ned to pull in the same direction, and this will be the biggest hurdle

[Mirek]

One other thing to add, in case you you don't do this already: have a super special stage the night before the event that is easily accessible to the public. You can use that as a venue for some of the other things you mentioned. This used to work really well on some national level rallies in the UK, where the super special was in town somewhere on the Friday night and at the same venue, they would have all kinds of related attractions, before the rally proper started on the Saturday morning. It really helped bring the sport to the public and built a sense of anticipation for the weekend.Just a thought....

True. One of the most crowded stages in many national championships are Friday night city stages. Even though it's harder to organize them the city stages are in my opinion far better than superspecials somewhere on dedicated roads. Also it's not bad when the stage is run for several laps with chasing

Some epic Friday (Thursday) night stages come to my mind - Barum Rally Zlín city stage, Rallye du Wallonie Namur Citadelle stage or Rally Mexico Guanajuato city stage.

Some events use Friday night for simple prologue. No times are measured, it's just show for crowds. Something like that was used in ERC/IRC in Rally Acores or Mecsek Rally.

[Mirek]

NRK (Norways answer to the BBC) has demanded one class to show on television, and 4WD is by my account (sic.) to expensive.
We are trying to make the top class for 2WD. The idea is to have both in international (R2), national homologated (similar speed to R2), and the rear wheel drive Group H class run in one Norwegian Championship class.
Here we will achieve a lot of diversity, and also - with the national homologation - more money in to the sport via more manufacturers with importer, dealers, and subcontractors like oil and tool companies and so on.

I would be careful about this. In my opinion this cheap 2WD championship doesn't work in Great Britain. There is neither more competitors nor spectators. From my experience people want to watch cars powersliding and where there are no people there are no sponsors either. For example when WRC cars were banned in Czech championship in 2005 the number of spectators went down very hard. We had even up to 50 4x4 gr.N cars per event in next years but people weren't interested. Only with S2000 they started coming back (and now it's again in deep shit but for other reason).

[tommeke_B]

True. What can work is a seperate junior championship (like we have in Belgium) for R1 and R2 cars, something similar can be found in junior ERC nowadays. Last year we had a nice championship with a great competition between several drivers, it was always impossible to predict who was going to win. This year due to several reasons the championship is not that strong. Anyway, in my opinion a junior-championship is a good investment in the future of the sport, on both national and international level.

[Lundefaret]

I would be careful about this. In my opinion this cheap 2WD championship doesn't work in Great Britain. There is neither more competitors nor spectators. From my experience people want to watch cars powersliding and where there are no people there are no sponsors either. For example when WRC cars were banned in Czech championship in 2005 the number of spectators went down very hard. We had even up to 50 4x4 gr.N cars per event in next years but people weren't interested. Only with S2000 they started coming back (and now it's again in deep shit but for other reason).

Hello Mirek

4WD will still be allowed, but the televised National Championship will be with front- AND rear wheel drive cars (power sliding) - or thats the idea.

Regarding the situation in Great Britain, if I remember correctly some of the most successful years of the championships history was with front wheel drive cars in the F2-era. You had a lot of manufacturers and dealers coming in, and it was a very strong championship. As in many other examples I think the costs took off, and that is also a very important matter.

Controlling cost by ex limiting the number of tires etc.

The problem with 4WD is that the group N cars are on their way out, and the R5s are too expensive. Then the idea is to cater for the drivers with international ambition with the R2, and the similar national homologated versions, and rear wheel drive, where You could have more engine etc.

[Mirek]

Sorry, I didn't understand properly about the 2WD idea.

You are right about the kit car era of British championship but remember that those kit cars were state of the art machinery of said time, very fast, loud and mean looking but also expensive to run. They were something completely different than current R2 cars.

I can't resist, sorry. Not that the 208 R2 looks bad but...

[Lundefaret]

Sorry, I didn't understand properly about the 2WD idea.

You are right about the kit car era of British championship but remember that those kit cars were state of the art machinery of said time, very fast, loud and mean looking but also expensive to run. They were something completely different than current R2 cars.

I can't resist, sorry. Not that the 208 R2 looks bad but...

Regarding the rather sexy looking 306 versus the somewhat more mundane 208, this is a very good point. Maybe we should hope to achieve the "kit car look" in the national homologation, the cars could look more like the 306 than the 208, but perform the same. Ie. loosen up the regulations regarding fender flares, wings etc.

But all this will depend on the drivers them selves, and if they want to contribute to a unity, or continue their solo operations.