My First Rallycross Experience

Run what you brung! I brought a 2010 Toyota Prius (its my beater car and has snow tires, so why not?)

What I learned: 

- Competition is lacking. That's not a bad thing, either. If you're used to autocross where a field of Miata and Civics will result in similar chassis fitting into similar classes and pretty tight racing, rallycross is the opposite. Very open classes. For example, bone stock 90hp Civic will find itself in the same class as a 250hp bone stock Focus ST. Not just this, but you could have a competitive car, but nobody to race it against (within your class). Even at this small event two Miata showed up and were running competitive times, but the Stock FWD was the most "even" with a Hyundia Elantra, Nissan SER, Fiesta ST, and Civic SI all showing up. The Civic was posting the fastest times of the day.

- Fun is abundant. Trucks, Miatas, (my Prius!), old Volvos, Side-by-Sides, all drifting and flinging dirt in harmony. 

- If I were buying a chassis for rallycross, I'd spend my money on something fun, rather than on something competitive. At our little event, the Stock FWD cars were putting down times better than modified AWD cars. As someone who has driven both RWD, AWD, and FWD cars in anger, I felt like I'd be having more fun in a RWD or AWD car, even if I was posting slower times than my Prius. On the flipside, if you have a practical sporty daily driver that's FWD, you might find its plenty competitive with a decent set of snow tires. Unfortunately, I do not have a fun car in my current fleet. 

- I can see how the venue has a lot of impact on the popularity of the series. The venue we used is flat with a good base, but it's essentially a big oversized football field without grass. I think part of what attracts many people to "Rally" is flying through the trees, so Rallycross feels a bit different from those dreams. I see in other areas, they might use an actually rally school property or other types of venues that lend themselves to more varied terrain. 

Glad you went and had fun!  I've been missing out lately, and am not happy about it.  I need to fix this fast. 

Also trees = smashed rally car which is one of the reasons I love rallycross.  Spin plus no smash = big win in my book.  For the record, I only spun it once in around 15 events or so.  My son spun it more, but kids.....

Rallycross is a weird set of rules and conditions where the car and car setup doesn't really matter.  125hp in a light car is enough and competes against 200hp in modern cars.  The fastest suspension is basically stock.

That fwd field is pretty average for rallycross and it is impossible to pick a winner based on the list of cars.  The driver matters much more here.

The fun part with fwd is you can occasionally compete for the overall win if you get the right course.  Rwd is always bringing up the rest.

On a hard packed surface setup doesn't matter much and it's all about the driver, but once you get into loose surfaces setup and tires absolutely matter. Driver is definitely still important though. If you think rwd is the slowest it's because either none of the drivers are good or none of them have discovered the magic of the mid engine platforms.

When I was rallycrossing regularly, I could always tell who did the course design.  If one of the short wheelbase FWD guys did it, there were lots of really tight elements and they tended to do better, as they could just flick the car through the tight spots and hammer the throttle once the nose pointed the right direction.  If one of the AWD or RWD guys did the course, then the cars that could take a turn at reasonable speed and put down some power coming out of it did better. 

In reply to dps214 :

A friend of mine just picked up a Boxster.  It was a revelation.  If I fit into them, I would have already switched cars.  The drivers seat isn't this bad but my helmet is still a few inches above the windshield.  The problem is worse in the MR2.

SCCA club or no?

I love rallycross at a good venue. Summit Point is fun.  VIR is fun.  Podunk gravel figure-8... not so fun.

The problems I had "locally" were basically 1) no competition.  As in I was competing against my co-driver and that's it.  The rest of the field was like 30+ seconds behind.  and 2) SAFETY.  The non-SCCA club that ran the event was extremely passive regarding safety.  They let a lot of E36 M3 go that could result in serious injury/death.

I put "locally" in quotes because venues ranged from 1.5 - 2.5 hours away.  So not really local at all, but the closest option I had.

In reply to ProDarwin :

If it WAS SCCA, it won't be any longer.

I said in a previous thread this day, which occured two days ago, would be coming, but the SCCA RallyCross board have all resigned.  They appreciate the input.

ojannen said:

In reply to dps214 :

A friend of mine just picked up a Boxster.  It was a revelation.  If I fit into them, I would have already switched cars.  The drivers seat isn't this bad but my helmet is still a few inches above the windshield.  The problem is worse in the MR2.

Yes my boxster definitely required a less than ideal seating position. That was probably my biggest disappointment about the car, how awful the ergonomics were for how large it is externally. Well, that and how part of the reason the seat is high is because there's a bunch of non-waterproofed electronics under the driver's seat....in a convertible.

Honestly part of the reason we got rid of the car was because nobody else had caught on yet and the car was so good that it was getting boring to not have any competition. I still think the second gen MR2 could be as good or better on tiny courses - a bit lighter, smaller, and better gearing/"power"band for those speeds. That was actually what we wanted originally, but non-T top cars are hard to find in the first place, and finding one that isn't rusted in half or wildly overpriced within 1000 miles of ohio turned out to be impossible. If I ever have $20k to throw away a 987 base cayman would be interesting to try.

Captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

If it WAS SCCA, it won't be any longer.

I said in a previous thread this day, which occured two days ago, would be coming, but the SCCA RallyCross board have all resigned.  They appreciate the input.

Uh...by "all" you mean a third of them?

In reply to dps214 :

You're correct, nothing to see here, move along...

Yes it was mentioned that SCCA is struggling to justify rallycross as part of its programs and that ARA might pick it up. 

How much would insurance cost if our little group did it's own thing? 

Captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to dps214 :

You're correct, nothing to see here, move along...

Honestly I haven't been paying that much attention, if there's evidence everyone else is resigning I'm happy to hear about it. Otherwise, it's possible to say "things aren't exactly all happy and perfect" without making unsupported statements that make people think the sky is falling when it really probably isn't.

In reply to dps214 :

If you swapped seats, do you think you could move the electronics and stay prepared legal?  I need like 4" of headroom and it isn't my car but a man can dream.

ojannen said:

In reply to dps214 :

If you swapped seats, do you think you could move the electronics and stay prepared legal?  I need like 4" of headroom and it isn't my car but a man can dream.

I think I remember there being a decent amount of space under the seats even with the electronics. I would think you could get a decent amount of lowering out of an aftermarket seat. Might require some custom made brackets and/or being fixed position though.

Can't change out seats if the new seat is lighter than the old one. I'm sure you could declare it and have proof that "old seat weighed 100lbs, new seat weighs 80lbs, so I added 20lbs of weight under the seat or in my belly."

Unless their was an available option for that make/model/year/trim that had lighter lower seats and you could buy those seats without a larger trim package. 

Not sure where you're seeing that. Stock doesn't allow seat swaps at all. Prepared and modified allow any seat with no specific weight requirement.

In reply to ojannen :

Oh, if they don't already know, make sure to tell your friend to clean the air filter after every event. Maybe keep a spare MAF sensor around too just in case. The one downside to having the engine in the back of the car is it's really good at sucking up all the dirt into the engine bay and the engine itself.

I wonder if it couldn't be justified to officials. Are we really going to prevent folks from competing in a Stock class because they are too tall for their vehicle?

At the local level this probably isn't a big deal. Show up at Nationals and it might be. 

In reply to pheller :

I asked the rallycross board when I got my current car.  I spent some extra time to find found the perfect no-sunroof, no traction control, no cruise control, low option car for stock class.  My idea was to keep the stock seat and remove some of the bottom cushioning.  They said no. 

I believe there are zero competitive RWD cars that I can run in stock class.  All my height is in my torso.  My wife, who is sitting next to me in the picture, has the same length legs as me but i have 9 more inches of torso.  I am way outside of the 99th percentile for torso heigh so I don't expect rules to be written for me.

Thanks for the tip on the spare maf.  We knew about the air filter but hadn't considered a maf problem.

On a local level, it's worth looking at what's actually being run and how they do before worrying too much about classing.  I've seen events where some of the stock class cars were outrunning the fastest mod cars. 

Local rallycross is all that matters in the big scheme of things.  Support local!  Pro tip, that applies to more than rallycross.

ojannen said:

In reply to pheller :

I asked the rallycross board when I got my current car.  I spent some extra time to find found the perfect no-sunroof, no traction control, no cruise control, low option car for stock class.  My idea was to keep the stock seat and remove some of the bottom cushioning.  They said no. 

Someone would still have to protest you though.  Is there anyone that is that much of a dick to protest over seat foam?

ProDarwin said:

ojannen said:

In reply to pheller :

I asked the rallycross board when I got my current car.  I spent some extra time to find found the perfect no-sunroof, no traction control, no cruise control, low option car for stock class.  My idea was to keep the stock seat and remove some of the bottom cushioning.  They said no. 

Someone would still have to protest you though.  Is there anyone that is that much of a dick to protest over seat foam?

At nationals? Absolutely. Not likely at local events.