Re: Off-Road Wheel-to-Wheel for our $500 cars!
This sounds like a hoot but (theres always a but), I just don't see this as cut and dry as it seems, and may not work so great.
Firstly I see you mentioned Team O'Neill. I went there for their 2 day rally school (which BTW is worth every penny) and I just don't see them opening their grounds to a bunch of people with no rally training to race. And after running on their roads I can tell you there is NO margin for error. You are going to spend more time cleaning up broken cars (and hopefully not broken bodies) at a place like that. That said those guys are definitely friendly to the Lemons community (I think I may have even convinced them to enter a Lemons race!).
So excluding that, if you did it rallycross style like they did this year at NJMP, that could work. Just have to manage peoples expectations. Rally is about 10x harder and more damaging on a car than normal racing. People will be blowing their budgets to pieces to just finish this race (vs a budget for Lemons). You're going to have a lot more rollover accidents, and race ending damage at something like this. Aside from the fact that proper rally driving is hard and unfamiliar to people. Turning the car with the brakes, completely different lines, the fact that when you turn the wheel the car keeps going straight, etc are all going to throw off people. I can see this ending in a lot of wrecks and hurt feelings.
I would love to see something like this work out. But I wouldn't commit to it for another year or two to see how it plays out and how many cars are actually finishing these races.
Craptain, Team Farfrumwinnin - 1995 Volkswagen Golf #14
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