Everybody knows that you need a lot of volunteers dedicating their time as officials, marshals and doing whatever to arrange a rally. I try to do my bit from time to time to ease my conscience. My motoring club called once again and since I had declined twice(I was co-driving in both rallies) already this year thought there wasn't any "excuses" to not help out. I co-drive in a lot of rallies and even though it seems that spare time is a luxury nowadays I still try to help even sometimes. In a way the safety car trip in September was this kind of help, but since it's almost like rallying I don't consider it as a chore. Being a marshal and keeping an eye on some junction to make sure nobody enters the special stage is more like a chore. That was something I was doing on Teijo-Talot rally.
Luckily the weather was good and I could also see the cars for a long time. Only a handful of spectators in my junction so I could also relax and focus on the cars. There was even one sierra among the cars. A rarity especially compared to the huge amount of mk2 escorts in every Finnish rally.
Hej Matti.
VastaaPoistaGreeting from North West of USA.
Interesting blog so far. I have a question maybe you could share some thoughts. I see you were out in a M3 in F-cup, and in the last few years I see more and more BIG BMW with big 6s in them.
Now you mention how rare a Sierra is in Finland and I have been wondering why not so many seem to like Sierra. Sierra seems almost made for Finnish rally stages.
Any idea why so few? No suitable motor for F-cup?
Hi Jan,
VastaaPoistaWith the Sierra I'm not an expert, but I do have some thoughts. I'm not sure at what point the Sierra was allowed to use in F-Cup. It's a relatively new car so I would guess at some point in the nineties. Turbo cars are not allowed to be used in the F-Cup so the engine would be similar 2 liter as in the Escort. So as a summary in the nineties there are lots and lots of Escorts everywhere and with the Sierra you would have been forced to start all the pioneer work with suspensions etc. I also bet the Escort chassis is much lighter than Sierras.
With the BMWs the reason is simple. They are cheap to run. With shorter gearing and better suspension all you have to do is fit the roll cage. You have relatively new car with enough power and for which you can get spare parts from dealerships or scrap yards. Pretty care free rallying. For example for a 325 the gearbox is around 150€, engine 900€, a spare chassis 500€ and so on. I have been sitting quite a lot in those BMWs -> www.heikkinenracing.suntuubi.com and select the English section. I should update it, but it's not much behind.
Thanks for answer Matti.
VastaaPoistaIts about what I thought. Over here in USA for 10-15 years or more I have been pushing hard for boys to think about overall costs and to get cars not just that they can afford to keep going which means simpler cars.
I introduced USA to F-cup and Swedish Grupp H and even managed with some help from friends to get the US organisers to look at F-cup rules and modify our equivalent class to add a motor size to weight deal very similar to F-cup so the boys with say Corolla with a 1.6 won't feel beaten before they start..
We do have a class which is called "Group 5" which is basically F-cup with turbo, but nobody really goes crazy in that class.
We never got Escorts rwd and even rwd Corolla was never sold in big numbers but we did get one model Sierra, the "XR4Ti" which is like 84-85 XR4i but with a big cousin of the old Pinto (called "Lima", made in Brazil, and is 2300 SOHC with a T3 turbo), and we still have millions of Volvo 240 and 740 (if you want to drive a bus!) so I joke with boys and say"the 240 should be the Escort of North America, only better size for our big and fast roads".
There has been now, after all these boys watch F-cup videos, several boys who have built mid 90s BMW...
I make rally suspension for a lot of the cars here maybe 20% of all the cars, and did some nice stuff for a boy in Colorado who after driving a friend's Sierra with my stuff, parked his EVO and built a 325!!! he says its way more fun and like the challenge compared to the Evo which is just too good.
By the way I posted a link to your blog on our little forum we call Rallyanarchy.com, here is linkit:
http://www.rallyanarchy.com/phorum/read.php?1,58693
We have some guys from all over, even one Finnish guy who lives half time in Florida and a very friendly danish guy.
It would be really nice if maybe you could drop by and say hello. You maybe don't realise how we look at Finland rally scene here and finska rally drivers. We believe it is "ralli-paradis" and all the drivers are all like Gods from Mt Olympus---or just insane crazy guys, one or the other we can't say.
We even have fun with names and everybody eventually gets a "honorary Finnish name", and I'm the guy who "donates" the name because i work with and race against many Finns for 7-8 years and can even read maybe 8-10 words I learned when I live some strange place just a little to the West of Finland (you know, where they speak some funny language which I know even a few Finns speak up in Österbotten and Helsigfors) 8+10 words is pretty damn good after all these years don't you think?
Well you're welcome to say hi over at our little forum, don't be shy!