I have a homework assignment for everyone on RDC.

[isdtbower]

" WIDE WORLD OF OFFROAD" Should be a weekly TV series. All venues have brought up the video and commentating quality to sustain that. Thinking of a Dave Despain type personality to carry it. Needs to be expanded so no one community is "Overcooked." Different Moto, Land speed, Desert, Crawling, Mtn. Biking, Recreational wheeling, Jamborees, Erzberg, Dakar..... Sleds? .....Lots of content and probably more commercial support there....... Let the great events shine through.

 

[AaronMacomber]

This thread is full of amazing ideas.

If a group wants to open-source put together a rulebook+ and wants to keep it transparent. RDC would be honored to provide a platform for the uncensored communication part of it. We could setup a separate sub-forum. Moderators can be peers of the community. Racers.

In my opinion all ideas must be put forward and shared with all. Then the ones with skin in the game vote on it.

Last night I thought more about all of this....eventually there will be resistance in project X (is that what it's called now? lol)... would be a shame if lots of efforts gets put forward and race promoters simply won't adopt to it. Or racers. Is this even something that is needed or desired?

as a newer racer, id support a unified system 100%. it would honestly make things significantly easier, and cost effective if we only needed to worry about building the car to meet one rule book, not picking which one we plan to primarily race.

I feel it would make life easier on tech officials as well, as it would remove " well its legal in Y" arguments...

 

[ProfessionalPitMan]

" WIDE WORLD OF OFFROAD" Should be a weekly TV series. All venues have brought up the video and commentating quality to sustain that. Thinking of a Dave Despain type personality to carry it. Needs to be expanded so no one community is "Overcooked." Different Moto, Land speed, Desert, Crawling, Mtn. Biking, Recreational wheeling, Jamborees, Erzberg, Dakar..... Sleds? .....Lots of content and probably more commercial support there....... Let the great events shine through.

I think some basic form of this has been tried and didn't really work. Maybe in the YouTube era something could. Cam narrating all off road would be for the better of the racing side of things.

Also, somebody mentioned above Stadium off road racing making a come back would be cool. But, if it was viable, wouldn't Robby's "Stadium Super Truck" series have stayed in stadiums and taken off? Some of these ideas have not been ignored they have just not worked. But again, that is a small segment of what "off road" is nation wide. Trail riding a dirt bike might not make exciting TV to some of us but small audience would love it. Bill Dance made a career fishing and people watching him fish. So anything is possible.

 

[AaronMacomber]

I think some basic form of this has been tried and didn't really work. Maybe in the YouTube era something could. Cam narrating all off road would be for the better of the racing side of things.

Also, somebody mentioned above Stadium off road racing making a come back would be cool. But, if it was viable, wouldn't Robby's "Stadium Super Truck" series have stayed in stadiums and taken off? Some of these ideas have not been ignored they have just not worked. But again, that is a small segment of what "off road" is nation wide. Trail riding a dirt bike might not make exciting TV to some of us but small audience would love it. Bill Dance made a career fishing and people watching him fish. So anything is possible.

On stadium trucks from the 90's vs today, I wonder how much size would come into play? Back then stadiums were (or so it seemed) bigger since a lot of them were multi use vs todays "every city has a dedicated sports arena per team" model...that, and even small trucks have grown in size, which would need a larger scale arena. i wonder if thats why SST's are now outdoors on road courses/etc.

 

[kyle_pc_75]

The reason I don't watch SST is because from the clips I've seen it just looks like a bunch of pavement, jump, pavement, jump, with some turns and "rubbin is racin" thrown in. To me it's just not very interesting.

 

[jon coleman]

sst acctually put on a good show at Long Beach, it has a monster jam feel, need to get the kids in the pits& pass out hats& stickers!, gotta get the next generation stoked, koh, offroad racing in general should have more meet& greets& ride a longs , ' camp off road' type stuff for the youngsters

 

[Bro_Gill]

Folks can't compare the MTEG days with anything short court today. The courses are very different, so the vehicles are as well. On the plus side, there are so many minor league baseball stadiums that you could run in at a much cheaper buy in than a major stadium, it would probably work better than when Mickey was running it.

 

[ProfessionalPitMan]

The reason I don't watch SST is because from the clips I've seen it just looks like a bunch of pavement, jump, pavement, jump, with some turns and "rubbin is racin" thrown in. To me it's just not very interesting.

SST came to here in Nashville with the Indy Car race and everybody preferred watching SST. Every person was just blown away by it! You are right, it is pavement racing, but it is what everyone loved about MTEG in that it is competitive and it is full contact. Robby has done a great job with it. I know calling it off road while it is on pavement is weird, but they do put on an incredible show. I wish something like MTEG would work, but currently SST is the best shot there is at spreading what we consider off roading to the masses.

 

[green787]

The rumor is that all this enthusiasm for Formula One is because of a TV show drama on Hulu or something.... . This allows the women to be involved..... It lets them learn about the sport from their perspective, not the male "I'm going to tell you" perspective.....

 

[green787]

We need to start racing against each other.... instead of the clock.....
I know what it's like to have a stadium full of people hoping for a crash in the first turn.... First race ever on this race course..... scary stuff....
Led the parade lap..... Daughter watching..... Desert trucks on a CORR short course track just to see what will happen....
Last out of the first turn from weaving through the first turn wreckage....
The Baldwins understood what people wanted.... Epic action...!!!! Daredevil driving..... 7s was INVITED to start the race....
Other than the Class 11 race at KOH, I have not seen this kind of racing..... And maybe that's why I want to see a Toyota 4 banger class.....

 

[J Prich]

I like @Klaus 's idea of creating some kind of collaborative rule set made by racers in each class to be pushed to every org. As a realist though who has had a relatively small amount of first hand experience with rules and racers, etc, I would imagine the execution of that would be a lot harder to pull off. Even within each class there are often significant disagreements about what various rule should look like, down to the smallest of details. Again not being a party pooper, I just feel like ultimately someone has to be in charge of herding those cats for each respective class and I am guessing that most of those who have been involved in those sorts of grass roots efforts for individual class coalitions, etc could attest to how hard it is to reach consensus on a lot of these issues. The inability to get consensus is part of the reason why we see some classes with similar but different rule sets in various orgs.

 

[ProfessionalPitMan]

We need to start racing against each other.... instead of the clock.....

You are not wrong. This is actually does seem like part of the problem. Again, this is one segment of what Dave was referring to with "off road to the masses" but as far as our version of racing goes, this makes sense. There is not enough door to door action, and the races are very long. Nobody (generally speaking. I know some of us on the board would) wants to watch 9 hours of a truck driving solo through the desert. If only somebody could condense it into a shortened course similar to NASCAR with grand stands and a good TV broadcast.. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Short Course has had very little commercial appeal. To the average viewer, they have taken trucks from Baja and put them on a closed course with side by side starts. I don't know why it hasn't survived or pulled sponsorship. Somebody above mentioned the NHRA and other forms of motorsports losing viewers as well, but before COVID I went to a race and it still felt like it was going strong despite losing some sponsors and only running 1,000 feet. Post COVID, NHRA and NASCAR just feel lame. I don't know if being away from it for so long just changed the desire to see it or what. I don't know if a title sponsored short course series on during prime time would pull a decent enough audience. Again, Robby is the closest to doing that and I don't know what their TV reach really is.

 

[Klaus]

I like @Klaus 's idea of creating some kind of collaborative rule set made by racers in each class to be pushed to every org. As a realist though who has had a relatively small amount of first hand experience with rules and racers, etc, I would imagine the execution of that would be a lot harder to pull off. Even within each class there are often significant disagreements about what various rule should look like, down to the smallest of details. Again not being a party pooper, I just feel like ultimately someone has to be in charge of herding those cats for each respective class and I am guessing that most of those who have been involved in those sorts of grass roots efforts for individual class coalitions, etc could attest to how hard it is to reach consensus on a lot of these issues. The inability to get consensus is part of the reason why we see some classes with similar but different rule sets in various orgs.

Leadership.

Someone does it. People follow.

vs. Authority

 

[J Prich]

Regarding SST, it sounds dumb but I think the lack of dirt (in direct comparison to MTEG) is an issue if the intent is to relate the series to desert racing. The concept of putting those kinds of vehicles in front of audiences that typically would not be exposed is great, and probably indirectly has exposed some folks to desert racing. But what was great about MTEG races it that it brought a "slice of baja" to the people so to speak. It wasn't the same, but obviously it wasn't that big of a leap to make the connection between the racers fans saw in short course races to seeing many of the same racers racing desert in SCORE/HDRA.

IF the intent of a series like that was in part at least to draw attention to the bigger overall sport of desert racing, that connection would need to be made a little more clearly IMO.

 

[class5cole]

Regarding SST, it sounds dumb but I think the lack of dirt (in direct comparison to MTEG) is an issue if the intent is to relate the series to desert racing. The concept of putting those kinds of vehicles in front of audiences that typically would not be exposed is great, and probably indirectly has exposed some folks to desert racing. But what was great about MTEG races it that it brought a "slice of baja" to the people so to speak. It wasn't the same, but obviously it wasn't that big of a leap to make the connection between the racers fans saw in short course races to seeing many of the same racers racing desert in SCORE/HDRA.

IF the intent of a series like that was in part at least to draw attention to the bigger overall sport of desert racing, that connection would need to be made a little more clearly IMO.

Im onboard with this idea

I understand viewership was a problem but SST was so cool in actual stadiums on dirt.

 

[Bro_Gill]

Stadium and Short Course started to suffer when Stadium and Short Course started requiring different vehicles, just like when Short Course and Desert started separating due to wheelbase. Prior to that, you could take your desert car and enter either and you could be competitive. Dividing up the pie seldom creates larger outcomes all around.

 

[MTPyle]

Was thinking it might be cool to reverse the way we do the races and use the desert as the qualifying and the final race is shorter and easy to watch. Do 300 miles in the desert and the top guys fight it out in a 5 mile loop for 20 miles.

Dave kind of did this with the UTV guys and it was cool to see the battles out UTV’s racing at the end in another race.

Mike

 

[J Prich]

Much easier said then done but some kind of clover design with multiple loops that all return to the same infield/pit area could be interesting. Moreso if the race was built around "optional" laps choosen by racers. Like four or five 30 mile loops that all converge back to the same central point, with a requirement that everyone has to hit each loop a minimum of two times and then their choice for the last two loops. More complicated to put in to practice but would consolidate action in a fan accessible way and keep the action flowing with people constantly coming in and out, and would still give racers 100+ miles of course so that they aren't beating the hell out of the same small loop 10 times.

Would get complicated for people to be able to follow who was leading though, lol.

 

[MTPyle]

That’s the thing. At the end start them off Short course style. Easy to see who is winning when it matters.

The rest of the race is just watching guys go thru the desert

Mike

 

[calstyl2]

More Crandon, less Nascar................
Watching Leduc back that Pro4 into a corner at Crandon is one of the most impressive things Ive ever seen, thats the stuff that needs to be seen, maybe larger tracks, a mix of closed course and larger course racing.
SST didnt work in the stadiums, Robbie smartly moved it onto pavement courses to survive. People love watching it, its awesome but not offroad.