THE FIRST BREAK IN FOUR YEARS….
author: Leon Botha
Rallystar will be going into summer hibernation for a while……
If you do not see anything new on Rallystar from Saturday 11 February until Thursday the 23rd, don’t worry too much as this will be the first time in four years that you will not be able to read anything new on a daily basis.
The following is written not to brag, but only to give you an idea of the work that went into the website over the past four years.
A few of the facts: – the website received just over 11 million hits, which is an average of more than 7500 daily. We published 3238 articles just on the “rally” section, which means that we published an average of more than two articles every single day since our inception!
I do not even want to work out how many hours and money went into it, as I do feel a bit depressed as it is, thinking that I may not have anything to do from 3 in the mornings until about 7 for the next week or so.
I am going to try to try and forget about Rallystar for at least 14 days, and get my batteries recharged, if you do not mind. If you do, well - hard luck, as the missus will definitely divorce me if I even look at an Internet Café while we are enjoying (hopefully) a week or two in the Bangkok, Phuket – Thailand area.
Looking back over the years, I must admit that it has been fun, there were a number of great fights over sometimes small things, and small fights where we actually needed to declare war. Many of you were extremely pissed off, many more were very pleased, and although it was always optional to register, we currently have more than 3000 registered readers on Rallystar – and we have not once sent any uncalled for promotional e-mail to any of you!
When I went back in time on the site this morning to check when we actually started, and how many articles we published, I could not help but read the article on 2002 Mountain Trail when Francois Jordaan navigated for me. Although for some or other reason the pictures in the article disappeared it was still fun to read, refreshing the event in my mind and at the same time I have to admit it brought a smile or two along with it.
I can still clearly visualise the following moment – this is about half way through the article:
Luckily we were not there to see this (the service vans sliding in the mud) , because the tales after the rally were frightening. We heard stories of our beautiful brand new long wheel base Iveco drifting sideways for about 100 meters down a steep down hill on its way to a bridge, followed by the event ambulance, just as out of control.
In stage three we were while driving at quite a pace, catching the Total Toyota of Dean Sanders and Ashley Gericke. As we saw Tjaart van der Walt standing next to his broken down Golf, I had the Toyota in my sight ahead of me and saw an opportunity to overtake.
Dean was driving as hard as he could under circumstances, pleased with himself that he was not doing too badly. The last thing in his mind was to look in his mirror for a car catching him. – “Impossible, never happened before, can’t be”, would be any driver’s reaction at such a time.
Hoping they would see our approaching bright headlights, I changed to sixth and hit the pedal. At that very moment, Dean sort of slid slightly to the left and I could overtake without missing a beat. As I came in next to him, looking at a huge culvert on the right-hand side approaching at better than 170km/h, the Toyota now just ahead of us hit a mud splash and completely covered our windscreen in mud.
What followed were some of those eternal moments every human sometimes experience in slow motion. The wiper blades that normally work at a schwip, schwop rate, now seemed to go down three speeds and came up at a slooooooooooop, and went back at a sloooooooooooooooosh rate.
I shouted “where’s the road” and Francois, without missing a beat said “straight on”
We heard later on that In the car next to us, the shaken team (who were also covered in muddy water) shouted at each other “Hey, what the hell was that?” and looked over their shoulders to see if there were more of these blue objects approaching?
Many readers do not really know what they can or can not read on the website, but if you enter for instance “mountain trial” in the search column, top left, you will receive 6 pages filled with applicable articles in which the words appear.
All you need to do to relive some of the “moments” is enter a search in the “type your search here” button just under the RallyStar emblem on the home page – top left. (Please click on “go” after you entered your search definition.) You will be amazed at the number of articles you did not read, because we actually published too many, too fast.
I promise you it is fun to recap on some of the events – so there you have plenty to do, while I eat Poodles in Bangkok!
The RallyStar calendar is something else not used by all after all these years.
All you need to do is click on the “Motorsport Calendar” button on the right hand side of the screen and select the month you would like to look at. You have to open the month you selected. Do not be like me who sit and wait for about two minutes before I realise I did not hit the “go” button next to the appropriate calendar and that is why nothing happened.
You can also advertise anything you would like to sell on RallyStar free – all you need to do is to “log on” and go to the classified adverts. You will then easily be able to place the advert. Please, big please try to add a picture of the article.
Coming Events
Shortly after we return, on the 23rd of February 2006 I will announce the dates for the 2006 RallyStar RallySprints Series, as well as the dates for the 2006 RallyStar shoot out!
You can also expect a very important announcement that will affect the rally scene dramatically to be made soon. This is going to be something you all have been waiting for, and if we do pull it off, you will be in a position to make money out of the sport, probably for the first time
Patrick Vermaak may be able to post an article or two in my absence, but he is still a bit wary of wiping out the whole site in the process – as I WILL kill him.
I cannot tell you how many friends we made during the four intense years of motorsport, of course we also managed to add a few enemies to our list, but that was mostly of insignificant.
What is important is the fact that here and there we did manage to “force” some changes on to the sport. In other cases we failed to make an impression, but there, we now realise all one can do is to wait until the person or persons responsible realise that they are actually not doing anything to improve the sport, and at the same time they are also not doing any good to their respective ego’s.
My goodness, I could never understand how a supposedly intelligent person can not see that he or she for that matter is actually an arsehole? The other night a friend told a story about the “auras” hanging around some people – have you noticed some of the totally negative “auras” some people manage to keep floating around them wherever they go? They walk like John Wayne causing more shit than the Three Stooges put together, and believe it or not, this while they must be thinking that they are actually doing good!
Then you get the real sluggers for the sport – they simply carry on doing their mostly thankless jobs, and in many cases they still have to endure unfair and uncalled for, criticism! When a competitor, mostly the not so successful ones, say “so and so is such an ass” I feel like kicking him where you get tuned to sing in the Drakensberg Boy’s Choir!
Thinking about it, I still prefer them to those who never say anything in the open. All they do is they arrive at an event, participate, and go home. They do not compete to win, they do not compete because they enjoy it – how the hell can you ever enjoy losing, except if you represent SA in soccer or cricket.
I still feel strong about us merging a number of unnecessary motor clubs to form one or two bigger united fronts to get the sport going. Pretoria Motor Club currently is growing at a good rate and if we manage to pull off some of the projects we are working on, we will be the first club able to support some of its top privateers in their effort to get to the top, or at least get to a higher bracket in the competition jungle.
Give it some intelligent thought and you will realise that “combining” means bringing those who can organise closer together, it means more talent in one place, more experience, and of course more members to do the work.
Can we really afford “club loyalty” when it does not actually exist? It is not like you will give you life for your club, is it? Most people hardly find it in their ability to pay their subs, or add a few extra Rand to the club’s coffers out of free will.
If you look at the number of members you actually cater for, and you measure the work that has to go into that, you will soon realise that it simply is not worthwhile. Not in its present form.
While talking about the clubs, the websites that popped up all over the show of course went the same way – it simply took the Marie Biscuit (for those who thought there was a cake) and crunched it, let alone divide it.
Instead of joining existing successful websites, adding what little extra they actually had to offer, they had to start a new site – reinventing the wheel, repeating what is said and written all over again. At the same time over catering for their small crowd of readers, who mostly read the other sites, where the same information is published – over and over again. I had a look at the various articles written on the main sites and came to the conclusion that we could have had one single worthwhile website – saving readers the time to search of anything worth reading all over the show.
We recently managed to do a fairly accurate survey to measure traffic on some of the sites and goodness knows it is pathetic to see that some hardly get 70 readers, let alone unique visitors, per day! The measurements and ratings also measure the same action two or three times, giving real accurately shit figures most of the time. Then you should hear the claims, mostly in the form of “hits”, some of them make to advertisers – it actually borders on fraud!
I am pleased to say that although “unofficially” Dave Ledbitter and I at least try to fill each other’s shortcomings and hopefully Rallyword and RallyStar will be able to work even closer together in future to ensure that we give you the best information and intelligent, or at least sensible, opinions you really want to read about.
I still get pissed off whenever I have to write about or report on an event and I think about all the negative trends, the contra productive attitudes that have done the sport so much harm in the past. Good people have been lost to the sport because not such great specimens thought they did a better job, or even worse did not care less, as long as their names appeared in the yellow flickering candle representing the local motorsport “lime light”!
I hope that we will be able to work together closer with one purpose in mind, which is to build the sport for those will follow us, while we manage to make it better for those who are currently battling to make it to the start of events.
One of the better things that did happen over the past few months, although it did not only generate good, was the fact that Total “withdrew” from sponsoring rally events, and used that money to assist regional rallies as well as a gaggle of “privateer” competitors.
Now all we need is a great sponsor who will see the excellent opportunity left open to get involved in sponsoring a National Rally or two, where they can create a true rally atmosphere, and bring the people to the sport – in areas suitable to host a typical South African rally.
Have you seen the spectator atmosphere during Sweden on TV – can you believe what this sport, that even those who are directly involved, underestimate, can really generate in publicity and the value it can add to any company’s image and customer relationships?
When will this actually happen?
The moment we realise that the sport is bigger than our own self-importance and little egos! The moment we really decide to take hands and at least support those who do have the sport at heart instead of their own pockets or their own interest.
To close this article I though it will be appropriate to show you that when we say “RallyStar Xtreme Rally Adventure” we really mean it! These pictures have been taken during a recent team-building day and to say that the customers were impressed is a bit of an understatement.
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Just to show that we are actually serious......
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See you again later this month – but watch this space I may just be able to slip away and visit an Internet Café, although if I manage to slip away …………..
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