I've been watching this debate with no strong opinion or bias,
but after reading the following sentiments from several people, it
suddenly occurred to me that the argument can be turned around --
and exactly what the DSM guys are asking for may be very costly to
them....
At 08:50 PM 6/16/99 , Brian Fitzpatrick wrote:
>The DSM's are the only cars I know of where a turbo update/backdate is
>legal.
...
>
>Why change a rule to hinder an unproven car? If it is proven to be an
>overdog, reclass it!
Okay, let's play that out. They allow update/backdate, which only useful
for that one car. Then they reclass it to a higher class because being
able to update/backdate makes it perform comparable to a higher class.
Now, everyone who owns such cars *must* update/backdate in order for their
cars to be competitive. Hmmmm. Was that really a good thing?
(Forrest Gump's mom always says, "Be careful what you ask for, you just
might get it." ;^)
Note that if they're going to go to the trouble of re-classing the DSM's,
they could just split them out onto separate lines. Hey! If they wanted
to hinder just that unproven car, they could just split them onto separate
lines, preventing the update/backdate. But they didn't do that... I wonder
why??
Hmmm. Perhaps because they weren't targeting that particular car, but
instead realized the potential mess that can be caused by allowing separate
update/backdate of turbos since it can have such wildly varying effects on
performance? Effects that would be almost impossible to predict in advance.
Such variation can make classification extremely difficult and unfair.
And since the classification would have to be based upon the maximally
prepared car, it could make the car very expensive to be competitive,
which is generally contrary to the goals of the Solo2 community.
(And this is why most mods to turbos are disallowed -- the most trivial
changes can have huge (and unexpected) effects.)
Note that the same argument that has been reiterated over and over here, "if
update/backdate makes the car an overdog, reclass it" can be made in reverse.
If disallowing update/backdate makes the car an underdog, reclass it!!
If you had a choice: being reclassed where you are competitive with minimal
mods or being reclassed where you are competitive only with extensive mods,
which would most people prefer???
Or more to the point, are you sure you want to allow a rule that may result
in a series of dramatically better setups being found for your car, possibly
resulting in mid-year class changes, and in any case forcing you to make
mid-year car updates/backdates to stay competitive??? Ick. It may not
happen, but I'd personally rather make that as unlikely as possible.
>From the SEB (and SCCA as a club) point of view, disallowing separate
update/backdate of turbos prevents significant future classing problems due
to people discovering a new turbo/engine setup that is dramatically better
than previous setups, resulting in unavoidable unfair classing (you either
let the new setup dominate, or you reclass it mid-year and make all the
others with that car either update/backdate to the new setup or be
uncompetitive). It does NOT hinder a specific car -- to hinder or
boost a specific car, they can just re-class it higher or lower OR
break it out onto separate lines. They didn't do that -- instead
they prevented a whole set of classing problems (which that car may
or may not be an example of -- we'll never know now, since the problems
have been avoided).
Well, for whatever that was worth,
just one lowly SCCA club member's unbiased point of view,
Brian
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