"I'm thinking from the perspective of a relative novice who's running
what they brung, which just happens to fall into HS (say, an Escort LX,
a common daily driver). I'd think that having to compete directly
against current ES cars would frustrate them quickly and cause them to
give up on autox."
That's the thing about Solo, it covers quite a spectrum of drivers with
different skill and expectation levels. It's also very hard to classify
cars for all those different types of drivers. Truths I've found about
auto-x...
1. A good driver in a Yugo can and will beat a newbie in a Celica (or
Mustang, etc.). Most folks seem to think the driver is at least 80% of
the package. The problem is that most newbies aren't convinced until
they ride along with a good driver.
2. On certain courses, a 'handling' car (Celica ST in HS) will beat a
higher HP car (Celica GT in ES, hell, sometimes Eclipses in GS or Neons
in DS!). At the Cendiv Divisional we only had to get on the brakes hard
twice each day. That usually means we only had to hammer the gas twice
after that. Results say Handling course.
3. On certain (Corvette?) courses, handling cars don't stand a chance.
This weekend at the Milw BFG, I was on the brakes HARD at least 6 times
each day. Perhaps we're seeing more handling courses these days due to
only having smaller lot's available.
4. Sometimes drivers just have bad days.
IF the ES/HS moves come about you'll have a really big ES field at Nat's
next year. Not so sure about HS but the door would be wide open for a
lot of inexpensive cars. BTW, I tried a HS Chevy S-10 with ZQ8
suspension. Even with the LSD you can't get the power down til you
stand it up straight. I'm thinking it would be good on some courses,
not so good on others, (Nats). I bet we'll see a lot of Integras,
Honda's, etc.
--
Jeff "I finally got a V8" Cashmore
http://www.execpc.com/~cashmo/wai.html = Wisconsin Autocrossers Inc
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