I didn't delete that danged tail last time, so Steve saw and answered my
last post before anyone else saw it. Just re-sent it to the list.
Just a couple comments on Steve's replies.
> > How exact is our fix? You beat me by a tenth of a second at Nationals,
> > Steve, with a car you say is a not-completely-sorted work in progress.
On
> > the other hand I have a pretty well sorted car with new and very recent
> (and
> > for my budget quite large) investment in engines that have raised me
from
> > tail-ender to mid-packer and even threatening for trophies (9th the past
> two
> > years, 14th this year with five Miatas ahead of me, most of them not
fully
> > prepared). Candidly, I was dissatisfied with my drives this year.
>
> I wasn't happy with my driving either<g>. Isn't your car also a road race
> car? If prepped to be strictly a Solo car, couldn't it be faster?
Yes it is a dual car (and built to GCR, not the solo rules). However, IMHO
going "strictly solo" would not really be an advantage for me except in one
area. The tracks I run on tend to be short here in MiDiv (except Memphis!),
so I run short gears. I have a 4:55 rear and a GT6 tranny. Used to run a
stock Spitfire trans. It worked for road racing but not well for solo (I ran
out of 2nd gear just about where 3rd began), so going to the GT6 gave me
much better 2/3 overlap for solo and a longer 1st gear and still is a good
road racing box. IOW, the gears I run work equally well for autox or road
racing -- except Memphis where I run out of 4th gear with 2/3 of the
straightaway left and just cruise at 8500 to the far end (but then the
carousel there, 6500 in top gear, is a hoot!).
The one thing I could do different for solo is yank all the roll cage and
supporting structure and get down closer to a Solo II weight. I am about 135
pounds overweight for solo, but about right on target for road racing. My
solo weight in the rulebook is 1405 without driver, road racing it is 1680
with driver. I guarantee you, I may be overweight myself but I do not add
275 pounds to the car! What happened? My car's GCR weight used to be 1585,
which came about when they decided to weigh with driver and added 180 pounds
to all the cars. Yep, that 1405 number in the solo book came from the
ORIGINAL GCR weight for the car! Well, GCR has mandated roll cages, then an
8-point cage (forward extensions) and in bits and bites here and there
boosted the weight another 95 pounds. This is not a bad thing, but solo has
not kept up. Solo's rollbar/cage rules date to some 15 years ago or longer.
Okay, so let's add 100 pounds to every car in the class, Miatas add 300. ;-)
> It seems the SEB is juggling several issues; how long to protect exsisting
> classes from new cars, how to revive a dying AP, and how to increase
> particiption in Preprared.
1. Classes should not be "protected" from new cars. BUT, new cars should not
be overdogs either. We need the new cars. Just that they need to be classed
intelligently. IMHO, if there is a question, then it should go in a class
where it might be a bit uncompetitive, let it prove its worth there. Easier,
as we are finding, to move a car DOWN than to move it up. And perhaps with
the stated objective that after a set period (two years? Time to let people
build GOOD examples?) the car will be reconsidered -- not for "reclassing"
but taken as if a new entity and classed where it needs to be. Wouldn't this
all be different if the Miata had been in DP for two years with the idea
that after two years trial/experience it would no longer be DP or ANY class,
but automatically classed fresh at that point? You come at the discussion
from a whole different point of view. It might then have been newly classed
in DP, FP, AP, or wherever it best fit. It would not have been "moved" per
se.
2. The dying AP was not helped much by the goofy rules invented for it. The
Lotii went away, a few other cars replaced them, and the numbers are about
the same. It seemed the better solution was when AP/FP merged, but again it
was done badly leaving the Lotii as overdogs with not enough effort to truly
equalize them to the good cars that came from FP. Result, FP was broken out
to its own class again, and it is a good class.
3. With the notable exception of CP, which has its own unique attributes
driving it, IMHO divorcing the Solo Prepared rules from GCR has done nothing
to benefit the category but has succeeded in enhancing an "us vs. them"
attitude. The problem was not that Prepared was tied to GCR, it was that
Prepared was tied to OLD GCR -- rule was that if you were prepped to any of
the past five years or so, which let people pick and choose and was very
confusing. It also has partially closed the door to cars that could easily
be sold between autocrossers and road racers. It could so easily have been
done that year-old GCR was the standard. And then, the race and solo
communities (boards) seemed totally averse to talking to each other when
they had common issues. "Us vs. Them" hurts both. GCR was a perfectly good
ruleset, with enough room in it to build great solo cars that were not very
good for racing but still within the same ruleset. GCR now has an answer for
the very same problems that exist in Production and it is working. Solo has
yet to figure that out for Prepared. Instead we have gone down a path that
creates virtually a different ruleset for each Prepared class. Chaos rather
than concept.
But there is something in SCCA's future that could fix that (but the fix is
distant, I suspect). We have a new guy on staff who is the tech guru for ALL
of SCCA club-level competition, and that includes Solo. He has a
Solo-specific assistant, but the concept of having tech issues club-wide
funnel to one guy is great. This becomes a first step to an idea I had -- in
a fantasy ideal -- several years ago. We create a new board -- the Spec
Board. This board decides the car prep issues for ALL of SCCA -- solo, road
racing, even pro rally. What can you do to a motor, a suspension, gearing,
etc. The Spec Board decides, and what it says for Production road race is
the same for Prepared solo and Open pro rally, for example. Ditto for Solo
Stock/Showroom Stock, Street Prepared/Improved Touring, etc. The issues of
each are in the mix, and you don't do something for one that screws the
other. Specs, weights, etc., are the Spec Board's mandate. Not that hard to
write a suspension rule that accommodates both the Pro Rally need for a foot
and a half of travel and the racer/autocrosser need to get as low as
possible -- It's the same rule, just which end do you want to build to? The
Solo Board and the Comp Board and the Rally Board exist to determine how
their sports are conducted. They also class the cars. They can mandate
things specific to their area, like safety (racer gotta have full harness,
solo doesn't but needs belts, etc.).
It'll probably never happen.
> I don't want to see anyone screwed. I just want some rules stability and
a
> competitive class where I can play with my car. The hurried, and IMHO not
> well thought out, move to AP is neither.
It is hurried. And that is not good. But the hurry is because a full year
ago it was pretty well anticipated there would be a class change for the
Miata but then the one proposed got shouted down and they are now trying to
come up with another. I still think it is an FP car under its current prep
rules and maybe a little weight adjustment (don't ask me which way!), but
that idea has never been put on the table. Why they proposed it for EP with
the tin-tops escapes me, but IMHO that is still the best proposal that WAS
on the table. The GCR ruleset for E Production Miatas seems the best basis
to use (note I said "basis" not "rule"). Oh, but that is a road racing thing
and if they like it we must ignore it and invent something else. Which is a
really blinkered attitude that manages to screw up more than it fixes. One
thing about E Production, that's where most of the cars are that autocross
in F Prepared. Guess what? The Miata is there too. It's not an overdog
there, but it is competitive -- wins some but not all the races.
IMHO, the Miata is too important a car to ignore. It is popular, and people
want to run them. It is exactly the car Prepared needs. But it does it no
favor to make it the overdog in a class it will decimate by its presence
(and does Prepared no favor at that end either).
--Rocky
/// unsubscribe/change address requests to majordomo@autox.team.net or try
/// http://www.team.net/mailman/listinfo
/// Partial archives at http://www.team.net/archive
|