Howdy,
On Mon, 8 Nov 2004, Chris Cox wrote:
> I agree with your final comment. It would be totally unfair to make a
> 2.5 E36 weigh as much as a 3.2 . In theory I don't have a problem with
> using the weight x displacement with adders formula. What I have a
> problem with is the value of the current multipliers.
Ok.
> I feel that Greg Fordall and Myself have almost equally prepared car. At
> our local National tour this last year I won that event by about 5
> tenths. Greg said that he did not feel he got everything out of his car.
> I on the other hand felt I left very little on the table. He said he had
> possibly another .25 left in the car. At the time my car weighed 2230
> on the scales and his was 2120. The numbers told us that my car may be a
> little to light. I felt like to be fair that my car should have to weigh
> 2300 for us to be equal. Who really know what the actual weight
> difference should be but it seemed reasonable to both of us. That is how
> I feel the multipliers should add up on my car. You wanted a suggestion.
> There it is.
The issue I have with that is that your car is one particular car, vs. all
the rest in the class. Leaving aside the actual validity of whatever
formula, looking at only one car (ok, two if you include the 914) to
determine a formula isn't going to work, particularly for the case of a
relatively simple formula.
I want your suggestion on a formula that works better than what is
proposed (and has been sent to the BOD now). Feedback that you think 70
lbs would make your cars equal rather than 170 lbs is interesting and
useful, but at this point we're both just guessing... If the formula is
otherwise ok then it seems to me that the thing to do is try it and see
how it works.
Now, all that said, the FP formula that I saw over on the scca.com site is
very interesting to me. I think there's every chance that it might work
better than the proposal formula (and, of course, every chance that it
wouldn't and every chance that it'd be different, but not better or worse
:-)
In many ways I dread saying what I'm about to publically... There's
plenty of folks out there who would like nothing better than to seize on a
statement like this and run screaming up a hill.
Of course, being on the PAC doesn't pay anything either, so what the
heck... :-)
My feedback letter to the BOD regarding the revised proposal said that I
hoped they'd accept the '05 proposal with the exception of the weight
formulas for dp/ep/fp and class moves to dp & fp. I think another year's
discussion and feedback, particularly in DP and FP, would make sense. The
flap caused by the BOD recinding their original approval has spurred very
good discussion in both areas and I think its worth looking at it again...
... but not at the expense of the rest of the '05 proposal items which
are, IMHO, _long_ overdue.
> The "this sucks" comment got exactly what I was looking for. It got a
> reaction. I felt I needed a way to draw attention to this problem. I
> have gotten a lot of personal e-mails from auto-x acquaintances saying
> basically "I feel your pain" , "here they go again" and " I'll see you
> in AP buddy" so it's not just me that feels like this proposal in unfair
> or thought out completely.
I've seen those same types of comments. And, I suspect like you, I've
seen comments totally loving the proposal, etc.
My goal as a PAC member isn't to make everyone happy. Its to help make
Prepared remain a viable autocross category for the foreseable future.
Changes are (in my opinion) necessary to reverse the current trend and I
strongly believe that without those changes Prepared as a category will
die. The nature of change means that some folks are going to be unhappy
and, after a certain point, that can't be helped.
Mark
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