Adam
The "recommended" top speed for SCCA Solo II events has not been 70mph
for the fastest car on the fastest part of the course for several years.
It was changed when the new breed of AM cars came into the mix. The
"recommended" top speed is now the low-to-mid 60s for the fastest Stock
and Street Prepared cars on the fastest part of the course and has been
that way for quite some time.
I put "recommended" in quotes because we can't set an absolute maximum
speed. This point has been driven home to me over and over again by
Pete Lyon. If we were to set an absolute max, and then have an incident
where the driver's OBD showed that he/she was going over our max at the
time of the incident, then we'd be opening ourselves up to some big time
lawsuits.
We should be doing anything and everything we can to restrict the
fastest Stock and Street Prepared cars to the low-to-mid 60s.
Where we run into a major problem here, IMNSHO, is when we run an event
on a large site where people are able to SUSTAIN speeds in the
low-to-mid 60s. If they're used to running on smaller sites with lower
sustained speeds, all of a sudden they think they're flying above and
beyond our "recommended" max speeds!
A good point of reference here is knowing where the fastest Stock and
Street Prepared cars red-line in second gear. If a given car red-lines
at 60mph in second - and has to briefly bump third - that's PROBABLY OK.
However, if that same car goes into third and stays there for awhile,
then the course is probably too doggoned fast for Solo II. There are
other venues available for those kinds of speeds. Solo Trials, for
instance, will let you hit 95! 8<{)
John (Old Fartz & TLS #37) Lieberman
adam popp wrote:
> Hello everyone. Well, I heard there was a lot of complaining at the Toledo
> National Tour about the courses there being to fast. They weren't that fast,
> come on now. Then, I heard from a source at the most recent cendiv event this
> weekend at Grissom AFB, that the national tour at Grissom was tight and slow
> because people complained about the national tour courses in Toledo. Then this
> cendiv event I went to where I was expecting a typical Grissom course, was not
> as good, it was slower and tighter.
> Now people, why are you in autocrossing if you don't want to go fast?
> Slow courses on big sites such as Grissom or Toledo Bax airport are not fun,
> like I mentioned in the subject line.
> I also heard the SCCA wants the top speed at the national tours to be
> 60mph at any site from now on. Give me a break, I hope that's not the case.
> You will take a lot of fun out of autocrossing if put the top speed at 60mph
> instead of 70mph where it has been. And you may loose a lot of members and
> money because so. I hope SCCA Solo 2 is not headed towards slow courses on big
> sites more in the future, because if so I might just run the local events
> where we like to go fast. That's my opinion, I'm out.
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