Yes John, I'm sure you didn't mean that comment to be an insult but to me it
sounded harsh and unfair. I don't think you could be more wrong as I don't see
any of these folks that I know running away from fast drivers. I would note
that at the Atwater ProSolo, half of the 13 car field in STS was made up of STS
Novice or recent novice drivers from our region. The time spreads were a
testament to how far they had come in such a short time. They were all within
1-2 seconds of our own esteemed and trophy winning Charlie Davis. And on a
local level, who are we really kidding here? How many of our "experienced and
faster" drivers who were at the top of their classes at Nationals even showed
up to enough of our events to qualify for a trophy? One of the few that I can
think of ran STS for the whole year and won the class. I didn't see anyone
running to the soft, underattended SP and prepared classes!
One of the most pleasant surprises for me this year was the healthy and
consistent participation in STS and its novice class. A friend of mine from
school got a FWD hatchback to remain nameless and asked if he could come with
me to an event and try it out. Next thing I know, he's hooked and bringing a
lot of his friends out to all of our events. And the retention rate was
astounding! Between STS/L and STS-N we had a total of 10 trophies and 17
people who did enough events to qualify for a trophy over the regular season.
Why? Probably because they were having so much fun, competing against each
other, pushing each other to go faster. And having fun before during and after
the event, which is really a big reason why I love this sport. Another great
thing was that you had your Celica guys and gals and your Acura RSX guys and
gals, and not once did I see anyone bitching about whos car is faster or any
animosity at all between them. By the end of the year they were driving each
others cars, figuring out what was different about them, and acknowledging that
they all have a long way to go with both the setup and the driving but at least
they are enjoying it. They are always looking for rides with the so-called
experienced and fast people, attending our schools, what more do you want? I
honestly believe these drivers on the whole got a lot faster pushing each other
week in week out than they would have getting schooled by 3+ seconds in the 4
or 5 events that our region's top drivers bothered to show up to in stock cars
which they budget over $10k a year just for autox.
Next year I see that most of these drivers are already planning to do as many
of the west coast National events as they can afford or have time for. That
brings me to another reason for the popularity of the ST classes- a lot of the
competitors are students and simply do not have the time or financial resources
to go all out in setting up a SP or even stock car. In STS they can build
their skills on the relatively inexpensive Falkens, they can do most of the
modifications they wanted to anyway without being restricted by the stock class
rules. Plus a lot of these cars, lets face it, are neither competitive nor all
that fun to drive in stock trim. You are talking about FWD cars with open
diffs, lots of power, and non adjustable strut suspensions.
Finally, let's talk about contribution to our region. We have already had
event chairs from this group and I personally know of more who want to do this
next year. Charlie spent a lot of time in this class this year and I'm sure he
would concur that this is a good group of people for us to have around. As I
said I'm certain that you meant no harm by your comments but I just wanted to
share with you my experience and perspective of this fine group of drivers.
Peter
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