one other thing driving the changes to classes: cars are about 10,000%
better than they were 30 years ago. you can make minor changes to a cars
(ala STS) and have a car that handles really well, has lots of power and
would whip almost any stock car made in the 70s. plus it wont blow up,
starve the carbs, rub a tire off a rim, flip over even just catch on fire.
plus they dont rust to death in 5 years and the engines have good
compression after 50,000 miles.
this means cars that are good race cars AND good street cars. AwEsOMe dUde!
-james
OSP - Old Sixty's Pride
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thana, Peter {High~Palo Alto}" <PETER.THANA@ROCHE.COM>
To: "Ian Green" <iagreen@ucdavis.edu>; "Bay_Area_Autocross_List"
<ba-autox@autox.team.net>
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 11:47 AM
Subject: RE: Round 6 results are posted
> 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
|