Rich, et Listers,
As one of those "modified Tiger people", I had to seriously ask myself
whether I should indeed be ashamed of my performance in the autocross
event. Especially so, since I was awarded a second place trophy in the
modified division. While I am not sure just what Rich might be getting at
with this question, I imagine that others besides Rich noted the seemingly
curious inverse relationship between first place times and the Stock,
Personalized, and Modified classifications. In defense of the Modified
class, I could point out that the average times of the three classes are
50.96 seconds, 49.75 seconds, and 48.39 seconds for the four top finishers
in Stock, Personalized, and Modified, respectively. However, a whole lot
more could be said on this subject, some of which has already been touched
on by Bob Horwitz. For those who weren't there, let me add some other
pertinent information. Essentially the same course was run the day before
by the Corvette club. I wasn't there, but we were told that their top time
of day was posted by a national champion driver (female by the way) that
was (I believe) in the 45 second range. I believe we made the course a
little bit harder by moving a few cones. Another factor was the sand and
gravel just off course which meant that any error was quickly compounded
and placed a premium on error free driving. I wish we had had the chance to
run against some of the fastest Corvettes on the identical course. I choose
to believe that Terry, Stan, Dan, and a few other of the faster Tigers
would have beaten many if not all of the Corvettes. Of course, we'll never
know the answer to that one.
Perhaps Rich's real question is whether anything those of us in the
Personalized and especially the Modified class have done to our cars has
really helped to improve performance. Well, this is certainly a subject
that could be discussed a some length. For one thing, the list of items
that move a car from Stock to Personalized to Modified include a lot of
things that have nothing to do with performance. However, just more
horsepower, or bigger tires, or stiffer springs, etc., etc., does not
necessarily show up as incremental improvements in autocross times. For one
thing, it's the whole package not just the sum of the separate items that
counts. Speaking for myself, I know I have made a lot of modifications that
turned out to be not so great. And Terry proves that if you work at it you
can stay within the "Stock" classification and not give up very much.
However, I'll bet Terry's motor puts out a little more horsepower than
stock, he was running a brand new set of BFG R1's and, gee, swear to god I
didn't know a rear sway bar was an LAT option!! If we really looked at
Terry and Stan's cars we would see that they are very far from stock, even
though they may (or may not) be satisfying the letter of the law. What is
incontrovertible is that these guys are damned good drivers. I would wager
that any of them could take any Tiger that ran that day and easily turn a
sub 50 second time. I should also point out that in the "fun run" part,
Terry turned a 45.9 second time and Stan turned a low 46 second, I turned a
47.0 second, and others also improved their times by big amounts during the
fun runs. Given enough practice, who knows what the limit would be? But
this does illustrate what a big factor the driver is versus the car. Most
of the drivers are just a lot further down the learning curve. Hell, the
last time I ran an autocross was last year in Eureka. For many, it's been
considerably longer.
Well, enough said for now. I did have a lot of fun. I will display my
trophy, and no, I don't feel ashamed even though I know I was beaten by a
few better drivers probably driving lesser cars.
Bob
B9472134, SHO, etc.
At 03:29 AM 7/2/98 -0700, you wrote:
> Is what I'm seeing correct? The best time in the Autocross was turned
in by
>a stock Tiger ? You modified Tiger people should be ashamed! Was it just
the
>Altitude that was killing the performance of the Beefed up[ Tigers? Just
>surprised and curious !!
>
>Rich
>
>>
>>Autocross
>>Stock Tiger Men
>>1st - Terry Taylor 47.248
>>2nd - Rick McLeod 51.044
>>3rd - Matthew Taylor 52.202
>>4th - Joe Smith 53.334
>>
>>Personalized Tiger Men
>>1st - Stan Clark 47.455
>>2nd - John Peterson 49.719
>>3rd - Rick Mueller 50.775
>>4th - Peter Phelps 51.034
>>
>>Modified Tiger Men
>>1st - Dan Walters 47.483
>>2nd - Bob Palmer 48.134
>>3rd - Phil Cohen 48.674
>>4th - Bob Horwitz 49.271
>>
>>Alpine Series I-V Men
>>1st - Rob Guerra 55.456
>>2nd - Steve Sage 57.474
>>3rd - Peter Thomson 58.685
>>
>>Other Rootes Vehicle
>>1st - "Ole" Olson
>>
>>Stock Tiger Women
>>1st - Nicole Valueff 51.555
>>2nd - Maria Taylor 51.590
>>3rd - Laura Ettinger 52.750
>>
>>Personalized Tiger Women
>>1st - Deborah Phelps 54.994
>>2nd - Karen Foster 102.575
>>
>>Alpine Series I-V Women
>>1st - Jennifer Guerra 55.296
>>2nd - Jane Sage 101.913
>>
>>Special Awards
>>Longest Rootes Drive - Chris & Karyn Williams (Corbett, Oregon)
>>
>>George Fallehy Trophy - Rick McLeod
>>
>>Howie Schoenfeld Trophy - Dick Barker
>>
>>Lord Rootes - Karen Foster
>>
>
>
>
Bob Palmer
UCSD, AMES Dept.
rpalmer@ames.ucsd.edu
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