Hi Guys:
As a recently retired board member of TE/AE, I could certainly be
classified as one of those unnamed individuals who has recently been
thrashing the autocross rules around, and the concours rules not so long
ago, too. As a participant in neither (never autocrossed, entered a
concours or two only to get a good parking space), I mostly looked for
things that seemed dumb, rather than trying to bend the rules to the
advantage of MY car. Do we really want to allow 302's in THAT class?
Why allow tires that big in Stock if they couldn't possibly fit in
completely unmodified wheel wells? Etc. You can argue about what to
allow or disallow in each class until the cows come home, which we did
on several occasions.
First of all, what's wrong with having different standards within
different clubs? Variety is the spice of life. Is every baseball park
the same shape? NO! Wouldn't that be boring... and we wouldn't have the
Green Monster here in Boston. Is every race track the same shape? NO!
Even within NASCAR, each one is a little bit different, and has it's own
challenges. And think about Lime Rock vs Road America. Wouldn't it be
more interesting to see how your car does under CAT rules, then against
STOA rules, then TE/AE? If your goal is to WIN WIN WIN, then yes, you
need matching rules so you can fine tune your car. And while you are at
it, you had better throw in some rules requiring exactly the same
autocross course layout on exactly the same surface, and probably the
same altitude and temperature too.
The National club issue: I think that if enough people wanted it to
happen, it would have happened by now. Maybe the Corvette and Shelby
worlds evolved with large national clubs, but the Sunbeam world didn't.
Before leaving the TE/AE board, we discussed exactly what the role of
the club should be in the future, given the evolution of the web as a
communication tool. This network, and sites such as TU, do a much
better job of providing many of services that used to be available only
through the clubs. Have a question? Here you can have it in front of
several hundred people within hours, and have a solution, if not several
possible solutions within a couple days. Try that in a monthly
newsletter. So I think the earlier comments were right. THIS is
becoming the national, if not the world umbrella club. Maybe there are
ways the clubs can better work together, and maybe this should become
part of how they evolve to remain viable in the future.
Stu Brennan
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