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No, and don't plan to.
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Bill
Planet 6 Racing
bill (at) planet6racing (dot) com
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Yes, I finally responded (via email).
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In case you are keeping score (you know who you are 
)
The newest batch or letters received on CD(!) had 15 for PCA's and 2 against.
AB
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Andy Bettencourt
06 ITS RX-7
FlatOut Motorsports
New England Region
www.flatout-motorsports.com
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I am HONESTLY smiling as I sit here - and will let Andy read my mind so I don't have to ask the question out loud.
Seriously. Actually laughing. As my wife says, I have managed to "set it free."
K
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Interesting. I wonder if mine gets counted as one of the 15 or one of the 2. My letter was for PCAs in general but against the ITAC proposal, as written. I actually suggested the following:
RE: IT PCA (a.k.a. "competition adjustments")
Attn: SCCA Competition Board
I oppose the proposed ITAC PCA proposal, as written. However, I would support a PCA-type proposal if it were de-politicized by design. Towards that end, I propose the following formula:
1) Take vehicle results for all IT class races for previous season (tracked only by ITCS entry listing, which would have to be indexed), excluding DNFs and the like.
2) Assign zero points to the one or two center-pack finishers. Assign positive points for front half finishers and negative points to rear half finishers equal to distance from the center (e.g, winner of 31 cars-in-class race gets 15 points, 15th place gets 1 point, 16th place gets 0 points, 17th place gets -1 point, 31st place gets -15 points)
3) Add up points totals for all cars according to IT spec line, and only allow proportional "PCA" adjustments to the top and bottom vehicle for each year (to slow and quicken, respectively, by weight adjustment and/or reclassification ONLY, where the weight adjustment is computed by a fixed formula).
The fixed formula for the weight adjustment could be:
[(points for anomoly car)/(points for nearest other car)]*[50 lbs]. Thus, a front-running anomoly car that had accrued twice as many positive points as its nearest competitor would be hit with 50lbs for the next season, while a back-marking anomoly car that had accrued twice as many negative points as its nearest competitor would get a 50lb break for the next season. Any car that would fall outside of given parameters (say +/- 20% of manufacturers published curb weight), would have to be moved up or down to the next class rather than weight-adjusted.
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I'm a lot of things but a mind reader ain't one of them!
The letters are grouped by the CB and sent to us for review. We don't read them and decide what side of the fence they fall on, someone does that prior to us getting them. We review them for salient points to add to the for/against debate.
AB
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Andy Bettencourt
06 ITS RX-7
FlatOut Motorsports
New England Region
www.flatout-motorsports.com
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Eric: I admire your proposal as it appears to be very well thought out. I have a couple of questions, however. When you say 'vehicle' you mean vehicle type, model etc according to the ITCS line, rather than a particular individual vehicle like my Shelby, your Rabbit, etc.? OK, so the car model with the most points get 50#, meaning that their minimum weight would be raised 50#, or would every car of that model have to carry 50# of ballast? Just saying this because if my car model was the one with the most points, and it already weighed 75# over the minimum, raising the minimum 50# would not effect me. The same on the bottom scale. If you can't bring your car down to near the minimum weight, what good would lowering it from 2350# to 2300# do?
How about just adding weight, but to the top two cars, and making the addition larger, like say 75# for the second car and 100# for the first?
I know we want to try and keep this as uncomplicated as possible, but how about considering making the weight increase proportional to difference in points between the first and second car, adding more weight to a car that was a real run away?
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Thanks Bill. In retrospect, I think my 3-step process could work well, but the final weight formula probably needs some work (and my examples were erroneous).
Per your first question: Yes, the minimum weight for cars according to that particular ITCS spec line would go up, but an individual car that was over its allowed minimum weight to begin with would not have to add anything.
Per your second question: I think it might be important, at least over a period of years, to make adjustments at both ends of the scale (that is, quicken slowest and slow quickest) in order to promote closer competition. I do understand your point, though, about potentially not being able to get a "quickened" car down to a newly reduced lower minimum weight. In that case, I believe that a potential reclassification would be in order, and that's part of the reason that my final formula could use some work (i.e., +/- 20% might be too wide a span, in general).
Per your third question: Adjusting the top two rather than just the top one is certainly possible, but would require a more involved formula. Your 75/100 estimate could work, but my formula was not just a strict 50lbs.
Per your fourth question: Actually, even though my formula may need work, it is already responsive to the *proportional* difference between the top two car models in the class. Let me give two corrected examples:
Example 1: Car model A1 has twice as many points as Car model B1, say 400 points vs. 200 points. The formula gives [(400)/(200)]*(50 lbs)] = 2*50 = 100lbs (I mistakenly said 50 in my earlier post). So car model A1 gets hit with a 100lb increase in minimum weight for the following season.
Example 2: Car model A2 has three times as many points as Car model B2, say 600 points vs. 200 points. The formula gives [(600)/(200)]*(50 lbs)] = 3*50 = 150lbs. So car model A2 gets hit with a 150lb increase in minimum weight for the following season.
Thus, this type of formula does reflect the proportional differences between the car models as actually run.
Yes, I am trying to keep it simple and feel that anything too complicated would never fly. Of course, it is *possible* to craft a formula that would adjust the potential of EVERY car model run during the year to theoretically make them exactly equal in race potential. But, I don't think we really want that!
Now, if something like my proposal were actually implemented, there would be one basic requirement that would have to be added to the ITCS listings in order to facilitate proper scoring. EACH ITCS CAR MODEL ENTRY WOULD NEED A UNIQUE INDEX. For example, if a VW Scirocco 1.7L happens to be the 33rd spec line in ITB, its index could be "XB33", and "XB33" would have to appear on the race results to differentiate this car from all the other ITB cars. Thus, T&S entries like "VW" or even "VW Scirocco" would no longer be sufficient.
Can T&S handle this? Perhaps, but I defer to others for advice.
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We've been here in the past but since the above suggestion is new...
...it seems to me that the problem is not in the details. The real issue is that there isn't - and probably never will be - consensus on the first principals of the thing.
What Eric proposes presumes that we want to handicap the makes/models that finish up front (and give a boost to those that don't, relatively speaking) regardless of what influences actually drive the results.
By its very nature, cars driven by talented pilots will get weight. If Bob Stretch builds an ITC Super Beetle and kicks everyone's butts, is it Bob or the Beetle? Should other Beetle drivers be punished for his success?
Similarly, cars that are disproportionately more well-funded (and therefore well-developed) get lead. Cars that are disproportionately driven by people with low budgets benefit. It is possible that the attribute of "BMW 325is" is merely associated with "good budget" and the real factor is not the chassis but the $$.
For the sake of this conversation, I am NOT saying that this is wrong. I am merely asking if this is what we want to accomplish.
Kirk
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Kirk is right, as long as ALL examples of a particular model are well-funded and/or well-driven. However, the negative/positive point system would basically *average* the actual performance of all examples of a given car that were run in the previous year.
Thus, a car finishing dead last (but NOT a DNF, etc.) would effectively balance trump the points of the same model car finishing first, resulting in zero net points for that event.
Caveat: Now, would well-funded drivers go to the extreme of arranging for someone else to sandbag in the same model car in order that their model not get adjusted the next year? I hope not, but really can't be sure.
I am sure that NOT ALL drivers of that model car would be so-inclined, so the system would eventually catch up with the car. And who knows, at worst we might have novices driving for free, and how bad can that really be??
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Yeah, but...
With a system that is referenced against a "central tendency" - in your example, a median - you don't need ALL of the examples of one make/model to be well funded to skew the results.
Over a large number of examples, it is enough if BMWs (an example but not a hypothetical, I think) are more likely to be well funded, than would be the case if funding level were randomly distributed among ALL of the possible make/model choices.
Similarly, the results really get wacked if there are NO well-funded examples of a particular make/model running.
My whole point (I know, again) is that the input variable considered when making the adjustment - finishing position - is itself an intermediate outcome, the result of OTHER, much more fundamental and wobbly variables.
Further, the influence of the make/model of car on finishing position might well be very small, relative to those other factors. This is totally OK if we are willing to accept that what we are actually handicapping is a sum of those variables including (a) driver skill (and a sub-variables that make it up), (
engineering prowess, © testing time, (d) tire allocation, (e) dyno time, (f) track familiarity, and (g) reliability - itself a direct product of the parts and labor that can be thrown at the car.
ALL of these factors are influenced by $$$ so at the end of the day, it might be a more accurate system to just give lead to the guys/gals who have the most money to spend - if we are trying to equalize on-track competition...
K
[This message has been edited by Knestis (edited November 21, 2003).]
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Wow, civilized debate! This is great!
I think that Eric's proposal would work, because of the law of large numbers. IT classes are usually pretty large, and the large fields and the large number of races all across the country will offset all the random events such as really well funded teams that DNF, differences in driver skill, etc.
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Okay - give me a couple of names of drivers of really poorly prepared, low-budget e36 325s...
K
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