cars legality?

[manny]

i'm new to this but,WHO or WHOM does the checking of the motors in the race cars? i just did the sebring race this weekend and i could'nt beleive my ears.the sounds of some of these motors = stock?.and nobody hears or see's this. very dissapointed. was running down a straight section with a same like car in class and this person pulled away as if he had nitrous. that comment was said in the pit area.

[zracer22]

nobody checks engines without a protest be filed. nobody files protests because you have to specify how the car is illegal. You can't just say, "his engine is illegal", you have to be specific. And you have to post cash along with the protest. And if you are wrong, then you pay for the engine teardown and rebuild. So to sum it up, nobody checks engines. You're not alone. We have all seen or raced with these cars. I've been in races where the top 2 ITS cars are just as fast on the straights as the top 2 AS cars.

lol,no no no dont mention the "C" word, everyone said I was alone on my presumption on trends, just kidding. there are those here with the means to dole out the protest money and there are those who dont, but what bugs me to no end is the "haves" telling the "have nots" to put up the money or shut up. its cheaper to drop a 750 double pumper on your car to even it out than it is to protest someone running a race cam. I used to HATE the nascar officials at the 4 tracks I used to run at, swore id run em down if I ever saw them away from the track. I miss those a--holes now, they would have the slowest guy at the track changing his rear end camber by 1/10th of a degree and fine him 50 bucks to boot.(joke to follow) But here in the civilized world of road racing were just P/C and "Tolerant" and we just let it gohhhhhh. Seriously now Manny there really four roads that leave this intersection (1) has you Protesting the offender once you have figured out what hes doing, (2) has you dropping a 750 double pumper on your car to show that SOB what the "C" word really means, (3) has you going into a class that has no rules, (4) just lets it gohhhhhh and sit by and take it.

its up to you to do whichever suits you,
I chose (3) for the most part.



[This message has been edited by 7'sRracing (edited March 03, 2004).]

[ITSRX7]

See the other thread on "Trends". All that needs to be said on your topic is there.

7's - come on. It kills me to realize that you know so little about the protest process yet you get beaten by cheaters.

You put up the bond (I think you can do it on a credit card) and protest fee. If you are RIGHT, you DON'T PAY A THING.

If you are wrong and the car in question was legal, you pay to have it put together and you lose your fee - and worst of all, you come to the realization that you are getting whupped by a better driver.

AB

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Andy Bettencourt
06 ITS RX-7
FlatOut Motorsports
New England Region #188967

[lateapex911]

Well, it's not quite that simple.

First, a bit of research should be done on the protestee and his/her car.

Then a protest needs to be written that is a smart protest. Just protesting the engine won't cut it. Specifics are needed. For example, you can protest a rotary for porting his engine, and loose the protest, even though he was cheating, and in the same way, by beveling his rotors! Same result, less detectable, and if you don't specify it on your protest form, he walks away the cheater, but the winner, and you walk away scratching your head.
That in mind, there are also ways to word the protest in such a way as to rope several acts togeter, without specifying 4 different item. If you write a smart protest, the protestee might just wave a white flag and go away long before any engine is even drained of it's coolant.

(We all know a guy who would just go home if the slightest thing broke in his engine, even though he was offered lots of hands to help repair it. I wonder why that guy always just vanished???)


I think there are a lot of reasons people don't protest, but a main one is the fear of the process itself. Folks figure if they write the protest wrong, the protestee gets away scot free, and the protester ends up with egg on his face.

I sometimes wish that we had an honor code. (I know we sorta do...)

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Jake Gulick
CarriageHouse Motorsports
ITA 57 RX-7
New England Region
[email protected]

[Geo]

Just because someone pulls you on the straight "like they have nitrous" doesn't mean they are cheating.

First of all, getting through and off a corner better than someone else can you have you leaving them like they added 200 lbs.

I don't mean to be rude, but it's pretty arrogant to assume someone is cheating because they leave you like you're standing still. Some drivers are just better than others and they get more speed down the straight.

BTW, a well built IT engine is anything but stock. They are very carefully balanced and blueprinted and some make considerably more power than stock.


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George Roffe
Houston, TX
84 944 ITS car under construction
92 ITS Sentra SE-R occasionally borrowed
http://www.nissport.com

[CaptainWho]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">First of all, getting through and off a corner better than someone else can you have you leaving them like they added 200 lbs.</font>

I can sure attest to that. A couple of weeks ago at the driver's school at Roebling, there was another RX-7 that had me cold on the front stretch, if he did his job right. One session he was distracted or something. He'd pull a few car lengths on me on the straight, and I'd gobble him up in the twisties. On one lap, he bobbled trying to get power down in T8 when I had a good position on him and I just matted it and blew his doors off exiting T9 enough he couldn't catch me before T1.

Geo " Just because someone pulls you on the straight "like they have nitrous" doesn't mean they are cheating."

Geo, dont take this personally but thats just the kind of statement that got me to go EP, your assuming Manny is a moron and he didnt take the prior corner speed of the other car into his assumption and your statement is exactly what "I" would say to someone questioning my legality if I WAS illegal. I made the same assumption Manny did BECAUSE I had gone thru the last corner side by side at the same speed as the other car with myself having all the trick shit and 125 RWH in identical cars I still got beat by 20 carlenths. convince someone else that superior inteligence is at work there. Ill tell you what superior driving is,
B. Martinez in his ITA CRX and R. Sather in his ITS Mazda nose to tail passed me on the talladega sweeper at Buttonwillow at 90+ mph with their ass ends hanging out, thats superior driving. the simple fact is the protest system we have in place works only if you can get under the hood of the car in question and determine what the hell is going on prior to filing a protest. nascar has for half a decade policed the cars themselves by writing rules that are enforceable and by requiring the top three in every class to hand over their cars as they come off the track, SCCA had this idea from the start but it turned into a gentlemens social event rather than a post race "TECH IMPOUND" like the GCR wants it to be. One of these days someones going to let the cat out of the bag on these guys and remember, you dont have to be in their class to protest an illegal car.

edit to add
In reflection what a lot of people consider cheating I dont, torturing the rule book has been what auto racing has been about since Henry fords 999. but im talking about the "in your face" stuff that you can argue. If the GCR says the air intake has to be in the stock location but I come up with a spoiler that pressurizes that location to 1.5 bar its up to you to change the rules to say I cant. rules are there as a general guideline, gain what you can thru creative thinking. I found a way in the ITCS to control my mixture on the fly in my non computer car LEGALLY and "There will" be another line added to the PCS eventually because of my creativeness with the PCS spoiler/ retractable h/lamp rules. (ill post a pic of that one as soon as they cry foul)



[This message has been edited by 7'sRracing (edited March 04, 2004).]

[Maddog]

Originally posted by 7'sRracing:
.....and remember, you dont have to be in their class to protest an illegal car.

When did that change in the GCR????

[CaptainWho]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">When did that change in the GCR????</font>

According to the test I took at the driver's school two weeks ago, you don't even have to be a competitor to lodge a protest. Any steward, corner worker or other specialty, crew chief, or competitor in any class can protest you if they put up the bond. Assuming my memory hasn't totally gone into the dumper.

[gran racing]

There's also another side to protesting. If you protest someone, the general feeling is that person will be chastised for doing such an evil thing.

I do think it is funny to walk around the paddock and see what people are doing. I'm not sure if they think that people can't recognize or notice the rules being broken or simply don't care. For these obvious things, it is too bad that SCCA doesn't get involved themselves and it requires a fellow racer to make the protest.

The other side is who is protesting who - what I mean is that I'm not going to protest a front runner (I'm mid-pack). And will a front runner protest a mid-pack car? Why would either and what would be gained? Not saying it is right in an ideal world.

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Dave Gran
NER #13 ITA
'87 Honda Prelude

[manny]

here's another statement that was said by a racer with same car and in same class" we're not running in 1st or 2nd so we might as well cheat just like they are and play with them".
GEO, because this other driver got loose in the turn i was able to catch him and also got along side of him coming out of the turn it was like a good old drag race to the hair pin at sebring.not only did he leave me sitting there but i never saw him again.i'm not new to building engines but when the same motor is sitting next to you in the false grid area and this thing is rocking like a monster a wont even idle under 1500 rpm then that makes me think,thats all. and he had a muffler on his car also.there were other same model cars out there that sounded the same and they also pulled away and never saw them again. i do know a driver with same car and is very well tuned so i do know how it should run.

[planet6racing]

Manny:

This is not a flame, but I have to ask: when did you get your SCCA license? Did you go through an SCCA school, or did you get it from an outside school?

The protest procedure is explained well in the GCR and should have been covered and tested on in an SCCA school. You should also already know that it is the competitors responsibility to police the class, not the SCCA's. If you hear a car with an obvious Cam modification sitting on the grid, that's a pretty easy protest. You'll probably want to talk to the person first, but don't be afraid to pull out the checkbook!


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Bill
Planet 6 Racing
bill (at) planet6racing (dot) com

[RSTPerformance]

Anyone can protest anyone; I would guess the only limitation would be that you have to be a SCCA member.

No one has mentioned the positives about the SCCA "protest procedure." I think a major positive is it takes undue burden off volunteers who want to be friends with you (who you would hate if they busted you), and the major benefit is that it takes the politics out of the legality of cars.

SCCA gets enough flack making the rules (for car prep/classification), imagine how much if they were responsible to enforce them consistently as well. They have enough to figure out already IMO.

On another note, many times I have tossed the idea around that the a class competitors work together and shares the cost... Top 3 cars get checked for (whatever is drawn out of hat at the end of a race). Everyone takes the cost burden, it proves legality for those fast guys, and makes everyone who is slower happy as well.

If you are a top 3 car then:

A) You can probably afford to rebuild your engine,

You can probably rebuild your engine on your own or

C) You cannot afford to rebuild your engine and you have no idea how because you were one of the crazy people with no money that spent $3,000 on an IT engine.

Raymond Blethen

Raymond said "No one has mentioned the positives about the SCCA "protest procedure." I think a major positive is it takes undue burden off volunteers who want to be friends with you (who you would hate if they busted you), and the major benefit is that it takes the politics out of the legality of cars."
.......................................

Im sorry but registration can be "your friend", F&C can be "your friend", "TECH INSPECTORS" need be friendly only to those that abide by the rules, am I wrong?
Ill tell you whats wrong with self policing. Would you rather be pissed off at a guy standing in the paddock or would you rather have the guy in a car right next to you at 100 MPH be pissed off at YOU. That in a nutshell is why nobody protests and why were even having this discussion. Go ahead, tell me im wrong.

[This message has been edited by 7'sRracing (edited March 04, 2004).]

[gran racing]

I kinda like Raymond's hat idea. I would imagine that would scare people a bit about cheating.

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Dave Gran
NER #13 ITA
'87 Honda Prelude

[Maddog]

Originally posted by CaptainWho:
According to the test I took at the driver's school two weeks ago, you don't even have to be a competitor to lodge a protest. Any steward, corner worker or other specialty, crew chief, or competitor in any class can protest you if they put up the bond. Assuming my memory hasn't totally gone into the dumper.

Take a look at GCR 13.4 on page 101 and see what it says about mechanical protests.

13.1 anyone who has ANY interest in the race in question (driver, owner, crew, friends of crew, scca minor licenced 6 year old thats freinds with a drivers kid, or anyone affiliated in any way to that competition can protest with or without that drivers consent.

love it when people only read what they want to see.

[RSTPerformance]

7's Racing-

I would say you are wrong on this issue. Unlike the local circle track people are not being paid to run tech. They are there to have fun with the people around them. If they were disqualifying people all day how many people around them would be having fun with them??? I know as someone who has been around a very long time I think that thin it sucks to be the "bad guy" who has to do all the policing... I would say that if we nit picked, a tech person would have to disqualify 90% of the cars in IT because they would be found illegal. He/she would probably let some things slide, and then politics will become involved. Also if you disqualify 90% of the field for stupid things because “that’s the rules” then that volunteer is likely to not have much fun or be well liked. Because of those reasons I think if tech enforced the rules on their own we would not have any tech volunteers.

In the Northeast the tech people do spot checks on things safety related as well as car prep related.

I do want to emphasize that I do agree with most that the mechanism by which illegal competitors are found is broken and/or doesn’t work well. There are a lot of illegal cars that shouldn’t be illegal. But I don’t think the way to fix that is by passing the burden to the tech inspectors, they should continue to concentrate on safety issues. We the drivers need to make a plan to do this ourselves… SCCA has granted us that power and WE continue not to use it.

In a 20-car field that had a couple clear cheaters at the front that won I think that you would see this...

1st cheater
2nd cheater
3rd legal
4th illegal
5th legal
6th legal
7th on down illegal and a few cheaters.

Cheaters* = Intentional cheating for performance gains
Illegal* = Not legal, but not illegal with intentions or knowledge to gain performance.
Legal* = Legal

Raymond Blethen

PS: If the guy going 100mph next to you is pissed off at you for giving him fair warning that you would protest, then did protest then he/she shouldn’t be with us… They should be thankful that we haven’t banished him/her.

[sgallimo]

Originally posted by 7'sRracing:
[B]... nascar has for half a decade policed the cars themselves by writing rules that are enforceable and by requiring the top three in every class to hand over their cars as they come off the track...B]

I don't know what the answer to this problem is but the two major differences between Nascar and us are (1) 43 cars in tech at Nascar vs 200-300 at the SCCA tech shed and (2) the Nascar folks have to tech 3 or 4 different "makes" of cars where as our folks have hundreds. Not to mention that handing the burden of rebuilding to a Nascar team can in no way be compared to that task for us Regional racers.

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-Scott Gallimore
-ITC #88 Pulsar