Travis,

Your points are all valid. I just want to make it clear that I didn't post this to be a troll or to start any sort of flame war. I posted it because I think the national club racing program is broken and needs to be fixed. And for those who don't know me, my name is Mark Coffin and I raced ITC for 6 years (1996-2001) and switched to production partly because I wanted to go to the Runoffs and couldn't because of ITC not being a national class.

FWIW, I think there is a place for regional racing. It is a good, lower stress environment for people to learn to race. When they're ready to step up to nationals, then they should be able to. I think part of the reason that some might think the whole regional/national status thing should go away is that the IT racers are used to racing with top-notch, full-tilt efforts simply because those guys have nowhere to go. If IT was national, I think you'd find the regional IT races a lot more laid back and lower stress.

Lastly, my comment about being grouped with SSB/SSC/T3 is primarily based on the fact that racing slick shod prod cars are WAAAY faster in the corners than the DOT guys and it just doesn't make for good racing. Nothing personal and no class snobbery intended!

Keep the ideas coming, I think this is a great opportunity for IT to go national IF the desire is there from the IT community. Who knows, if IT goes national I might come back to my roots.

MC