Strategic Planning and "The Problem with IT"

[lateapex911]

Day three has brought some great stuff!

One comment regarding the "Aging out" concept. If the basic premise of IT is to provide low cost racing, it would fly in the face of that premise to arbitrarily tell people that they must throw away their, for example, 2nd place ARRC finishing 1973 Datsun 240Z....to buy the first place winning 1996 BMW E36......

I suggest the trouble Prod got into was that they changed the entire foundational rules package in attempts to molify owners of older cars that could no longer compete due to the inability of the old parts to survive the stresses of racing, or the parts sources dried up.

In any case, I can assure you as an ITAC member, I have learned from the mistakes of the past (And yes, I know many will argue that they weren't mistakes, LOL) and our basic foundational ruleset won't be modified to allow alternate billet cranks to keep older cars on life support. It's one thing to make rules changes to mold the category to the needs of the current/future cars and racers, but quite another to go backwards. In other words, I favor the "natural death" method, and I won't sponsor or back any "life support" rules.

[shwah]

Rob,

I think you just provided an excellent example of how, little by little, older cars will naturally "age out" of IT competition. The shifter alone won't do it, but parts availability, better brakes, better drivelines, stiffer chassis, will gradually push many old cars out of favor. A few will keep going because the drivers just love them, but those looking for the path of least resistance to victory will choose newer cars.

The last thing I want to see is rules changes specifically to allow me to take my 21 year old IT car and make it more like a 5 year old one. This is counter to the whole class philosophy. You run what you have, warts and all.

My Golf 2 will not live forever in IT, but IT will still be there for me when I am ready to upgrade to a newer car.

And regarding the ECU issue. We were all asleep at the wheel 3-4 years ago when this really took place. The recent proposed change, simply makes the same thing that was available to a few, available to many. It does not add any, not one single, additional gain or capability than what was already offered under the current rule. I wish it never happend, but like the new wording more than the old. I also think that we would have eventually ended up here as newer cars with more complex oem systems became IT eligible.

[zracre]

I guess that would work if they said no cars older than 25 year will be eligible. Cars with log books issued before the 25 year anniversary date of manufacture may compete.

this will keep the people with investments still in the game and prevent new old cars from appearing.

[flaboy]

With the 25yr rule you could say good bye to ITC.And thats a decent sized group of cars.

Hell i think theres like 11 cars at daytona in 2 weeks in itc.

Tim

[seckerich]

Just why would you have a discussion about the health of a class and worry about stopping someone from building a new car? What would it hurt to have a brand new 30 year old car? Don't bend the rules to make them competitive but let them race. At some point down the road either ITC will die or the target for all the classes will get moved again and the older cars will be less competitive. Darwin strikes again. I do not see that newer classes need to be added unless something goes away. As C dies (sorry guys it is going to happen) we will be back to 4 classes and have room to up the window of performance to take in the new cars. We are missing the boat bigtime not finding a home for the turbo crowd. Give them a class and assume boost on kill in classing and let them go at it. That class would grow fast.

We need to grow ITR now if it is going to fly long term. People will not build cars if there is nobody to race with. Myself and many others would build an RX8 now if it would get classed. None of the other offerings make sense for the rotary guys. We need something current and it is the only choice. It was sold in very early 03 but is considered a late 04 by the ITAC so you loose all those potential drivers. It is really 5 years old next year so whats the holdup?

[Doc Bro]

It's too bad there isn't a way to consolidate ITB&C with fairness and safety to all involved. That would also provide room for a class above R. In 15 years you could invision some of A joining in a similar fasion as the speeds continue to increase. It's a sort of planned obsolescence, that still gives the opportunity to race more competitiors than the current system would allow.

R

[gran racing]

I'd hate to see an age limitation on cars. I actually think it's pretty cool to see the mix of cars and ages out there all racing against each other. As others have said, I don't think older cars should be thrown a bone for various parts allowances but don't ban them from the category.

[Doc Bro]

I'd hate to see an age limitation on cars. I actually think it's pretty cool to see the mix of cars and ages out there all racing against each other. As others have said, I don't think older cars should be thrown a bone for various parts allowances but don't ban them from the category.
[/b]

Couldn't agree more. I KNOW for a fact if my wife were ever going to race it would be in an ITB Volvo.....pink with purple numbers.................

Hey it's a long ride to the Glen....what can I say???

R

[lateapex911]

Couldn't agree more. I KNOW for a fact if my wife were ever going to race it would be in an ITB Volvo.....pink with purple numbers.................

Hey it's a long ride to the Glen....what can I say???

R [/b]

Whatever it takes, Rob! Better than her demanding a super jammy top of the line ITR car!

[Chris Wire]

I'd hate to see an age limitation on cars. I actually think it's pretty cool to see the mix of cars and ages out there all racing against each other. As others have said, I don't think older cars should be thrown a bone for various parts allowances but don't ban them from the category.
[/b]

+1 - Well said.

[pgipson]

suggest the trouble Prod got into was that they changed the entire foundational rules package in attempts to molify owners of older cars that could no longer compete due to the inability of the old parts to survive the stresses of racing, or the parts sources dried up.[/b]

And I would suggest that as IT moves further from the original intent, one rule change at a time, that the same destination awaits.

25 yrs is a number, and exclusion of older cars is a just an idea. Or maybe no new logbooks issued for cars older than XX after some date.

The real issue is what do the current participants in IT think the class should look like in 10 or 20 yrs. As Kirk said, that is not very long in the grand scheme of things.

[Dave Zaslow]

I agree in principal with every point Kirk has made.

As silly as something like the washer bottle rule may seem to some, it is a benchmark of the intent of the IT rules philosophy.

The (now) five groups that make up IT are based on race potential of a set of cars. As long as there are new cars to class within those sets there is no reason to set any age limit. When there are no cars (or no interest in those cars) available to fill a class, that class will die.

Classifications of newer cars are needed. ITC in the NE is in trouble. Part of that is that there are no new cars being built and (chicken and egg) there is no good competition. One cannot run a Fiesta, Datsun 510, Rabbit 1.6 forever. ITB may have similar issues soon enough, but there are still cars out there that could be interesting for folks to build.

It appears to me that there is no feed from SS cars/drivers into IT. I don't know where they go after they age out of their (now) longer national lifespan. IT is an attractive choice people make when they decide to go racing. For a lot of people without extreme means IT is not too hot (technology) and not too cold (technology) but just right (technology balanced with that off other cars).

As has been suggested, I think that a faster class than ITR is not in our interest. Let those be the problem with another set of classes.

I am surprised that I have not seen a Ford Focus out there. Perhaps that and the equivalent Chevy should be looked at to repopulate C.

Dave Zaslow

[Bill Miller]

LOTS of really good stuff here. Sorry I'm late.

NASA does some things right but they haven't got it all figured out. Their real strength is in in the ability of the HPDE program to grow people into race licenses - something that SCCA has completely missed the boat on.[/b]

I'm repeating this, because it's such a fundamental issue. In fact, I see this as the single largest opportunity for new membership, and as Kirk said, the SCCA hasn't got a clue. Someone mentioned PDX as an answer, which it might be, but I think it only goes part way.

I think NASA has it right (and they sure didn't come up w/ it, EMRA had it 20 years ago when I got hooked on this madness). You have to run your HPDE/Time Trial/Solo I events IN CONJUNCTION with a race. It's an association thing. You get people out there w/ their street cars intermingled w/ people w/ their race cars, and the street car people get exposed to what the whole racing side is all about. You've got a Wombat XSR that you drive to work every day, and Fred (Bob's brother and Alice's cousin) has a Wombat XSR that he trailers to the track and races. You start checking out Fred's car, and talking to him about what he's done w/ it, and then you hang around and watch him race it. THAT is what will get people hooked. I know, because it's exactly what happened to me. I took my Rabbit GTI street car to Pocono for an EMRA Time Trial and there were these two guys there w/a a Rabbit GTI that they were racing. It took that, and one session on the track at speed, and I was ready to sign up!

And please, stop trotting out the red herring that is the 'wing thing' to attract the tuner crowd. You need to actually look at the typical 'tuner guy' mindset to understand that the vast majority of them will never make the jump to racing. And it's not because they can't put wings on their race cars. For most of them, it's not just about the go-fast stuff, it's about the BLING. And the biggest issue, is that they don't see their cars as disposable. By that I mean, they're not comfortable (or willing to accept) the fact that they may write their car off any time they put it on the track. Hell, some of them still owe major chunks of money on their cars. If you don't believe this, just scan any of the marque forums and look for the stories about how the kid totaled his Wombat XSR at the track and his insurance company is denying coverage and how he now has no car but still has to pay for it.

You want to get the tuner crowd hooked on racing, start having HPDEs in conjunction w/ races, and work VERY hard at educating them as to what you can and can't do to the cars. It's one thing to talk about it, but when you've got physical examples right there, it's easier to get the message across.

Kirk, and others, have made some very good points about older cars in IT. Looking at the 'age window' when IT was created provides good insight into what was going on at the time. There's a reason that they made an age cutoff. I just wish that they would have had the vision to put something in there about how to deal w/ it in 10, 20, ??? years. That being said, I don't want to see anyone told that the car they have will no longer be eligible to race because it's too old. I think Evan really hit on something. Don't issue new log books to anything older than 25 (20?) years old, but grandfather in all the cars that currently have log books. I think that solution strikes a good balance between the two issues. Of course, there will be the case where someone wads up their 1980 Puddlebee, and has three spare tubs at home and a garage full of parts to build another one. I think in that case, you just have to say "No". There is of course the 'transplanted roll cage' option.

As for creating &#39;newer&#39; IT cars, and better aligning T and IT, I think it&#39;s a great idea. Do you go so far as to say that you can prep to IT rules, cars that are <5 years old, and race them? I&#39;m not sure. Maybe. I think it&#39;s probably better to make the T rules a true sub-set of the IT rules. For example, only stock parts, no gutting of the interior, remain emission-compliant, etc. for T (probably not too far from what the original IT rules were). I just threw those out there as a couple of examples, certainly not a complete list, and may need to be tweaked further.

An important part would be to roll T and SS into one category. Right now, most of the T3 cars are ITR and some ITS cars. You need ITA and ITB (ITC???) cars. Set up T1 - T5 and be done with it. And don&#39;t let the mfg&#39;s hold the Club hostage again. I also think the T -> IT progression needs to be codified. And that being said, I don&#39;t really see a way of creating a T>IT>Prod>GT progression scheme, at least not the way things are now. Look at EP, it&#39;s a mix of ITA and ITS cars, nothing faster. And find something that&#39;s less than 10 years old that would fit into HP. GT has gone way too far down the tube-frame road to ever make it reasonable to build one out of a tub car. Not only that, just look at how many guys moved from Prod to GT over the last 10 years (w/ the same car) to get a sense of the desire for such a progression. I think that while it may look good on paper, and it may have this ultra-strategic ring to it, there&#39;s no real practicality in it. Nor is it something that the membership may really want.

And I won&#39;t go into my thoughts on the whole Regional/National thing again. I&#39;ve made my position very well known on that issue.

And as Greg said, one of the important things to do, is not dork up IT. I think the ITAC have done a good job in balancing the need to fix some issues w/o going too far and just opening the flood gates (ECU issue notwithstanding).

It&#39;s really too bad that we can&#39;t drive a bottom up strategic plan for IT. And it can&#39;t be done in isolation, it needs to be part of a larger plan for all of the production-based categories, and Club Racing as a whole, above that.

My 5-year vision for what the production-based landscape will look like:

Prod pretty much is gone
BP/DP (and probably AP and CP) are the &#39;new&#39; GT
T1-5 align w/ ITR-C (not directly, but you get the point from my post above)
SS is gone
Regional/National distinction is gone.
ITR, S, and A have the largest fields at the Runoffs.
SM is gone, as all but three of the cars have been wadded up.

The one key area that I didn&#39;t mention above is AWD/forced induction. SOMETHING will need to be done to get those cars into IT. The mfg&#39;s are offereing more and more cars w/ this configuration. They&#39;re already in T. Not finding someplace for them in IT will be a big mistake.

[ddewhurst]

***SM is gone, as all but three of the cars have been wadded up. ***

& they were racing wheel 2 wheel when they did it to each other.

[Andy Bettencourt]

While I agree 110% that running your PDX&#39;s in conjunction with races is th e&#39;right&#39; way to do it, I submit that at the size the SCCA Regionals are now, it is impossible. NASA can do it because their events are small enough so that they can have two things going at once. An entire run group dedicated to a PDX is impossible in certain areas of the country. In those that it isn&#39;t impossible, it should be done, no doubt.

Creating a road from Touring to IT would result in some more IT classes. T3 cars barely fit into ITR now, nevermind the forced induction/AWD cars that reside in T2. I do think &#39;TTX&#39; could be successful, but if I was interested I could just create it Regionally.

T1-T5 has always been a good idea.

It&#39;s all very interesting and it&#39;s good to see some lurkers weigh in. I think we can just leave IT alone and help the CRB with some ideas on how to get the REST of the house in order.

[Bill Miller]

Andy,

I agree with you. In this case, size does matter. One of the reasons that groups like EMRA and NASA can run their &#39;dual events&#39; is because they&#39;re not drawing huge crowds. But, if you look at what some people say about some of the SCCA races, they&#39;re not drawing huge crowds either. I know that&#39;s not the case on the East coast, but I&#39;m sure that there are plenty of Regions that could integrate a PDX event into a Regional weekend. Of course, that means less track time for the racers, but that should be offset by lower entry fees since they&#39;re spreading it around to the PDX folks.

I&#39;d love to hear from someone that had a lot of experience w/ Solo I. Did anybody ever do an analysis as to why it failed?

And I said that T1-5 is not a direct ITR-C alignment, today, but we should be able to get close. T1/ST should become the new TransAm. Start running production-based cars again and see if you can&#39;t get the mfg&#39;s interested again.

Not perfect Andy, but it&#39;s a place to start. Think about where we started and how we got to PCAs. That took a couple of years and a LOT of work.

[Matt Rowe]

I&#39;d love to hear from someone that had a lot of experience w/ Solo I. Did anybody ever do an analysis as to why it failed?[/b]

Who said it failed? It and the ruleset it was based on was used as one of the cornerstones of the Time Trials program of which those events continue to grow. The success of the Solo I program (and TT level 3&4 events they have become) are highly regional though due to the efforts of people within those regions to grow the programs. At heart the ruleset isn&#39;t a problem and neither is the PDX rules that are also part of the time trials program. Yes there can be improvements made in the ease of implementation and those are ongoing but the single biggest thing holding us back are getting more people to organize and staff these events.

The customers are out there. Dates can be hard to get but they can be found. Initial profitability is an issue, you have to have a region that afford to lose a little at first while they establish that customer base and their reputation. But ultimately it comes down to having a core group of people that decide to put together these events and target that market.

There are a couple strong Solo I programs (now TT) that continue to bring in new drivers and they exist primarily through the efforts of a few core people. As an example in my own area we have a pool of roughly 300-400 drivers entered in TT events over the last 5 years and out of that group I can think of at least 15 that have gone on to participate in club racing, myself included. Meanwhile the other drivers are still generating revenue for the club and more importantly increasing exposure to SCCA among the automtive savvy public.

My point is the tools are there. They need polishing but there is no need to reinvent the wheel. What we need is people who will pick those tools rather than stand back and say the work needs to be done. That is not directed at anyone in particular but you can&#39;t expect national to put on events. Even the regions don&#39;t put together events, it is people that spearhead them and without people stepping up to make this happen it doesn&#39;t matter what the plan is, it is not going to succeed

[gran racing]

While I agree 110% that running your PDX&#39;s in conjunction with races is th e&#39;right&#39; way to do it, I submit that at the size the SCCA Regionals are now, it is impossible. [/b]

If it&#39;s the right way to do it (which I believe it is), we need to give further thought to how it can be done. I really think there are ways to make it happen which will vary from one region to another. If the event size is too large, make the event a restricted regional. Maybe in some instances it means that there is only one PDX group out on the track, be it novices or experienced, and they only get two run groups during the day but it is priced inexpensively.

I still think a mentor program should be developed.

[Andy Bettencourt]

I think my point is in Region where you can&#39;t fit it, it may not be needed. Push the smaller Regions to incorporate this stuff and build upon their ranks.

[Zneed4speed]

While I agree 110% that running your PDX&#39;s in conjunction with races is th e&#39;right&#39; way to do it, I submit that at the size the SCCA Regionals are now, it is impossible. NASA can do it because their events are small enough so that they can have two things going at once. An entire run group dedicated to a PDX is impossible in certain areas of the country. In those that it isn&#39;t impossible, it should be done, no doubt.

It&#39;s all very interesting and it&#39;s good to see some lurkers weigh in. I think we can just leave IT alone and help the CRB with some ideas on how to get the REST of the house in order.
[/b]

Being an SCCA guy and a Solo guy first I always wondered why the Street Prepared and IT rules couldn&#39;t parallel more so SP could feed IT.

PDX&#39;s/ DEs are "the" thing for this decade. Some good points about how running them with a race can pull people into racing. My Region(I&#39;m on the Board) will hold our 2nd this year 12/1 at Barber. The only issue we have is getting instructors to ride in convertibles without rollbars or cages(we do require arm restraints).
Can&#39;t do them at regional races because we have so many groups and we have the " they can&#39;t be combined even it there is only 2 in that group" mindset. SCCA, though we have mostly reasonable entry fees, also offers less track time than other clubs already. So yeah it&#39;s currently impossible, but the NASA events in the Southeast aren&#39;t small Andy. Two events I ran in this year had over 200 entrants. You can&#39;t compare SCCA events to NASA events. We maybe able to learn from them but at this point there is no comparison. Rather than chance offending anyone here I&#39;ll send that note directly to the ITAC.

Jake mentioned the "low cost" issue again. Maybe the word comparitively should be inserted somewhere there.