I got beat by Deuce at the SIC last year. He brings the whole package, no doubt.

But I'm also pretty confident that - as a driver - I left enough time on the table at RR to have made up most of that difference.

Frankly, I just don't think that more classes are a good thing for SCCA club racing. And all it would take to "qualify up front and run away" in a spec class like is described here, is EXACTLY what's required to do so in ITB today - budget, engineering, testing, and talent.

Look at NASA's Spec classes - most notably e30 and the 944s. Everything was copacetic in the early seasons until competitive pressures started encouraging the guys/gals who wanted to run up front to go crazy - by building real (gasp!) race engines, for example.

It's not rules that control costs: It's low levels of financial commitment required to run up front. That comes primarily from low class subscription - since high levels of participation go hand-in-hand with competition, and typically, higher numbers - so the only way to "assure" low costs to run up front is to have small classes in which entrants aren't compelled to really duke it out for wins.

So the upshot is that, as long as Spec VW isn't a success, it could be cheap. If it catches on and someone gets serious about it, it will stop being cheap.

K