Big Picture of IT - Share Your Opinions

[shwah]

I guess I'll post here what I did elsewhere, and give some thought to the content of a letter on the general subject of IT to the powers that be. It's hard for me to do that because many of the issues I see are larger than IT, and require a re-consideration of the Club Racing structure as a whole (dump Regional/National, have 'Races', invite top 20 classes in participation to the Runoffs the following year, invite the rest to ARRC, treat all the classes equitably and make the effort to make them all competitive places to race - maybe apply some of what makes IT so good to other classes).

As far as what appears to have brought this conversation to the fore:

If the intention was to make a number of changes around 'target' cars to improve equity in the class, it seems putting that together as a package would have made the concept easier to communicate to the decision makers.

Of course I am still in the position currently that we need to address the 'standard of evidence' issue for alternative process inputs. If you guys get a car wrong on the heavy side, people will be incentivised to send in data showing a lower than assumed power gain, and that data can easily be skewed. If you guys get a car wrong on the light side, people will not be incentivised to share any data - I know I am not going through a 10/10ths build of a competitors power plant to prove the mistake, and they certainly are not dumb enough to share it. You are setting yourselves up to create overdogs by not addressing this issue first because the correction mechanism available won't be triggered (unless you start to consider 'on track performance' - which is a bad idea in most cases).

Since the A2 Golf/Jetta weight 'inaction' was precipitated by my request early last year, I'll speak to it. While I agree with the philosphy of classing the cars where they land, and on this basis wish the change were approved, I could care less about whether I get a 10 pound reduction, because the reality is that the car is closer to 10 times that far off achieving equitable power/weight compared to the other front runners in the class. At this point the issue is dead to me and I'll find a way to win with what I've got (EDIT - it has been suggested to me that the expectation was that other cars would move the other direction putting them in closer to equitable positions). Building and testing several custom headers now, flow testing several heads, manifolds and throttle bodies now, whatever it takes to remove any possibility of not having everything legaly possible out of the car. This is why I have not raced this year. I don't want to bring a knife to the back straight at MO or RA next year. My position is certainly not impartial on this particular case, so my opinions are likely skewed at least some on the subject.

I have heard rumors of other requests that were not acted on, and they have raised my eyebrows a lot. To the point that I would lose a lot of faith in the category if they went through. Thus my beating the drum of knowing that we know what we think we know, rather than knowing what we were told, before taking action. It will be harder to fix a mistake than I used to think IMO.