Sebring in August

[quadzjr]

Well even though 70 IT cars are registered online for this race weekend nobody has talked about it. Looks like it may be a wet race.. for people in the afternoon, atleast. Heading down there today with two MR2's, ITB civic, and ITS Civic.

Hope to see you there!

[spawpoet]

Wish we could be up there, but I'm still recovering from the drivers school a couple of weeks ago. 20 cars in ITS is a darned good draw. 5 of those cars are guys that also just finished drivers school, so there seems to be a good influx of new blood in IT in FL. We should be back at Sebring in October next, though we might run the enduro in September. Give us a good account of the racing from this weekend if you don't mind, and good luck out there with the mister twos. I always liked those cars.

[Darryl Pritchett]

Any results in ITA?

[quadzjr]

Honestly don't know what happend in ITa. I know that Andrew broke in the ITS miata, and that Irish Mike (Mike Flynn) was fast as hell in his Merecedes in ITS. AFter qualifying something let go in the motor in our ITS car. We decided not to chance it and retire it.

In ITB was a fun tight race for 2-5th. There was some legaility issues with one of the competitors, but it was resolved. ITC ford caught on fire during sat qualifying but was on pole for the sunday race. Sunday race was a toss up to run rains or dry tires.. dry tires was the ticket. as after a few laps full tread tires were getting too skwirmy. I got pushed off course fighting for third but it dont' thnk it woudl afftected the outcome. I spoke with the driver and we were fine. I laughed when he said "I thought I gave you enough room on teh other side of the curb". Then I said "the other side of the curb is off the track!" Bottomed out the chassis pretty hard, but not un-repairable damage done. so all is well..

[Chip42]

Steve and Josh both did well in spite of the weather and a few lingering mechanical gremlins. Mike had a bit more trouble coming to terms with the track but had a good time and showed improvement. unfortunatley our ITS civic continues to seem cursed.

Paul Ronie won sat and sun, with Jay Griffon (usually in HP) taking 2nd sunday with his 1st gen CRX. VWs (missed the names) in 3rd/4th and the TSM boys above filling out the top 6 sunday.


Anyone seriously contesting ITB in the SARRC be aware - there's a WAY cheated up 2nd gen CRX out of the Florida region currently running 2nd in the ITB SARRC standings.

He had his hood off in impound after the "saturday" race (sunday AM due to rain) for a transponder check where we happened to see that he was running a JDM D15B VTEC with a Y5/8 manifold rather than the stock dual-point TB injected D15B2 (not-VTEC). he was pretty adamant that he believed it to be legal, and he's new (member number 37X,XXX)so I guess that's possible, though he obviously hadn't read the rules in that case.

he was nearly violent and very argumentative when we called him out - we were trying to be gentlemanly about it, and did not file a formal protest. After some intervention from Paul Ronie he agreed to waive his points for the weekend. He was listed in 2nd place in the SARRC points going into the weekend.

overall the car had a lot of smaller legality issues - most of which are irrelevant and certianly wouldn't be proteste worthy, particularly in light of the blatantly illegal motor swap. I think the SARRC ITB comunity needs to be aware of this ONLY because he made it clear he was shooting for the SARRC championship.

The car is white with a gold cage, purple and orange graphics wrap, number 1. If he shows at the SIC and hasn't fixed it, we're planning on sending him home in boxes out of principle.

[Flyinglizard]

Tim Mincey drives the CRX. The car was classed in ITB and should be ITA. It has a few other issues also but the builder and crew chief have built a very nice ,fast car.
I told Tim that we were going to have to protest due to the wrong class etc. He was not violent, just pissed ,like any one would be. Paul talked to him and Tim decided that he should talk to the Stewards, yada yada.

That was resolved and Tim withdrew his results. He manned up and took his trophy over to Mike McCormick(#22 ITB Jetta). Mike brought the 3rd over to Michael Ogren( #171 ITB Golf). All is well. Tim needs to read the rule book a little better but turned out to be a nice guy that SCCA should keep around.
Sun race; we took the tires off of Mike's street car for the race, as we did not have any valid rains. The Yoke front and the Falken rears made a nice balance and Mike ran only 1 sec off of the Hoosiers time.
The race was busy for the first few laps as he got stuck in the slower Toyotas. As for shoving you off of the track, Mike has many laps of very close racing,insisted that he gave you enough room.... waiting for the video.. I can under stand the ugly respect room tho as the car was severly damaged Fri, twisting the whole front end about 3 in along with the drivers side. BUtt ass ugly for sure.
Had a great time all in all. Mike did a great time as a driver, first time on the long course. Well, other than wrecking the car in practice.

I believe that minor rules infractions should be discussed with the driver of the car. Be nice and talk about the specific rule and allow some discussion about interpretation. Maybe its a misunderstanding or simply misinformed.
There is no money in this stuff, just racing experiences. The more the merrier. IMHO. MM

[quadzjr]

The car shouldn't be classed in ITA, ITB, IT anything. Not saying the guy was a bad guy.. just say that it has a Japanese spec motor that never came in the US that makes 30 hp more than the classed motor in ITB, and 15 more than in ITA. so with that alone it cannot be an IT car. Actually I talked Tim a few times during the weekend and we had good fun joking about what we needed to do to cath the VW contingent in front of us and just joking in general both before and after the legality issues were brought to light.

I chuckled a bit about the slower Toyotas.. Can't really help that. I have the same hp as you guys with 3-400lbs more weight..

he said he thought he gave me enough room "on the other side of the curb". that isn't the same curtsey I gave him in the previous corner. we went into turn 4 side by side. I kept a gap between us to give wiggle room, He turned in removed wiggle room, and I had two options hit him, or check up and go over the curb. I chose the second option. Like I said it wasn't a big deal. He was way faster than me and I wasn't going to block him to keep him behind me the whole race. (see the courtesy I gave him going into turn 3 when he got a his right front even with my left rear).

100% agreeded with the more the merrier.. Paul approached him with the about the half dozen or so things worng wwith ethe car and Tim did the right thing. I am not saying I want Tim to stop racing.. but from now on if he is racing for position and points make a effort to make the car legal.

[Chip42]

Michael - it was nice to meet you and your son - he did a hell of a job!

Mr. Mincey certainly came around after his initial hot tempered responses. He stopped at our trailer and apparently many others to appologize - that's a bigger response than I could have hoped for, and says a lot about him. The car doesn't belong anywhere in IT with that motor, it's not a US-offered motor and never came in that car. the only reason I would ever protest him is if he continued to run it in ITB as if this weekend never happened - the other stuff is just silly - rear tie bars, aluminum control arms, plates over light openings, etc... looks like a nice SPU car (being JDM only it's not allowed in ST by proposed changes). I don't want to scare members off - that type of build attitude is really what ST is supposed to be targetting. I like his energy but he needs to get to the reading.

[jsgprod]

Any results in ITA?

The results are up at MyLaps.

Sat. http://www.mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=577217
Sun. http://www.mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=577224

Regarding Tim, he did come by my paddock unsolicited, before lunch and apologized to me for his car not being legal. Gotta give the guy some credit for that.

And I ran with him in some very close quarters situations for several laps after I got up to second position. Wouldn't hesitate to do it again...as long as the car's in the right class and legal.

[quadzjr]

The results are up at MyLaps.

Sat. http://www.mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=577217
Sun. http://www.mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=577224

And I ran with him in some very close quarters situations for several laps after I got up to second position. Wouldn't hesitate to do it again...as long as the car's in the right class and legal.

+1 on that.. on the Saturday race I felt bad for him as the field bunched up he got shuffled backwards at the start and the same thing happened to him in the Sunday start. We raced clean as could be with some really tight and exciting couple of laps Saturday and only briefly Sunday. No issues with his driving etiquette. He was told by Ronie to let the fellow ITB competitors know what he was planning on doing shortly after the Qualfying. I saw him ride his bike into our paddock first, then down the street to the other ITB racers. while I was talking to the guys at Boles Motorsports and Jay Griffin.

[cschimmel]

Steve and Josh both did well in spite of the weather and a few lingering mechanical gremlins. Mike had a bit more trouble coming to terms with the track but had a good time and showed improvement. unfortunatley our ITS civic continues to seem cursed.

Paul Ronie won sat and sun, with Jay Griffon (usually in HP) taking 2nd sunday with his 1st gen CRX. VWs (missed the names) in 3rd/4th and the TSM boys above filling out the top 6 sunday.


Anyone seriously contesting ITB in the SARRC be aware - there's a WAY cheated up 2nd gen CRX out of the Florida region currently running 2nd in the ITB SARRC standings.

He had his hood off in impound after the "saturday" race (sunday AM due to rain) for a transponder check where we happened to see that he was running a JDM D15B VTEC with a Y5/8 manifold rather than the stock dual-point TB injected D15B2 (not-VTEC). he was pretty adamant that he believed it to be legal, and he's new (member number 37X,XXX)so I guess that's possible, though he obviously hadn't read the rules in that case.

he was nearly violent and very argumentative when we called him out - we were trying to be gentlemanly about it, and did not file a formal protest. After some intervention from Paul Ronie he agreed to waive his points for the weekend. He was listed in 2nd place in the SARRC points going into the weekend.

overall the car had a lot of smaller legality issues - most of which are irrelevant and certianly wouldn't be proteste worthy, particularly in light of the blatantly illegal motor swap. I think the SARRC ITB comunity needs to be aware of this ONLY because he made it clear he was shooting for the SARRC championship.

The car is white with a gold cage, purple and orange graphics wrap, number 1. If he shows at the SIC and hasn't fixed it, we're planning on sending him home in boxes out of principle.

Thanks for the heads-up .I am competing for the SARRC title and would like to run against "legal" cars. I haven't done the SIC since "04 ,but it's always a great race with the best drivers in the division,so I hope to see a lot of B cars from "down your way" in Savannah.
I've got a yellow A2 VW sponsored by Competition Cages. Stop on by. I will bring a 16 valve head ...just in case...maybe no one will notice..
Chris Schimmel

[Chip42]

Thanks for the heads-up .I am competing for the SARRC title and would like to run against "legal" cars. I haven't done the SIC since "04 ,but it's always a great race with the best drivers in the division,so I hope to see a lot of B cars from "down your way" in Savannah.
I've got a yellow A2 VW sponsored by Competition Cages. Stop on by. I will bring a 16 valve head ...just in case...maybe no one will notice..
Chris Schimmel

updated points are up HERE.

Mr Mincey either chose not to or was not allowed to waive the saturday race points (20 for 2nd). The margin from 2-3 is now 20pts larger, and to 1st is only 3 pts. I haven't got a dog in the hunt, just 3 friends who have a relaistic chance of placing in the SARRC, But I still feel that this is a huge injustice to those ranked 3rd or lower in the SARRC ITB standings.

I don't know what can be done to correct the issue. I understand that he has been made aware of his indiscretions, and hopefully is correcting them - but what about the accumulated points??

[Flyinglizard]

How much difference is the payout for those points??

[Chip42]

How much difference is the payout for those points??

What do you mean?

[spawpoet]

How much difference is the payout for those points??

Honor and competitive integrity is more valuable than any potential payout would be.