Getting Rid of Regional/Majors Distinction?

[seckerich]

Greg saved me a ton of typing. Tom had me seeing unicorns and rainbows for a minute.

You had a hardcore group of drivers that their entire year was dedicated to testing for the runoffs. Start and park was, and still is very common to get "starts" for the runoffs.

Then you had the other 95% of drivers that raced for the love of racing and championships, etc were just a bonus. Went to the track with their families and just enjoyed racing with friends. ECR and other series had all the same drivers and teams you see today in IMSA. IT was a big deal then.

SCCA racing will not return to that regardless of the number of classes. Same group will still be on track with slightly different letters on the car, but same number of drivers and same time needed on track as the current grouping. More track time is BS as you assume the groups you run now at Majors are full. At a double SARRC weekend a driver will get 100 minutes of track time in my schedule, 20 minutes is a talking point that is way overused. Get out more and see the world.

Here is the problem with class consolidation. Not saying it is bad or good, just the proven results over time.

Driver has a car he loves and has developed for years to get to the front. Has collected all the hard to find go-fast goodies. Class is consolidated or killed and now he has a whole new set of rules to learn. Now instead of a stock gearbox he needs a pimpy CR box, because it is allowed. Weight might go up to level him out in the new class so tire wear, brakes, etc get more expensive, or like ST now need to be upgraded (because it is allowed) to stay competitive. Other option is an SIR that now has to be tuned around and most likely will require a new cam, etc to be fast. No big deal you say as it looks like the other sedans in the class. Weight is lighter to speed him up so maybe he now has to go lexan and fiberglass body in the new class, just stroke a check, no big deal. Of course the other cars can run any motor by the manufacturer so most likely the one in the car is not "THE" motor to have so out it comes. Just toss that earlier collection I spoke of. God forbid they read the rules and put a Rotary in a Miata and kill the whole damn category. How is that cluster working out with a definition of a sports car and now we want to further shove a ton of cars in fewer classes. Truth is he does none of this and just goes to vintage, another club, or quits. Now you lost him, his family, and every friend he can tell how the SCCA screwed him.

We had a chance before ST was created to take a restricted ruleset like IT and build a good foundation for a sustained category. Further we could have opened Production up with a spec wing, motor swaps (already allowed in the Bugeye, etc) and never needed ST at all.

Look at F1000 where all the slow formula cars were going to put a 1000cc motorcycle motor in and it would bring out all the old FA,FF, etc to race again. Then Stohr built a new car and class was DOA. Follow similar theory with all the classes that skipped regional to national requirement and you have a list of failures. Now classes that did it the right way and are at the top of participation in the Nation are supposed to just sit and watch? Right.

As I said I will watch the sparks fly as the genie is forced back into a bottle. Only good thing they did is institute the 3 year freeze we asked for to give the runoffs rotation a chance to show what classes were popular. BOD is not the one that should be coming up with a plan, the members should. Then and only then would it have a chance. Without buy in from us you have nothing but pissed of customers that have little faith in the broken promises of the past and definitely no faith in the few on the BOD that are really pushing this agenda.