Mark, good to hear from you. Heard the rest of your season after Nashville went well -- congratulations.

I would say that the three biggest areas of debate amongst the ITR committee folks were:

1. V8 ponys, and to a lesser extent the 928 (a fetish car of mine, probably good that it did not get classed).

2. Whether to put the high revving 4 cylinders (Acura RS-X or some sort and definitely the Toyota Celica GT-S) with lower hp in S at a high weight or in R at a ridiculously low weight.

3. What to do with the S52 powered BMW cars -- should they be included in ITR or no?

I was on the fence on 3. I owned a 2000 M Coupe, best car and best motor I've ever owned. Stock made more hp than advertised -- I dynoed it at 216 at the wheels which is about 250 crank hp or 10 more than advertised. Others with M Coupes were even higher.

There was a significant fear that the power potential in IT trim for those cars could, based on the 325 experience, reach as much as 260-270 hp. That's just too much for ITR and as Andy says we were looking at a weight of 3500 lbs or so based on power potential for all the S52 engined cars.

I posted on the Bimmerforums board about this I beleive, and I think most thought that an unrestricted 325is at 2600/2700 lbs could not compete with an M3 at a reasonable weight.

It is a shame, there are a lot of M3 track and race cars out there that would be great for ITR fields. I just think the car is a bit out of the performance range for ITR. If someone has numbers to convince me otherwise, I am all ears. I think they would make a great addition to ITR so long as they don't have a real potential to be a class killer.