7's Racing-

I would say you are wrong on this issue. Unlike the local circle track people are not being paid to run tech. They are there to have fun with the people around them. If they were disqualifying people all day how many people around them would be having fun with them??? I know as someone who has been around a very long time I think that thin it sucks to be the "bad guy" who has to do all the policing... I would say that if we nit picked, a tech person would have to disqualify 90% of the cars in IT because they would be found illegal. He/she would probably let some things slide, and then politics will become involved. Also if you disqualify 90% of the field for stupid things because “that’s the rules” then that volunteer is likely to not have much fun or be well liked. Because of those reasons I think if tech enforced the rules on their own we would not have any tech volunteers.

In the Northeast the tech people do spot checks on things safety related as well as car prep related.

I do want to emphasize that I do agree with most that the mechanism by which illegal competitors are found is broken and/or doesn’t work well. There are a lot of illegal cars that shouldn’t be illegal. But I don’t think the way to fix that is by passing the burden to the tech inspectors, they should continue to concentrate on safety issues. We the drivers need to make a plan to do this ourselves… SCCA has granted us that power and WE continue not to use it.

In a 20-car field that had a couple clear cheaters at the front that won I think that you would see this...

1st cheater
2nd cheater
3rd legal
4th illegal
5th legal
6th legal
7th on down illegal and a few cheaters.

Cheaters* = Intentional cheating for performance gains
Illegal* = Not legal, but not illegal with intentions or knowledge to gain performance.
Legal* = Legal

Raymond Blethen

PS: If the guy going 100mph next to you is pissed off at you for giving him fair warning that you would protest, then did protest then he/she shouldn’t be with us… They should be thankful that we haven’t banished him/her.