There is no strategic planning - nor even a provision for it - in SCCA club racing. The system presumes that individual competitors will ask for stuff that they think gives them an advantage, and the CRB decides to give it to them or not. Changes are made incrementally, with individual lines of the rule book edited, added, or deleted, without any real big-picture oversight.

That said, it would be a very interesting exercise to write a new set of rules that tried to codify what people should be doing under the current ruleset. The policy analyst in me thinks that there is every chance that we'd create a slew of unintended consequences with a comprehensive re-write, making the cost of the activity outweigh the benefit.

On the OTHER hand, if I were the John Bishop figure in this organization, I'd just change them and make interpretations and clarifications after the fact - ask me and I'll tell you what I meant.

There's a great story about Bishop (from the early IMSA days, after he stomped out of the SCCA in the late '60s), about a competitor complaining that some interpretation wasn't in the rulebook. He made the mistake of holding the book out to Bishop, who took it, got out a pen, scribbled and signed it, and said, "It is now."

K