MARRS ITB/ITC say hello to ITS

[Gregg]

I'd rather file the paper on make the stewards work - especially since I have a strong hunch that their hands were all over this move too.

Nope..not the case here. But a number of compelling stories of near misses between GT1 cars and ITS cars, as well as genuine fear from ITS drivers (incl. a former drivers school chief instructor) were behind the request. Admittedly some of those near misses owed to lack of awareness by ITS drivers more than anything, IMHO.

Whereas in the past the different reps to the CRC have been loathe to even consider mid-year group changes, I think this year is very different given our reliance "on the numbers" to create groups.

]As for the stewards...

Let's go to the tape...http://www.vimeo.com/2097173

No action taken. IIRC, there was an investigation by the operating steward who determined that an RFA wasn't justified. Could be wrong though.

Bad example, and I don't think we should be placing the onus on the stewards for something that hasn't even happened yet. In the above incident, an RFA against me was filed after the 007's crew chief approached a steward and complained. My explanation and video as well as video from a trailing car easily exonerated me.I chose not to file paperwork because I (mistakenly in this case) thought that talking to the driver would be more productive. Given the carnage I caused this past weekend, I'm glad that a few drivers made the same decision in working with me, though the stewards probably should have whacked me very hard.

With the overlap in lap times, I'm pretty confident that a correctly timed/spaced split start will eliminate inter-class racing. At this point, you have so few ITS cars out there (< 10) there should be little difference from running w/ IT7 (which has been moved to ITA/SRX7/T3).

As for the question of combining ITA & ITB in MARRS -- That would place us at or above the 50-car max for the track each race and make it almost impossible to get acceptable densities for other groupings. ITA and ITB were split apart mid-season four years ago for just this reason.

If there's one thing we (or Marshall as the ITS rep) should take away from all of this is that on the whole the MARRS ITS drives have a pretty poor reputation for awareness. A lot of that was earned running with ITA the past two years but also during preceding seasons. A lot of the names and cars have changed over the years but the on-track actions have not. My suggestion would be a group pow-wow to let them know what's up and what's on the line for them as a class and as individual drivers.