Enduro length question?

[Knestis]

>> I am tired of the "Its not an enduro" line. The next step up from sprint race is enduro.

No fair arguing against drawing a semantic line in the sand by drawing your OWN semantic line in the sand, Rob. The original question asked for what those dictionaries call an "opinion."

How about a little more leeway in terminology? There's a whole 'nother genre that's somewhere between "sprint" and "enduro" - in my OPINION - that includes ECRs, 3- or 4-hour races, and anything that mandates pit stops. Some think of them as "enduros," others don't.

Sprint - Go as fast as you can for a short period of time; rewards intensity and the ability to get 10/10ths out of car and driver over the short run; requires optimization of the car for the purpose - outright speed.

Enduro - Go as far as you can over a long period of time, as fast as you can; rewards preparation, teamwork, organization, and patience; requires optimization of the car for the purpose - to run a long time without stopping.

"Extended Sprint" or "Mini-Enduro" - Go as fast as you can over a time longer than a sprint race; rewards some compromise between what is required for a sprint or enduro; requires no specific optimization beyond that required for sprint races due to specific mandates in the rules.

It's that last bit that is crucial to the definition. It would piss off the ECR/3-hour crowd if the rules let me show up and run one stint with my distance-optimized car. It pisses me off because mandatory stop rules handicap me for choosing to specialize my hardware. What if I asked that the supps demand cars tweaked harder than mine (solid bushings throughout, right at the minimum weight, etc.) to start 20-minute sprint races with a 1 lap deficit, to make the situation equitable...?

Mandatorty stops are racing socialism.

Look - at NO point did I say, "Hey, regions wanting to make money - don't run any 3-hour or 90-minute races, dammit...!" I just said, "In my opinion, when they DO that, the races don't qualify for 'enduro' status."

K

EDIT - Sadly, I heard that NCR didn't get to its minimum entries to break even on the event. (I think Jeff Y. told me it was 60...?) Consider though for a minute that the economies, though just as real, are different for something like the 13-hour. Remember that the entry fee was $825.