Marty, I'd say that most of what you suggest has already been tried.

It was before my time, but the first time the process was used on a batch of cars (the "Great Realignment"), the history as I understand it was this:

-some resistance from the BoD/CRB to the use of a process to fix some inequities in IT caused by the old curb weight/minus classing method.
-ITAC develops the "Miller ratio" power to weight formula.
-CRB sees merit to idea and helps ITAC shepard the process through acceptance by the BoD (many thanks to the CRB members on that, including -my understanding- Bob Dowie who really supported what the ITAC was doing)

So, we've used the process on a select group of cars (the bogey cars for each class and the most popular models) and guess what? Over the last few years it has worked. ITS/A/B, the racing is great.

CRB accepted, at the time, the stock hp/IT gain formula, allowed it used on a decent sized group of cars, and advocated its use to the CRB.

Two things happened. We (the ITAC) then turned to how to deal with using the process on other cars in the ITCS. Several schools of thought:

a. Do all cars (herculean task, with a lot of pitfalls because we don't know much about many of the unraced and unloved as Jake calls them).
b. Do only requested cars (I think this was becoming the consensus).

However, we decided to try to do all of ITB to see how that worked. I think the CRB was on board with this. We started the process but never finished before things shut down.

So it goes...

Travis, the best idea on how to deal with older cars I've heard comes from Josh (Sirota). Basically, if a car has not been raced in a period of time, leave it on the ITCS but remove its weight with a note that if someone wants to build one, they can request a weight classificatio and then we process it.

I like that solution a lot. It leaves the cars on the ITCS so that oddballs still have the opportunity of being built (and it happens a lot), but allows us to deal with them process wise on a case by case basis.




Quote Originally Posted by Eagle7 View Post
I think the principles and methodology that the ITAC has developed is absolutely essential. Somehow we've got to get the the CRB to buy into it. Maybe if they have a hand in developing it they'll begin to appreciate it. We probably need to lock the CRB & ITAC in a room for a weekend and let them hash it out. My guess is that the CRB never even tries to look at the big picture of 300+ cars. They always just focus on the one or two of current interest, so they don't realize how much inconsistency they're creating.

I've been wondering if there is room for compromise here. Based on the reports we've gotten, this could probably never happen, but in a perfect world, the CRB could/should provide the "correct" factors to account for in an adjusted calculation. Then a sampling of cars could be run through the new Process (capital P) and subjected to the smell test. Grade the results of various permutations of calculations and pick the one that seems most consistent.