Many know the story, but opposite experience here.

First, agree with Kirk: no clear and easy answer. It all depends on the stewards, the racer, his personality, etc.

Our experience. We had a guy who had been an obvious cheater in IT7 (drilled rear bumper discovered when the cover was knocked off, switch on the gearshift to blip the thottle since he couldn't heel and toe, etc.) move to ITS. First season he was slow,second year he built a motor off season and showed up at VIR and was five seconds faster.

After several weekends of all of us running close enough to him to suspect the motor (an ITS RX7) was not kosher, and after consulting some Mazda gurus, we showed up at our Memorial DAy event ready to file paper and with a promise the tear down could be down that evening in the Tech Shed for $1500 so that he could race the next day if legal.

We had a lng debate about talking to him first and decided not to . Probably a mistake, not sure. I suspect he ould have changed the motor out and used the illegal one more judiciously but who knows.

We protest. And it's not just one ITS driver, it's five of us. Stewards try to talk us out of doing so. Continually raise the bond until it's like $3k or something (saying they had consulted with Roger Mandeville who was at the track). Wanted to allow the engine builder (I keed you not) to take the car and do the tear down over a couple of week period. And so on, and so on.

Driver was reasonably polite at first and then (by his own admission) tried to take me out in the race becauase he was "mad" and then, after spinning in his attempt to do so, would proceed slowly around the track, wait for each of the protestors to come along, and then follow us on our bumpers for a few laps. Control let him do that.

IN the end, after lots of discussions with us, the stewards and the driver, and the driver claiming he didn't want the motor torn down because it may not be built back the same (yep), we agreed he would waive all SARRC points or races run that year, and run the next day in STL.

So still don't know if the car was legal.

That said, the car has never been as fast in a straight line and I think we made a point.

But would I do it again? Probably not. It ruined that weekend and the rest of the year with angst, and set bad precedent when we started to have issues with the same driver causing a lot of wecks.

Bottom line: I have no good answer. I think contributing stories helps, but that is all I can do.

Some of the obvious cars in Florida? Yeah, I'd tell them they were illegal, although like KVS told me about teh ITR Porsche with the lexan: he just didn't care enough to protest ifthe guy was going to run 15 seconds a lap slower, which he did.

It becomes a much harder question when it is a competitive car. I think talking to the driver is probably the best approach if I had a do over, but unfortunately my experience with protests is I would think long and hard about doing one again.