NHMS TeamDI Pro IT Race - April 10th

[JLawton]

1) What happened to Ben?
2) Did any ITers run STU?

[benspeed]

I was moved to last place in class for non compliance. This was a pretty tough pill since I won the ITR race but after meeting with the stewards it's pretty black and white. At impound everybody was to open their hoods - I understand that Topeka asked for air intakes be inspected. My intake box has a stock snorkle. The guy I bought my car from was a injection molder and created a bigger snorkle to the front air vent in the car - creates a great Ram air effect. I've shown this to many folks remarking that here is a great, legal mod for the 968. Well, not legal.

When the car was inspected it was questioned and I said, "go look at Brian's 968 parked over there by impound - my snorkle is in the stock location getting air from the stock location." Well, that provided a perfect comparison point. After inspecting Brian's car it was determined that the small grill that goes over the air vent was missing on my car - no question that is non compliant. The second non compliant point was after very, very careful inspection it was determined that the metal area in front of the airbox was modified to allow the snorkle. Now I owned both those cars and had them both in my garage side by side - I didn't notice but no excuse - can't have modified body work - so that was the second non compliant item. This work was so good several folks in impound said no way that was modified, its factory. Well, it was different on Brian's car so no doubting that.

So while I was totally disappointed I hope I comported myself with class like a man, licked my wounds and will come back with my issues corrected. I received clear instruction on what to do. A point I will add - the big snorkle was legal - but since I have to replace some bodywork it won't be as effective. I plan on working with tech to make sure what I do to correct this is 100% to the satisfaction of tech.

Kudos to the stewards. These folks managed the process very professionally. I was treated with dignity and respect and communication to me was very clear and direct. I clearly understood what was happening, why and unfortunately the outcome.

This was a roller coster weekend. T&S had no times for me after qualifying. Then my times were found and I was third overall and on ITR pole. Won the race, did the victory lap and went downhill from there...

Looking forward to racing at LRP - I will be there with vengeance.....

PS - I did the STU race. I was so depressed I was going to skip it but my buddies encouraged me. Didn't fill up the tank - got DQ'd for being 8 pounds light. It was icing on the cake but I didn't really care - I was so bummed my heart wasn't into it. There were 8 cars in the whole race and only 4 STU cars. I was against Maynards Grand AM BMW and Parlato's World Challenge BMW - no chance. Gorrarian raced his Miata but pulled off to get into another car for the next session.

[Andy Bettencourt]

Ben, call me.

[benspeed]

Just got my messages - will call you this AM. Wall St. meetings this AM

[Greg Amy]

The Pro-IT race was a fun one, it was great to see the top guys running together all race.

We had a BFA in the first group (Pro-IT) due to T&S issues (not many cars were getting "hits" on the loop) resulting in some scrambles to both resolve the technical error and to find bodies to run stopwatches -- I'd not run a stopwatch in T&S since 1986 and I was lost even with only doing two cars!). Fortunately, after the restart the technical glitches were pretty much resolved.

There was a fuster-cluck in T9/10 first lap of the Pro-IT race Saturday, leaving Wendell Holmes and Bill Fenton with damaged cars, and with Yiannis Tsiounis "sans" door skin the whole race (Yiannis has in-car video of the whole thing). Funny thing, Yiannis didn't know he was missing the door skin until his radio guy called him and told him!

We lost about 8 minutes to the subsequent clean-up of oil (all the way from entry into T9 to T11), paced by Yours Truly (I wanted to hold up the middle finger to signal one to go, but I figured the translation might get lost), and from there it was green to the end. Great race.

We in Scrutineering had very few issues, however it was still interesting since we had posted in advance at registration exactly what post-race items we were going to inspect for each class. This posting generated a LOT of interesting discussions and some inspections throughout the weekend (and yet we still snagged a few "discrepancies" post-race, each of them typically a simple misunderstanding or oversight of the regs). If you are a technically-oriented rules nerd-like personality, you would have enjoyed your time volunteering in tech (hint, hint!)

Did any ITers run STU?

As Ben noted, four STU entries. Phil Parlato won with his sweet (fully self-built) World Challenge BMW, with Dave Maynard hounding him the for second; Dave was never more than a few car lengths behind the whole race. Ben dropped in a respectable third - there's some good potential in that car. Unfortunately, Maynard was excluded due to being significantly underweight; he mistakenly thought that STU also accepted Grand AM-prepped cars as well as World Challenge*.

As for the National racing, I was personally disappointed in the run group numbers. I was very surprised at the low counts, but I hear from others there that this is typical for a National weekend . I think the FF/FV group had 7 cars...? Honestly, if it wasn't for the addition of the Pro-IT and "All Miata" run groups, that track had the potential for being a ghost town...

There were some good opportunities for STU track time for Improved Touring entries; two half-hour quallies and a 45-minute race, then add in there more racing on Saturday for Pro-IT (and a keerapload of more time if you drove a Miata; I think we figured Jerry Rigoli's SSB could have run 4 race groups; 5 if you count Prod...!) I'm bummed we weren't able to make it on the track, but I invite you all to join us for a few other Nationals, and come out to help at the track if you can't.

GA

* There's a lot of misunderstanding about the STU rules. STU is an "either/or" proposition: you can prep to the STU rules, *OR* you can prep to the most-recent World Challenge rules for your car *OR* you can prep to the Improved Touring rules *OR* you can prep to the MX-5 Cup rules. You cannot mix-and-match these rules, but it's perfectly fine to cherry-pick which one is most advantageous for you.

In talking to Dave Maynard, I recognized that the mistake was assuming STU was like ITE, where you can prepare your car to *any* professional race series. Not the case. Unfortunately, his legal STU weight (which is based on engine displacement) is about 350 pounds more than his Grand Am weight, so it would take a lot of lead to make it STU legal...

However, I didn't think of this until during the drive home, but does anyone know if his BMW complies with the ITR specs? I don't know if his chassis is even eligible for ITR, but if it is I have to wonder if maybe the GA prep level is within ITR allowances? If I had thought of this post-race we could have discussed it to see if he could squeak through...

[Andy Bettencourt]

The Pro-IT race was a fun one, it was great to see the top guys running together all race.

We had a BFA in the first group (Pro-IT) due to T&S issues (not many cars were getting "hits" on the loop) resulting in some scrambles to both resolve the technical error and to find bodies to run stopwatches -- I'd not run a stopwatch in T&S since 1986 and I was lost even with only doing two cars!). Fortunately, after the restart the technical glitches were pretty much resolved.

There was a fuster-cluck in T9/10 first lap of the Pro-IT race Saturday, leaving Wendell Holmes and Bill Fenton with damaged cars, and with Yiannis Tsiounis "sans" door skin the whole race (Yiannis has in-car video of the whole thing). Funny thing, Yiannis didn't know he was missing the door skin until his radio guy called him and told him!

We lost about 8 minutes to the subsequent clean-up of oil (all the way from entry into T9 to T11), paced by Yours Truly (I wanted to hold up the middle finger to signal one to go, but I figured the translation might get lost), and from there it was green to the end. Great race.

We in Scrutineering had very few issues, however it was still interesting since we had posted in advance at registration exactly what post-race items we were going to inspect for each class. This posting generated a LOT of interesting discussions and some inspections throughout the weekend (and yet we still snagged a few "discrepancies" post-race, each of them typically a simple misunderstanding or oversight of the regs). If you are a technically-oriented rules nerd-like personality, you would have enjoyed your time volunteering in tech (hint, hint!)


As Ben noted, four STU entries. Phil Parlato won with his sweet (fully self-built) World Challenge BMW, with Dave Maynard hounding him the for second; Dave was never more than a few car lengths behind the whole race. Ben dropped in a respectable third - there's some good potential in that car. Unfortunately, Maynard was excluded due to being significantly underweight; he mistakenly thought that STU also accepted Grand AM-prepped cars as well as World Challenge*.

As for the National racing, I was personally disappointed in the run group numbers. I was very surprised at the low counts, but I hear from others there that this is typical for a National weekend . I think the FF/FV group had 7 cars...? Honestly, if it wasn't for the addition of the Pro-IT and "All Miata" run groups, that track had the potential for being a ghost town...

There were some good opportunities for STU track time for Improved Touring entries; two half-hour quallies and a 45-minute race, then add in there more racing on Saturday for Pro-IT (and a keerapload of more time if you drove a Miata; I think we figured Jerry Rigoli's SSB could have run 4 race groups; 5 if you count Prod...!) I'm bummed we weren't able to make it on the track, but I invite you all to join us for a few other Nationals, and come out to help at the track if you can't.

GA

* There's a lot of misunderstanding about the STU rules. STU is an "either/or" proposition: you can prep to the STU rules, *OR* you can prep to the most-recent World Challenge rules for your car *OR* you can prep to the Improved Touring rules *OR* you can prep to the MX-5 Cup rules. You cannot mix-and-match these rules, but it's perfectly fine to cherry-pick which one is most advantageous for you.

In talking to Dave Maynard, I recognized that the mistake was assuming STU was like ITE, where you can prepare your car to *any* professional race series. Not the case. Unfortunately, his legal STU weight (which is based on engine displacement) is about 350 pounds more than his Grand Am weight, so it would take a lot of lead to make it STU legal...

However, I didn't think of this until during the drive home, but does anyone know if his BMW complies with the ITR specs? I don't know if his chassis is even eligible for ITR, but if it is I have to wonder if maybe the GA prep level is within ITR allowances? If I had thought of this post-race we could have discussed it to see if he could squeak through...

Thanks for the excellent recap. The Maynard car COULD be eligible (like our MX5) but you can seam weld along with a few little things that are outside the norm. A careful look at the IT rules BEFORE the GAC build could have netted a dual-purpose car. And I think he has a 330 which puts the weight at 3290 which is 10lbs off his STU weight interestingly.

A quick search yeilded no fruit on the SWC weight for an E36 325. Anyone know where to look? I found VTS's for E46 325 but no weight on it. COuple questions on legality:

World Challenge spec cars: They need to run the spec tire, right? I say this based on the specific allowance for the MX5 Cup cars to run any DOT tire with a size limit. If you run an older SWC car, what tire do you run? The RA-1 from when it was listed or the R888 from now. I would think you have to run the car AS CLASSED from the 'latest available VTS' sheet.

For sure they need to be running a Toyo of some sort...and BMW engine allowances are minimal...

Slow track? Surprised given the time of year...

[rsx858]

Fun weekend! Glen, way to snag the pole! you were flyin.

Really looking forward to limerock... Could IT go sub 1 minute?? stay tuned

[Greg Amy]

...I think he has a 330 which puts the weight at 3290 which is 10lbs off his STU weight interestingly.

Dunno. I wasn't running the scales during STU, but Dave mumbled something - paraphrased - about 'not going to add over 300# just to run STU'.

A quick search yeilded no fruit on the SWC weight for an E36 325...Anyone know where to look?

Old WC rules, I'd guess. Maybe do a search using web.archive.org?

World Challenge spec cars: They need to run the spec tire, right?

That's a good point. Given that you must meet the most-recent-for-your-car WC rules, I can only conclude you must run Toyos...however, in talking to Phil about his car, he said that the STU rules pretty much mimic the WC rules (he runs STU rules)...so there's no reason to get hand-cuffed by the Toyos.

GA

[RSTPerformance]

Slow track? Surprised given the time of year...

I don't think it was that slow of a track... Ken Hubbard ran a 1:19.1 in the ITB car... Close to the track record I belive!!

Raymond "Should have bumper cam shots from kens qualifying session up soon" Blethen

[benspeed]

I was able to locate the little grill that was missing from my car on a 968 forum - I was really worried I wouldn't be able to get the stock part.

Couple of comments - I thought the track was slow. It was very green from all the rain on Friday and the sun didn't shine long enough on Saturday to really warm the pavement. Good cool air for power but only moderate grip.

My camera wasn't working so I'm curious who crashed into the back of my car at turn 3, first lap. I thought to whole back would be smashed in from the hit - not a scratch - pretty stout car.

After the disappointment of being non-compliant wore off I guess the guys who had the worst weekend was Rob Thiele and Rob Nimkoff - man, both those guys have had more than their share of bad luck with mechanical/crash damage. I hope both you guys make it to LRP to battle. Windell - he got crashed out too - bummer.

I heard a red ITS Honda was demolished - who was that? I didn't see the car.

PS - Glen - total blast running with you dude - that was one insane tank slapper you had going through 12! I kept thinking, he's going, nope, he's gone, nope, going again, nope - incredible save after running through a ton of oil.

[dj10]

What happened to Rob Thiele and Rob Nimkoff ?
I'm hoping to join the ProIT fun 1st races @ njmp. I should be ready by then.

[l8tbreakr]

Just a quick note, I drove up on Sat to watch with my son and had a great time walking around and meeting a few of you there. A little surprised by the low car count, but was told a few times about conflicts this weekend with SRF down south and a typical low count National weekend. Either way it was a good trip up and great to watch the PRO-IT race on Saturday afternoon. Should be seeing y'all soon in an SM race.

Regards,
AJ Goldsmith