While I can appreciate the desire to both distinguish IT from the rest of the SCCA's classes as a "beginner" and a "regional only/low budget" class I don't think racing on non-race compound tires is actually the smart thing to do.

I realize that non-race tires are cheaper, and I realize that non-race tires are almost as good as race tires are in some cases, I do think that running tires that are not specifically designed to be raced will not have any measurable effect on either participation or cost of racing.

My rationale is this:

A: CrapCan/Lechump racing is successful because of 3 basic aspects we can never achieve with IT:
------------------1. simple rules with an absurdly low entry cost.
------------------2. a crazy amount of track-time for the dollar.
------------------3. Teamwork and group-cost sharing that both enable an aspect of racing that binds groups of friends as well as distributing the cost-load across 3 to 6 members.

B. Street/non-race tires tend to display other issues that DOT-R compound tires are engineered to avoid
------------------1. Chunking of the tread blocks
------------------2. Severe rolling of the tire and sidewall/edge degradation

Note that just because we know that "Extreme Performance Summer Tires" are good for racing Lechump/Crapcan doesn't mean we'd see everyone come out on these Extreme performance tires.

C. Size. A quick check of the Tire Rack list I see nothing smaller than 14" and of the 14's and 15's on offer, I see one size, a narrow selection that many of us would have to make changes to the cars - relatively expensive changes to accommodate.

As an example. My car is an ITS car. I can fit 225/45 and 225/50 Hoosier R7's on that car because I bought a wheel that has an offset that makes them work with rolled fenders. I have a specific set of springs that I use with Hoosiers that overpower the grip for the R888's I run on track days and I have quite a bit more camber than I would otherwise need. I have invested a lot of money into getting this right, and time. You're asking me to do this again for the RE71R or BFG Rival S1.5. I'm not looking forward to that. But maybe that's something we can dismiss as realized cost. But it's still painful to think about doing this again.

To me the answer of controlling the cost of tires and still distinguishing IT as the "beginner" and a "regional only/low budget" class, would be to seek out a supplier who'd be able to step up and supply long lasting, "race-engineered" tires with a regional level contingency. Toyo RA1's, RR's R88R's, Maxxis Victra RC-1, even someone hungry like https://www.natiresusa.com/ might be willing to jump into the DOT race tire market if we proposed that 5000 IT racers would all switch to their tires with the understanding that they'd step up and supply us. Maybe even Hoosier would create an "IT" tire that we would all use if we reached out with the idea and the threat of us all dropping them for a spec tire.

Another point of Lechump/Crapcan racers. They desperately want somewhere to test and improve their cars that are not tied up in the endurance series. A lot of these guys want to race in the SCCA/NASA and MCSCC where I race. Giving them an IT class of their own would be far more attractive than asking them to step up and build ITC, B, A or S cars... ITJunk/ITLemon would be a much more successful idea IMO, and let them know they are supposed to follow their series' rules to be compliant and let them self-police. If it becomes a "thing" then we can break out their classes into sub categories.

While I understand the need to re-brand IT, I don't think starting here is actually the right idea. This has the potential of undermining the interest of a lot of the current IT community. Let's start with a spec tire.