2011 Runoffs

G

Greg Amy

Administrator
Staff member
I was at the 2011 Runoffs, figured I'd offer a few notes.

- Congrats to your new champions, Scott Tucker in STO in a Porsche 996tt AWD, and Joel Weinberger in STU in an Audi A4 turbo AWD. Personally, I think the AWD aspect of it is purely coincidental, as both showed up with very well-built and well-driven machinery.

- Attendance was light but decent in STO. We had Scott Tucker in his "out the blue" 996tt entry, David Pintaric in a sexy-looking Viper ACRX, Joe Koenig in a "bad azz mofo" BMW M3, Jerry Onx in an "America f&&k yeah!" Corvette Z06, Gary Kachadurian in a BMW M3, and Marty Grand triple-dipping (T2, STU, STO) in his Evo IX. The top guys would have fit right in to the World Challenge GT class. Unfortunately, a first-lap incident sent Joe to the hospital with serious -- but fortunately not life-threatening -- injuries, and put Jerry on a flat bed, leaving Dave and Scott duking it out for the rest of the race. Congrats to Scott for a well-driven race, and our best wishes for a speedy recovery to Joe.

STO Final Results (PDF)

- STU was a good field of "true" STU cars. Actually, I was even personally surprised at the depth of real STU cars and the relative dearth of double-dippers like Spec Miatae. I was also surprised at the appearance of Marc Hoover in a Mazdaspeed-turbo-powered Miata, taking advantage of our turbo table rules to run the smallest turbo inlet restrictor we allow (32mm), thus the lightest weight we allow (2200#!) Marc pedaled damn hard, but just couldn't keep pace with Weinberger in that WCT Audi A4; Joel just ran away with the STU championship. Congrats to the champ!

Behind them there was a SUPER battle for third between Marty Grand in his Evo IX, "Irish" Mike Flynn in his E46 M3, and another surprise of the weekend Eric Heinrich in his gorgeous Gulf-liveried E30 M3. Those three guys went hammer-and-tong amongst themselves; Marty eventually fell out with power steering failure and Mike had an unfortunate spin in T5, leaving Eric with a killer drive in the M3 to top out the podium. Behind them were many other good STU-quality rides, such as an Acura RSX, a Mazdaspeed MP3, a Mazdaspeed 6, and a Lexus Is300. It was a great field!

STU Results (PDF)

The CRB "Town Hall" meeting during lunch on Wednesday was fairly calm. Nothing new came from it, other than assurances to competitors that we're doing our best to minimize significant rules changes going forward, and that we'd REALLY like to get support on making STL a National class (get all your friends to double-dip in STL!)

We tried to put data boxes on the top-4 of each class. For various reasons, we didn't get a full compliment of results. Actually, I'm pretty disappointed in the results. But I appreciate the cooperation from the competitors, and we'll keep plugging away to ensure reasonable comparative parity.

It was a great time, and distinct pleasure to meet everyone!

Greg
 
Greg Amy said:
I was also surprised at the appearance of Marc Hoover in a Mazdaspeed-turbo-powered Miata, taking advantage of our turbo table rules to run the smallest turbo inlet restrictor we allow (32mm), thus the lightest weight we allow (2200#!) Marc pedaled damn hard, but just couldn't keep pace with Weinberger in that WCT Audi A4; Joel just ran away with the STU championship. Congrats to the champ!
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I hooked up my PC to my TV to watch this race, it was great!

Watching Marc got me thinking (dangerous), I'd really like a crack at STL or STU. Any details on Marc's setup?
 
I have an update on Joe Koenig for friends and fellow racers:

Direct quote from one of his daughters, who also races: "He will be fine. He's got a broken rib, 4 ribs are detached from the sternum, and 5 hairline fractures on the hip. He can't walk or do much on his own but the car saved his life."

And

"And his spirits are great"
 
Greg Amy said:
That's great news. We were all very concerned about him Friday... - GA
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x2

I saw the car ONCE via the online stream, and it was NOT good. The fact that the cameraman in that corner then went out of his way to not show anything during the FCY laps didn't help things.
 
Since the high profile televised fatalities of Dale Earnhardt and Greg Moore, most directors will not show replays of serious incidents during live telecasts.
 
What he said.
As an F&C worker, we're also told to keep any and all medical-related news off the radios, other than "driver OK" or "ambulance now". I'm sure the same goes for the TV crews.
 
Greg Amy said:
Nothing obvious, just looked like a nicely setup Miata with a big-power turbo engine. Marc is an engineer and a past DSR champion; I'd suggest it's a pretty well-done setup. - GA
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What was the motor out of. Mazdaspeed Miata's have a tiny turbo so I can't imagine that. I figured either a Turbo Rotary or a Mazdaspeed 3 motor... both of which would be fairly high dollar swaps, problem with the 3rd gen RX motors is then you have to use that messy twin turbo setup.
 
Mazdaspeed Miata engine. He asked for - and we gave him - an alternate turbo (see STCS "Alternate Vehicle allowances" table). The thought behind that is our weights for turbos are based purely on the size of restrictor that the competitor chooses to use, so giving alternate allowances for turbos should have minimal effect.

GA
 
Greg Amy said:
Mazdaspeed Miata engine. He asked for - and we gave him - an alternate turbo (see STCS "Alternate Vehicle allowances" table). The thought behind that is our weights for turbos are based purely on the size of restrictor that the competitor chooses to use, so giving alternate allowances for turbos should have minimal effect.

GA
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Uggh.
 
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Greg Amy said:
... and that we'd REALLY like to get support on making STL a National class (get all your friends to double-dip in STL!)


Greg
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Sorry Greg, I find this a bit disturbing. We have too many classes as it is, and asking people to double-dip in STL just to get the numbers up is a disservice to the existing classes. Encourage people to build cars for STL - sure, but let it thrive/survive/die on it's own. Should be the nature of all classes.
 
PSherm said:
...I find this a bit disturbing...too many classes...a disservice to the existing classes....let [classes] thrive/survive/die on [their] own....
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I'm not going to get into long discussions on it, but you may be shocked to find that a lot of people agree with you -- and just as many disagree. This is a serious topic of conversation that got a lot of air time this past week* and something that the Board of Directors is addressing as we speak.

GA

* I had to literally laugh out loud numerous times this week when conversing on this subject. I found a direct correlation between any individual's position on this subject and the class they choose to race (or want to race), which itself has a direct correlation to that particular class's participation numbers...it got to the point that it was a game for us to predict in advance any one person's opinion(s) based on what event t-shirt their were wearing..."the more things change..." ;)
 
Greg Amy said:
I'm not going to get into long discussions on it, but you may be shocked to find that a lot of people agree with you -- and just as many disagree. This is a serious topic of conversation that got a lot of air time this past week* and something that the Board of Directors is addressing as we speak.

GA

* I had to literally laugh out loud numerous times this week when conversing on this subject. I found a direct correlation between any individual's position on this subject and the class they choose to race (or want to race), which itself has a direct correlation to that particular class's participation numbers...it got to the point that it was a game for us to predict in advance any one person's opinion(s) based on what event t-shirt their were wearing..."the more things change..." ;)
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I think a point could be made that there are some good classes that are going away purely due to the economy and that an effort should be made to let them survive so that the class can thrive again in a new and hopefully better coming economy and job market.
 
Mrsideways said:
I think a point could be made that there are some good classes that are going away purely due to the economy and that an effort should be made to let them survive so that the class can thrive again in a new and hopefully better coming economy and job market.
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Which was yet another source of LOLs during the daily Town Hall meetings...that "excuse" pretty much came exclusively from participants of those classes that are in danger of being "de-listed". To a "T" those in strong classes pronounce "survival of the fittest", and to a "T" those in weak classes talk about history, tradition, depth of opportunities in the Club, the bad economy, etc.

There's always an excuse for avoiding de-listing...and always an excuse for getting listed...it just ain't as easy as some folks think it is. I don't envy the BoD right now... - GA
 
There are ten million ways to build a race car and everybody wants to build it the way they want, then they want to be able to run up front. When they don't, they ask for rule changes. when they get them, the people that didn't ask for the change scream. When they don't get them, the people that asked for the changes scream.

It's a no-win situation trying to make everyone happy. Just ain't gonna happen.
 
Greg Amy said:
Which was yet another source of LOLs during the daily Town Hall meetings...that "excuse" pretty much came exclusively from participants of those classes that are in danger of being "de-listed". To a "T" those in strong classes pronounce "survival of the fittest", and to a "T" those in weak classes talk about history, tradition, depth of opportunities in the Club, the bad economy, etc.

There's always an excuse for avoiding de-listing...and always an excuse for getting listed...it just ain't as easy as some folks think it is. I don't envy the BoD right now... - GA
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I find it odd that the classes I see in trouble are the Cheaper to run classes (touring and SS). I think the economy has hit those that are barely able to race a lot worse then those running cars with enormous budgets. The Fear is when those that were barely able to race and currently Can't now are able to barely race again those cheap classes will be gone.
 
Mrsideways said:
I find it odd that the classes I see in trouble are the Cheaper to run classes (touring and SS).
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Two thoughts:

- First, SS and Touring ain't "cheap" by any means. Far from it. Start with an expensive new car and then spend a s**t-ton of money prepping, rebuilding, and blueprinting it. You'll spend as much money as, for example, a National Spec Miata effort.

And then do it over again when the next new car-of-the-year shows up.

- Second, most people tend to want to race a "real" car, not a street car.

The "cheapest" classes in the long run are those with consistent long-term rules, minimal mods, and competition active ongoing adjustments to avoid model obsolescence. SS and Touring only hit one of those.

GA
 
Greg Amy said:
Two thoughts:

- First, SS and Touring ain't "cheap" by any means. Far from it. Start with an expensive new car and then spend a s**t-ton of money prepping, rebuilding, and blueprinting it. You'll spend as much money as, for example, a National Spec Miata effort.

And then do it over again when the next new car-of-the-year shows up.

- Second, most people tend to want to race a "real" car, not a street car.

The "cheapest" classes in the long run are those with consistent long-term rules, minimal mods, and competition active ongoing adjustments to avoid model obsolescence. SS and Touring only hit one of those.

GA
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I look at SS and Touring as cheap, In SS you can always rip the cage out and sell it as a street car. Sure the rich start with new cars. The rest of us start with $500 salvage title jobs. For instance the Focus SVT we built for SS 2 years ago we bought the car, caged it, extra wheels and tires, brakes, clutch, flywheel, timing belt, and an oil change and were running side by side with that years runoffs winner for $4,870 on the track.
I'm hearing numbers from friends talking about buying a front running spec miata 3,4 and 5 times that number.
the other advantage is there's tons of em running around about to time out for dirt cheap.
 
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This is a serious topic of conversation that got a lot of air time this past week* and something that the Board of Directors is addressing as we speak)[/QUOTE said:
Greg , Any insight into when the STL question will be communicated ?
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