My guess is that most of the BMW guys are nowhere near the boards 240 plus hp either......... that is my point[/b]
But it isn't a valid point. IT classing is based on IT legal
potential, not on what competitors choose to field or not. Though the repetitive fielding of levels of performance can definitely cause the revisiting of what potential had been assumed in classing.
For there to be a valid argument here, the argument would have to be that the
potential does not exist to build an IT legal motor in excess of the HP targetted in this decision.
The questions to be asked and that can be validly argued in this decision are far more limited than people are willing to acknowledge:
Is classing based on potential?
Are potentials fairly determined?
Are potentials fairly balanced?
What means are available to balance potential?
Which means are preferred to balance potential?
If a nonpreferred means to balance potential is to be used what are justifiable reasons for doing so?
On an assumption that the first three are yes (which can be argued but I assume that the decision started with a yes to those questions) - the answers to the last three that guided the decision to add an SIR to the E36 and not other cars can be as follows:
Weight and power.
Weight.
Power is grudgingly used to balance potential when the weight necessary to adjust potential is unreasonable. (And RPs were determined both to be ineffective and to the detriment of areas not desired to be affected.)
No decision was made that the ITAC or CRB has any desire to get into the regular practice of balancing potential through power - they viewed it as a choice of necessity. I can't find it now but somewhere, someone with inside knowledge of the decision communicated that this decision was not one that would have been desired were it not that the E36 in ITS is an anomoly.
With the process as has been communicated the only valid way to add an SIR to another car would be to establish that it has a potential above its assigned weight and that adding weight to balance it would be unreasonable. What other car has the
potential to generate in IT legal form HP in excess of its assigned weight
and to add weight to it in response would not be reasonable? Lacking those conditions it has been communicated that overall SIRs are not viewed as desirable in IT - but rather a matter of necessity in addressing an IT anomoly.
IMO there has to be people who regret this car was ever classed in IT at all. It has been shown that its legal potential is beyond ITS intended ranges.
