Originally posted by Matt Rowe:
We still have arguments here between people that have built and raced cars that still can't agree on what is reasonable. Education doesn't seem to help.
The difference is a bit greater than that - I mean the people here do understand what the ramifications of placing no restrictions on brake or suspension components in terms of the cost to compete. The uninformed figure that using their OTS aftermarket parts that they could afford would be the limit of what they would compete against in an unlimited modification environment.
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">As for getting run over in ITE, his STi would have faired no worse than a lot of other cars that run in that group.</font>
Since I believe there isn't much point on this forum of discussing adding cars to the overall SCCA list - I wasn't talking about his STi. The STi was traded for a tow vehicle - his interest and mine as well would be in classing the Impreza RS (2.5L NA motor) in IT - that is the car that would get ran over if he were to try to show interest by running it in ITE. His choice was to go ahead and build the RS and race with EMRA, mine was to buy an existing ITA car to get to the racing part and then work to bring in the car I would rather have - in this case the Impreza RS. What I am trying to say here is that if they were classed there would be a minimum of two Impreza RS's in MARRS as well as attendence at some other regional races around the NJ area. And that is just from the small number of people that I interact with.
While actually both of us liked tracking our STi's and were glad to see it added to T1 and moved to T2 - neither of us had any intentions of starting racing at that performance level or preparing a base car that had that much cost in advance of preparation. In three years if I convince myself I have any competence at wheel to wheel then I will think on building an STi, though my current one would be pretty close to 5 by then, I could get another.
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">As others have said, I don't have anything against the concept other than it WILL be difficult to setup properly. One group is going to come out with a perceived advantage and the other group is going to whine about it. Before we start down another slippery slope let's see how much interest there really is. If you know someone that is interested, or better yet if you know someone already running a car in another series, get them to write in.</font>
I agree that is where my efforts will be focused. The most difficulty I find is that over time there are some who have felt alienated by SCCA and feel that the SCCA are set in a way such that they wouldn't listen to anything outside entrenched ideals. I am not saying that the feeling is right, wrong, justified or not - that fact that the feeling exists among prior and current members is sufficient for it to matter.
Either way I think there is enough interest in the area between VIR and Watkins Glen that within 2 years of classing there would be a minimum of 4 AWD cars running.
It has gotten to the point where we almost have enough interest to run them in an AWD series within current classing of other sanctioning bodies. 6 of us met to lay out the ground work for that just three weeks ago with 4 of us licensed and with built cars (albeit not all are are using AWD at this point). I personally feel that advancing an AWD racing community would be better served developing within SCCA IT classing and prep rather than trying to start a small series with an initial group that combined has less than 20 years experience and almost none of it on the administrative side of running motorsports.
[This message has been edited by turboICE (edited April 15, 2005).]
[This message has been edited by turboICE (edited April 15, 2005).]
