Excellent question. And...boy this could get thorny.
First...Raymond- I think I know the case you refer to. I heard it differenty. The protestee told me that he admited that the part had been on his car in that configuration for most of, or the entire season. Secondly, I understand (again, from him) that the grinding in question was the result of a weld made to a stock exhaust manifold to repair a crack. I understand the weld was on the outside and inside and was ground down. Finally, I thought he had a penalty of 7 points.
The rule is that the part must be stock and unmodified. Welding and grinding are modifying. So that part is easy, he was guilty. And this is an excellent example of where harsh penalties can go awry.....he was merely being cheap or lazy or both, and not taking the time and or money to procure himself a new (Used?) manifold. Or so he says. Performance gains were non existant.(The same protest resulted in a teardown to check all the head stuff, displacement, etc, and he passed that part of it)
So....what do you do with a situtation like that? Obvious rule infraction, not so obvious benefit? I was told he got the lightest penalty possible, but I never checked the validity of that.
That said, harsh penalties ARE needed. And there will be casualties, such as the above case. (Keep in mind he knew he was playing with fire when he started welding, but it does suck to see someone slapped around who did something innocent, but dumb)(which he admits)
Now if it is obvious that there was malisciousness involved, then the book and the chair should be thrown.
Stuff like the wrong cam, the wrong displacement, the wrong throttle body (how many VW throttle bodies out there are correct I wonder?), the wrong compression, ported rotaties (YES, of course!) and other items that are black and white, and required effort to perform, are the items that should carry the harshest of penalties.
Still, it puts an incredible burden on the official. I know of guys who have innocenly purchased cars, been told that the cars were legal, then a year later, on a rebuild, found that there were illegalities, These guys have not been front runners, and have denied nobody any trophies, but they were pretty horrified to find the problems. What if they had been protested by a competitor for some petty political reason? They would become an unfortunate fallout. So we and the officials need to be careful that the justice fits the crime, and, to some degree, we need to leave the penalty aspect up to the officials. (I know...huge problem there...suggestions of favoritism, etc)
I think that one way around the problem of frying semi-innocent people is a second chance approach. Lets say Bob got protested for having illegal cams and compression among other things, and indeed, thats the case. Guilty. But Bob says he bought it from a guy who swore that it was legal. Part of the penalty should be a mandatory check at a random future date to be sure the car is still clean. Now, if Bob fails that inspection, or any repeat infraction of the same magnitude, in the future, the penalty has to be exclusion for a minimum of 13 months.
On the other hand, things like a missing bezel from some on track contact, or some subjective bodywork repair that doesn't meet the letter of the law should be dealt with on a most minimal level. Fix before next season or similar.
In the final analysis, we need to make the penalty far outweigh the benefits.
(And, an entire thread could go to discussing the issues with the ease, or lack of same, of protesting...wait..we already did that!)
I can't wait to hear Dicks and Kirks and GregAs thoughts on this...
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Jake Gulick
CarriageHouse Motorsports
ITA 57 RX-7
New England Region
[email protected]
