It depends how you define "right" and "wrong," Jeff. But then, I'm one of those scary moral relativists that you read about...
I'm actually going to make a semantic difference between "
right" and "
Right." The latter represents some absolute Truth, where we have magically divined a race weight that is absolutely, 100% fair, such that all IT make/model examples have exactly the same chance of winning.
Proposition: We are NEVER going to achieve that.
You are arguing a point of view shared by some on the ITAC - that because we'll never be
Right, we should settle for, "eh, whatever."
(EDIT - that might be perceived as pejorative. Call it "settle for 100 pounds.") However, I think that's missing the point because (a)
Right IS in fact not going to happen, (b) the idea of "letting perfect stand in the way of better" seems terribly wasteful to me, and (c) that whole perspective requires that we assume we are actually TRYING to accomplish that. I argue that we are not even TRYING for
Right. (Some might think so; they are wrong.)
We are in fact shooting for "
right" - which I would like to see defined as "repeatable, transparent, as-objective-as-possible weights." The goal is, accepting that they'll never be
Right, to get car specification weights as reasonably close to that as possible but in a way that decreases the organizational costs of farting around with things. A weight is
right when...
** It was arrived at in a way that everyone can see
** Done again - absent any new information - the system will produce the same weight outcome
I firmly believe that
right is pretty much always going to be close enough that - as you (Jeff) quite correctly point out - the amount a car is "off" (the delta between
right and
Right) contributes little enough to real world competitiveness that it gets lost as noise. Frankly, I don't believe that's a very small window to hit.
In short, the argument that we can't be "accurate" makes the most compelling argument for being "consistent."
Because we CAN do the math to the pound, we SHOULD do the math to the pound. And to be VERY clear here, I am most assuredly NOT suggesting that...
** We should give cars more weight because make/model cases appear to be faster or more competitive
** We should entertain request after request to adjust by fiddly little pounds (once the system has been done, repeatability says the result will be the same)
Finally, another AMAZINGLY disingenuous position that I've seen in these discussions comes from the guy who on the one hand says, "we're fooling ourselves if we think a formula is going to be within 100 pounds of
Right, so there's no use diddling with any that are more than that far off" but on the other says, "I know a guy who builds some of the best engines for Borgwards. I KNOW from him how much power they make, so I KNOW that car should be 100 pounds heavier than the formula says."
Bull biscuits.
K