So this is going to be a long post, and I ask everyone to read it and REALLY try and understand it. I also challenge any ITAC or CRB member to bring forth any reasonable arguments. Anyone who agrees with the philosophy of the change (like Greg), I would like to hear their arguments as well. Maybe I am missing something. It should always be the job of the committees to put in the work and class things as 'right' as they can.
First off, this classification is NOT inconsistent with the way other cars are classed because it is DIFFERENT. Read that again. It's different. I am going to lay out some generic scenarios for you in an effort to try and reduce the Miata bias.
Take car A. Car A had a body style run from 1990-1993. From 1990-1992, it had 130hp. In 1993, they tweaked the intake manifold and the cams and the new rating was 140hp. Now, if the 1990-1992 car was classed first, it would be classed based on the 130hp number. You would then have a choice as the CRB. Add another spec line because the cars are different, or combine them at the higher HP because the items that make the extra 10hp are not legal to change in the lower HP version - and then allow the UD-BD so that the lower HP car can actually make a real base number. Following me? It's a mechanical change that CAN be done to can extra HP in IT trim.
Now, take car B. Car B had the same body style run and the same HP change. But the extra 10hp came from a tuned set of headers and a low restriction exhaust. Are we saying that the new stock HP is the way to class this car. HELL NO. Why? Because those mods are already taken into account in the IT weight calculation. Follow this logic:
Lets say for arguments sake that there are 4 things that contribute to a cars 25% potential increase in IT trim (just using round numbers to make it easy. We know every car responds differently). Air intake 5%, exhaust 10%, B&B - port and compression 5%, and ECU 5%. There is your 25%. If a car gets a bump in stock HP SOLELY because of one of these, you have not increased it's potential HP in IT trim. You can not argue this. In the above example, all you did was erode the 10% increase in an optimized exhaust, you did not add 10hp to the baseline number. So you COULD use the higher number to class it but you would then have to reduce the potential % gain the car will get - netting the same original weight.
Take the 2 versions of the 2nd gen RX-7. One had 146hp and one had 160hp. That 14hp difference was made up of basically 3 key items. A MAF instead of an AFM, different intake manifold design and higher compression rotors. All three things that you can not change in IT. These cars COULD be on different spec lines with TOTALLY different HP in IT trim.
NOT true with car B above. Those cars have exactly the same HP potential in IT trim. There is nothing 'mechanical' that you can change that would bump the base hp of the early car up to that of the later car. When I say this, we need to be clear. This 'something' has to be a feature that is not otherwise allowed to be changed in IT. In other words, something you could UD-BD to that would bump the HP.
Another example. Let's say Nissan had a 240SX 'Type S' at 140hp and a 240SX 'Type R' at 160hp. All they changed was the exhaust and the ECU. The Type S is already classed. Then the Type R comes in and all it has is optimized equipment under the IT rules. There is NOTHING different in the two cars in built IT trim. You DON'T bring the bottom car up to the top car and THEN add the 25%, because you would be forcing the car to actually gain about 43% in order to make it's process power.
Even more simply (because this is very hard to explain), Car A has 130hp. Honda does a Type R version with a factory optimized IT package. It now has a rated 162hp. You wouldn't take the 162hp version and class it at 25% additional power because the Type R version has used up 100% of the IT gain and there is ZERO more to get.
So to bring it back to the Miata, this is exactly what happened. The 128hp car was classed, then later, the 133hp car was requested. When you look at the differences, the cars are identical except for an ECU tweak. Since this is an allowed mod in IT, it renders the improvement 100% moot when discussing potential in IT trim. And THAT folks is how cars are classed at the core level. Potential hp in IT trim. The change in ECU adds nothing to the base HP as it affects HP in IT trim. If it were a larger TB or something you could not legally change, then yes 100%. So if you wanted to use the 133hp number for 'consistency', go ahead, but you must compensate with a lower potential gain in IT trim, say using 20%...which gets you to withing 5lbs of where the car is classed now (figuring 2370 because of the old slush 10lbs). But this is silly because it would be very hard to pinpoint the % of one modification under the rules...so you simply use the standard 25% on the correct number.
One thing that should concern us all is that this line of thinking has been debated and voted on at the ITAC level. It is codified in the Ops manual and had seemingly been accepted by the CRB for over a year now. So effectively, the CRB has decided that (which is their right I suppose) that the Ops manual is out the window for this car but yet it holds firm on it even when it's wrong (see DW adder in ITR). Sweet. We should all be happy with the inconsistency.
So there is data that shows the Miata makes more than 25% but less than 30%. Ok, fine. A weight change based in THIS line of thinking is actually the unprecedented kind. 25% to 27% on a motor like this is 2.5 crank HP...or 2whp. Anyone who wants to adjust the weight of a car based on 2whp is nuts. Let's be real here.
This isn't a Miata issue, it's an issue about whats the right way to class a car. To the Miata, I am not aware of any dyno sheets that show the Miata to be capable of 25% on top of the 133hp number that already includes a % for ECU (as described above). Interestingly, 128hp @ 30% and 133hp at 25% are almost identical. So the Miata is getting classed at a number not yet represented in any dyno data and at a level that doesn't make sense.
It's obvious the Miata is a lightning rod but we need to be worried about classing decisions that make sense because we have put forth effort and thought instead of seeing what we think we see.
If you have a real need to add weight to the Miata, then do it in a way that is consistent and makes potential sense. It's probably more than the sum of it's parts...so add in another variable that not many cars have - like a rear DW adder. I proposed it, it was shot down. This would add an additional 50lbs to the Miata while legitimately trying to quantify a real difference in it's contemporaries - EXACTLY what an adder is suppose to do.