Banning stuff sucks. Then we try to become "SCCA like" yet we don't have anything close to the uniformity of them.

If you ban stuff, then there is no innovation. Rhoades figuring out the big ass wing was a stroke of genius, because now he can sneak his car into other non-Speedventures events and kick some ass on cars that would normally beat an S2000.

We can't absolutely positively measure driver skills unless:
1. We race spec karts that weigh the same including driver
2. We race spec miatas that weigh the same including driver
3. We race spec S2000s that all weight the same including driver

Part of the fun of this series is to speculate on the mods and driver skills per each car, and how much each factor into laptimes.

Rule changes sucks. (but that is just because I am still bitter about outlawing slicks. )

Right now, the combo to beat is Rhoades with the wing. But he isn't winning by huge margins, I got him winning at:
1. Laguna - 3/10ths over Bitterman
2. Thill Clockwise - 1/10th over Rylan

He built his wing cheaper than what Rylan probably paid for the coil overs. Yes, he ran Hoosiers, but Rylan/Aaron pulled the passenger windows out, the door covers, etc. So you could make the case that Jason's car is more stock than Rylan/Aaron's car is

If you ban the wing, then it would look like Rhoades would have to go out and buy expensive coilovers and throw out the passenger windows to have a "similar car".

If Rhoades was winning by a full second, then I would try to maybe add more points for the wing. But we are talking 10ths of a second here. (unless of course, he is a really good sandbagger. )

-Doug

 

If we don't ban anything, the alternative would be to make sure the points assigned each mod are such that certain combinations that we already know would be outrageously fast are not possible in MOD, such as Hoosiers+coilovers+wing, as Aaron B., I believe, proposed. So, for example, make a wing 30-50 points. This would be easy to implement at this stage of the season also.

Sounds like we are down to two alternatives so far.

Edit: Jason proved that a wing could be worth a similar amount, in terms of laptime, as coilovers which are assigned 75 points. Hoosiers+swaybar+CAI = 130, so we could assign 70 points to a wing (similar to coilovers) and everyone would be accomodated in MOD as they are today (including Jason, with no more mods as he is fast enough, and even Doug with Hoosiers and coilovers if he chooses to do so ).

 

My concern with some of this is that you end up classing drivers, not cars. How many people feel they could have driven Jason's totally stock car with that wing and gotten the same lap times? You have to take that into account. Simply banning a wing seems like banning JZR.

It makes more sense to me to come up with a meaningful set of rules that everyone can live with. The whole points value thing has never worked all that well in any instance I've seen it used. Unless you can accurately assign points values (which is next to impossible) then it's best to have a hard-and-fast ruleset.

I understand what Doug is saying 'cause he's a tinkerer. And I agree, Doug, you'll never have a true spec series without all driving the same car. But it would be allot more level playing field if there weren't so many combinations of mods. The wide variances in car prep simply fosters the whole "he was fast because of the wing" or "he was fast because of the Hoosiers" attitude without truly looking at people's driving performances.

The trick is to try and come up with a set of mods that:
1. Won't cost an arm and a leg
2. Will tend to reward driving performances instead of craftiness
3. Is fun to drive

So, I'm not sure what this is, but I think it's a worthy goal. Keep up the good responses. What kind of mods would you like to see on the Spec class if there is one?

--edit - I tend to agree that the Spec moniker for this class is a bit misleading... how about we come up with a different name? How about Prepared class?--

 

Umm... as an example of the failings of the points system, rlaifatt mentioned that he felt that a wing was the same points value as coilovers. I respectfully disagree. I don't think anyone has realized the full potential of a coilover set yet in terms of spring rates and damping settings. A properly tuned coilover package would be worth way more that a wing. Not to mention that the wing is course dependant... on slow courses it's pointless, but on Big Willow it's everything. So are we going to adjust the points values per track, too? That's why I feel points systems for modification doesn't work well. We should pick a list of mods for the 'Prepared' class and stick to them.

 

well, first appearance of a BAUW was streets of willow where it showed significant gains. it happens to be the smallest, slowest course in california.

 

It's true, some of the mods that I'm seeing are out of control. A lot of them wouldn't even be legal in club racing.

If you want ANY sort of equality, you have to figure out how restrictive you (the governing body) are gonna get. You have to put your foot down, otherwise us, the racers are gonna go rampant with the mods and others are gonna complain.

We should remember that most of us are using our cars on the street, so getting psycho with loony mods is way out of hand. It seems that people on this forum want good competetive racing at a reasonable cost with some mods. The problem is that there is a huge variance between the "stock" cars and others that run slicks, wings and other crazy stuff. We need to narrow the spectrum so that people are closer to each other in terms of performance.

The easiest thing to control and the single most important thing on our car (this could be argued) are the tires. So if you guys want closer competition, you have to control the tires for each class.
Ideally, each class would get their own tire and that would be that. When I raced shifter karts, it was that simple. Hard tires for novices and softer tires for the more experienced guys.

This way you would resolve one of the biggest issues and also be able to control costs considerably. Once the tire issue is put to rest, you could control what is allowed in each class. Outlaw big wings and anything else that would greatly change the performance of our cars, and you would have much tighter group fighting with each other.

Whatever you do, somebody needs to make a decision - it's not F1 over here.
Make up your mind(s) and stick with them for a while.

 

Thanks Jason for starting this thread. I'm tired of having so many different threads on classing. Let's try to keep the discussion here and not let it spread to others. Maybe krazik can keep it from disappearing to the bottom of the charts?

My hope for the S2000 Challenge was that it would grow and evolve. I always hoped the classing would change, since that would imply increased participation, competition, etc. I don't see the changes we've been making as negative, I see them as refinement. I agree the classing shouldn't change if people are expecting to set-up their cars a certain way to win and have made investments. Rlaifatt is the only person who has been screwed by these changes so far that I am aware of; but he was screwed only because of lack of participation. The reason for going from 5 to 4 classes, and then from 4 to 3 was to increase competition, excitement, and participation. His expensive 17 inch wheels don't really do him much good if he's the only one in his class, and I believe he said as much in that earlier thread.

I think there should be a novice class, but I think it should mirror the Pro class. Many folks show up with heavily modified cars right out of the gate. We need to bring people in off the street who've got a supercharger, for example, not shun them for having bolted on an SC before getting involved in road racing and make them take it off at the track to participate in the novice class. We want people to fit into a class with what they've got when they show up. All they would have to do is choose between novice or Pro.

The Pro class should be prize paying, the novice shouldn't. But the novice should have trophies, recognition, etc. People in novice should be forced to move up to Pro if their times are within a certain percentage of the best time posted in the corresponding pro class (a la krazik's suggestion in some other thread).

As far as what these classes should be: I think there should be 3 for the sake of competition, excitement, etc.

I like the names STOCK, MODIFIED, and UNLIMITED since they clearly state what's been done to the cars.

This series is not at the level of SCCA autocrossing or racing (*yet*). It is a series for street cars and we need to involve as many people as possible in order to get it off the ground. This means accomodating the range of modifications found out there. When we have a whole event with 100 S2000's and grueling competition (which is the goal I think) then we can have a more SCCA-like way of classing cars. For example, I don't think the SCCA allows X-braces in many classes. In the S2000 world, a lot of people have their X-braces in hand before they've picked up their S2Ks. They shouldn't have to take them off.

As it stands I think our system accomodates everyone. The continuous changes are refinements to make the classing fair. For example "we" didn't know slicks were 2 sec. faster than hoosiers. "We" knew Hoosiers were 2 sec. faster than RA-1's, but didn't know Hoosiers would still be a winning tire by far over RA-1's when used in combination with coilovers (let alone a wing). We did what we could to keep people from running Hoosiers, but they're so damn fast it's tough to equalize them. That's what the changes are about. These don't hurt people really since most of us can switch tires. (rhoads and hayashi can dump the hoosiers and buy mods that cost far less then that high dollar rubber).

Money is a factor. I think the more we tune the classing, like we've been doing, the more it is becoming as "spec" as the series can reasonably become at this stage. But to make it more "spec" might be suicide by discouraging involvement since people are, more often than not, runnin' what they're a brungin'. Especially newbies.

I vote for keeping the classing as it is (with the newer 3 classes) and relegating Hoosiers, along with slicks to the UNLIMITED class. Hoosiers are very fast and very expensive. And there's no need to run them with the oh-so-excellent RA-1 available; it's a perfectly good race tire.

dt

 

I think slick rick has the right idea. I'm basically motioning to focus in even more on tires like he suggests.

I don't agree with people's interest in banning big wings. I don't think they cost more than coilovers. The motons are $5k when all is said and done. I haven't seen anyone show up with a $5000 wing yet (JZR, come on, what did you really spend?).

I say allow the wings. But certainly up their points value if it ought to be upped.

The problem here may just be that the moderator of this classing system (yours truly) is completely ignorant about what mods are really worth. I'm slowly learning, but relying on you guys to help me out. If a wing is worth 30, let's make it 30. If 50 pts., let's make it 50. But we need to keep in mind the $$ of mods too. Wings don't really cost that much so, even if they were as valuable as coilovers in terms of laptimes, they should be less points since they cost far less.

dt

 

Oh, and one more thing:

Re. Saini's suggestion that we create a Spec class with the most popular mods, I really think we've done that already with both Stock and Mod. That's basically what we've got in both cases.

Admittedly, people can, and will, keep coming up with some mod that's not on the list and at some point in time we might want to set additional limits beyond the tire controls. Perhaps the moveable wing could be outlawed for instance since none of us are either clever enough or have enough time to match JZR's effort. But we can do this by forcing such mods into UL. Each time we force a mod into UL, we're increasing the spec nature of the class.

If someone shows up with carbon fiber prop shafts and all kinds of crazy ass shit just to win, the rules say we can make that judgement when the time comes (if it's not on the list, it must be declared and will be assigned points). We can make CF prop shafts worth whatever pts they're worth + a high-cost tax (I'm not sure what CF prop shafts cost or how much advantage they give, I'm just trying to think of something really exotic).

I don't consider putting slicks or Hoosiers on clever, I just think the classing was stupid for failing to understand their relative advantage. Making a moveable wing is clever and until the season is up I think it should be allowed. If we think JZR has a highly unfair advantage because of it we can outlaw it in '04. But he put the time in, so I think it should stay for the season at least.

 

This post is here just to be goofy so I can say that I set the record with four posts in a row without anyone responding.

dt