XPost: soc.history.war.misc

Pat Wildfire
Top contributor
Letter #37041 sent today:Thank you for publishing these proposed rules.
Seeing a clear definition of the Prototype class makes it much easier to understand the direction that SCCA management is suggesting.
Unfortunately, the direction seems to be actually a deletion of the P2
class rather than a merger as suggested. As mentioned in my previous
letter, I have been racing in P2 for several years, and additionally
some of my customers also race in this class. I personally, as well as
most competitors, chose this class because the laptimes produced in P1
are beyond the capability of our cars and/or budget. If we had wanted to
race in P1, we would have.
I understand the necessity to increase participation, and am therefore
willing to spend the money and effort to modify my car to a different
spec than the current P2 rules if necessary.
That being said, modifying my car, and many other P2 cars, to produce
the laptimes currently seen in P1 is really not possible. Just to be
clear, my car in it's current trim turns faster laps than it ever has
before, and the AMAC was extremely competitive in DSR. The suggestion
that was made that we are 'returning to DSR' is simply not accurate, as
the engine, aero, and tire technology has improved dramatically.
The basic design of my car is simply not suitable for these speeds. In
order to make it competitive in "P", I would have to replace the entire
body, including the whole bottom of the car. I would also have to modify
the chassis to stretch the wheelbase and to allow room for proper
tunnels. I would need to replace the rear suspension completely in order
to make room for the required diffuser. Both front and rear suspension
would have to be converted to pushrods to allow for decoupling of roll
and heave so that the higher downforce could be managed. In addition to
all that, I would have to install a new engine.
I generally do all work on this car myself, in whatever spare time I can
find between customer work. To accomplish the above work would take me
at least two years, and a minimum of $20,000 just in parts and materials.
If I should chose to speed this process up by paying someone else to
build the engine and modify the body, I could possibly get it done
sometime in 2025, but it would cost closer to $50,000, and would still
need to be developed on track to be competitive.
Clearly these options are completely impractical and unfeasible to me.
More likely I would simply retire the car from SCCA. So in order to
increase participation, you will have lost my participation completely.
My customers are in the same position, so you will lose their
participation as well, and I will lose some of their business.
It has also been suggested that those in my situation 'just run
regionally', or 'just run in "P" at your own speed'. I trust you will understand that these suggestions are ridiculous. Most people don't
build, own, and race cars like these unless they crave competition, and
racing against the 115% rule does not qualify as competition.
Furthermore, anyone who wants to drive these cars without intent to
compete and win races, can find a plethora of venues in which to do just
that in open track, HPDE, TT, or other events with a much lower cost of
entry and less hassle than SCCA club racing.
For all of the above reasons, I ask you to please reconsider this
proposal, and either publish a new 'combined' rule set that is
achievable for P2 spec cars, or allow P2 rules to exist unchanged and
simply combine us into one run group for all races, including the Runoffs. Thank you,
Pat Wildfire
P2 #49
6d
Reply

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)