[sperry]

Kevin I think the problem is more fundamental, and it's not necessarily about the people and the cars, it's about the goals of our autocross program.

There are two nearly mutually-exclusive goals:

1) Provide a fun venue for regional competition that allows the vast majority of people that show up all season long with tight competition in highly contested classes.

2) Provide a venue for drivers with national aspirations to refine their driving to become more competitive at the divisional and national tours.

The vast majority of drivers (both RT and ST) fit into goal 1. But, IMO, the more "important" goal is 2. The problem is that doing things to cater to goal 1 tends to reduce our ability to achieve goal 2.

The whole RT vs. ST issue is really an issue internal to goal 1. It's essentially the same issue as "is PAX fair at this altitude" and "should we use a bumping order", etc. In order to provide deep competition with the number of people in the region, we have to have some method of grouping people together, and there will inevitably be people that think they're getting screwed due to the rules, and the rules alone. I think integrated ST is really a good thing that helps us achieve goal 1, but the factor may need to be changed in order to make people feel like the playing field is level.

The real problem we need to solve is "how can we provide the non-national level drivers fun competition, without reducing the region's ability to provide useful practice for national drivers?". That's where the PRO class was coming from, and that seems to be getting killed.

It's my opinion that the proposed changes from last night are actually going to hurt both goals. Splitting RT and ST hurts goal 1 because it plainly reduces competition. Randy made a big point that his RT Vette was getting beat by John Perry's ST Solstice. But that was one of the closest races all season long! Congrats Randy, next year you'll get the win, because if John doesn't go to R-tires, he'll be racing in the ST class.

Meanwhile, the few national driver we have will only be racing against the few race tire drivers in smaller classes. Whereas, they could have been up against a larger field, which would contain potentially more talent to challenge themselves against. What helps a national driver practice more? Beating up on the same one or two drivers, or going up against 6 drivers, 4 of which have what may be a handicap advantage? Frankly, racing against drivers on street tires that have that ST PAX should help national drivers go faster. I don't believe the ST factor is too harsh to be insurmountable (and if it is, then it should be softened). If a national driver is getting beat by a ST car, shouldn't that be incentive to reach deep down inside and find a way to drive faster? Isn't that the whole point of goal 2?

But like I said, I'm not getting real feedback from the most of the region. The really vocal people are the race tire drivers from goal 1... so Reno SCCA is going to end up with rules that make them happy.