Jan Reno SCCA meeting results

[dknv]

Dean showed me some of the materials from last night's meeting.

For those who went, what are your thoughts of doing away with a pax trophy? If that happens, I guess I'd be annoyed since that is what I'd been chasing for 4 years. But then I don't know if I'm even going to be running, or much, this season.

[Kevin M]

Doing away with PAX? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

[Dean]

History... "driver of the year" or some such used to be a subjective trophy. use of PAX was an attempt to objectify it. with as screwed up as PAX is now, all it does for the most part, especially at our altitude is say you picked the right car in the right class this year.

Options were: Keep it, junk it and if we junk it, do nothing or create our own something.

Nobody voulenteered to make our own regionalized PAX, but what I offered to do was run the last event which I am chairing in a manner that allowed us to have a localized "runoffs" for the last event with a localized "PAX" based on the year's results up to then and crown champions that way.

Vote was pretty split keep vs. junk. tabled until next month.

[MikeK]

Apparently any old chump can get a pax trophy these days, so we should just get rid of it.

[sperry]

Here's a reprint of the email I sent the board last night:

Originally Posted by sperry

Since I wasn't involved in the original conversation about this topic, I thought I'd share my thoughts with the group regarding the question of keeping, dropping, or modifying the PAX championship. Hopefully I'm not so long winded that no one can get through this long letter.

First, in order to analize this stituation we have to ask ourselves "what is the point of the PAX Championship?" In my opinion, the PAX Championship is represents exactly what it's titled... the "PAX Champion" is the driver that finished with the highest total of PAX points for the season. Since I've been around the region long enough, I know there are some issue with PAX (both philosophically, and specifically due to our region's altitude), and I know that when someone like Mike Mulhall finishes in the top 10 it's probably more impressive than someone like Mike Khamis winning it outright due to the cars and PAX factors involved. But in my opinion, that's not what the championship is about. The championship is about PAX, including all the flaws inherrent in the system.

Having learned some more history of the club tonight, I now realize that while I've been here long enough to appreciate (and some would argue, capitalize on) the issues of a PAX competition at our altitude, I haven't been here long enough to appreciate that many members in the region consider the PAX Championship to be more of a "Driver of the Year" award, since it's that award that it was specifically created to replace. In that light, I understand there is much more at stake than simply being crowned "the best in PAX", and I understand the argument that we should drop the PAX championship because the standings don't accurately reflect what the de facto "meaning" of the award is in the hearts and minds of the region's members, which is actually more along the lines "Driver of the Year" or "Best Driver in the Region".

So we're left with a dilemma that seems to have only several options:

- Leave the award as it is. The argument is that PAX, while not totally accurate, is the best available method for transparently selecting the regions best drivers.

- Drop the award entirely. The argument being that if the PAX championship can't accurately represent the "region's best driver", then we simply shouldn't attempt to crown anyone as such.

- Modify the award in some way. One posibility is to downplay the award and attempt to make it mean only "best PAX driver" and not "best driver", perhaps by awarding it 1st so as to hype the class trophies more. Another is to return the award to a selection by committee method, where PAX points are only part of the picture. Or finally we could modify PAX to better reflect our region so the award more accurately reflects "best driver" over "best PAX".

Looking at our options, I see nothing that will truely solve our situation.

- We can't leave the award as it is, because it simply doesn't mean what the region's members expect it to mean.

- We could drop the award, but the region seems to certainly want a "Driver of the Year" type award even with the additional in-class competition we expect to generate with the new Street Tire rules. In addition, a PAX championship is essentially a "free" championship that everyone can participate in in addition to their class championship. I'd hate to lose an element of competition, just because we can't agree upon what it means.

- Downplaying the award only offers lip-service to the problem, and won't solve the situation unless we can somehow change the perception of the members.

- Picking "Driver of the Year" by vote not only opens the floodgates for "political" issues within the club, it also seems to run contrary to the whole point of competative motorsports: "the winner is the person that crosses the finish line first". If you numerically win PAX, but have the award given to the second place person because of a vote, how legitimate is that champion? At least with the current PAX championship, each driver can clearly see how the champion was selected, (and they should clearly see the flaws in the PAX method as well).

- Changing the way PAX is calculated opens a whole new (actually old) can of worms; ...how do we do our own PAX? ...is it fair? No matter what we try to do, I guarentee the PAX factors will be a point of contention if they're generated within the region. In my opinion the current 3rd party generated PAX factors are flawed, but not easily improved upon. Having a member or committe that competes in the region will undermine the "officialness" of a PAX champion due to the implications that there may be alterior motivation behind the selection of the factors.

Since the possibilities above don't seem to present a solution, allow me to propose another option. Hopefully one that will take all the advantages of the above solutions and blend them in a way to provide the region with the satistfaction of knowing who the best driver(s) are, as well as be completely transparent from the start of the season to the end.

Here's my suggestion:

- Classes are grouped into several "PAX Groups" with the intent of placing the cars less effected by altitude together, and the cars more effected by altitude together.

- PAX Groups are scored each as their own PAX Championship.

- At the end of the season, the PAX Group that generated the closest competition (as determined by some calculation based on number of competitors and tightness of the competition) becomes *the* PAX Group, the winner of which will be the overall PAX Champion. (Think of each PAX group as being a Bowl Game, but only one Bowl Game is the National Championship game.)

- If we're really clever, the PAX Groups will match the Run Groups (Red, Blue, Green, Yellow), allowing us to watch the PAX competitions per group throughout the day. I think with the Novice program's flexibility and the changed to street tire, we should be able to balance run groups per event if the main classes are more firmly pre-scheduled.

This solution retains the transparency of scoring that the current PAX rules have. It also attempts to equalize the competition but at a granularity that prevents the nightmare developing our own PAX factors would be. It adds several PAX champions, so that even if I don't win the title of "PAX Champion" I can still say "hey, I won the Rose Bowl at least!".

However, the difficulty in this system is two fold. First, the organization of classes is critical, and will certainly be a point of contention. Second, this system is much more complicated, and will be hard for timing and scoring without some specially designed software (I am certainly willing to write at least a post-event parser that will recalculate event results into the format we need), and it may be hard for all the members to understand, since it's not as totally straight forward as the current PAX rules.


Off the top of my head here's how I would organize the classes based on their altitude disadvantage. This is just a 1st pass, and would certainly need a lot of discussion, especially since I have very little feel for the cars in the Modified and Prepared classes.

Low altitude disadvantage:
SS, DS, FS
ASP, BSP, ESP
STU, SM, SM2, SU
AP, BP, CP
F125, FJ*

Altitude neutral:
AS, BS, GS, HS
DSP
STS, STX
FP
AM, BM, CM, DM
FSAE, FSCCA

High altitude disadvantage:
CS, ES
CSP, FSP
STS2
DP, EP
EM, FM


Then grouping them into four PAX Groups, again these will need plenty of discussion, as I've attempted to organize by car type with altitude disadvantage considerations, and it doesn't seem to work all that well, especially for run balancing:

RED (race/sports cars, low altitude disadvantage, think "Corvette"):
SS, AS, BS
ASP, BSP
SM2
AP, BP
AM, BM
F125, FJ*, FSAE, FSCCA

BLUE (race/sports cars, high altitude disadvantage, think "Miata"):
CS, ES
CSP, FSP
DP
CM, DM, EM, FM

GREEN (sedans/street cars, low altitude disadvantage, think "STI"):
DS, FS, GS
ESP
STU, SM, SU
CP

YELLOW (sedans/street cars, high altitude disadvantage, think "Civic"):
HS
DSP
STS2
EP, FP


Finally, the calculation for determining "competativeness" will need to be creative and obvious. I don't have anything in mind outside of using the number of competitors in a PAX Group coupled with the "tightness" of the scores. i.e. a group with 10% of the drivers within 50 points of the leader is more competative than a group with only 4% of the drivers within 50 points of the leader. There may also need to be something that relates the median PAX results from group to group, so someone that runs away with a group won't be penalized because everyone else in their group totally sucks. This may be a problem I'll need to run by a mathmatician at IGT. :-)


And with that, I'm spent... I'm sure everyone will have an opinion on what classes belong where. The nice thing is that by organizing the classes with respect to the region will hopefully be less of a chore than attempting to define our own PAX factors, as well as be less of a point of contention.

I'm of course open to suggestions, and would actually like it if someone with more experience and better class knowledge (ahem, John, Dave) would take this and run with it, if this seems to be a viable alternative to the previously proposed PAX solutions. And if you think this is a total bunk idea, feel free to tell me that too so I stop wasting my time thinking about it! ;-)

That should help people understand the odd situation we're in, as I attempted to summarize the points of conflict as well as the already proposed solutions, aside from the "PAX improvement" award Dean mentioned.

Speaking of the PAX Improvement award... I don't necessarily have a problem with it, however I don't see how it's really a replacement for the PAX Championship. It sounds more like a good way to calculate the most improved driver award, which is currently just voted on by the board.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by MikeK

Apparently any old chump can get a pax trophy these days, so we should just get rid of it.

It was not my intent to diminish your accomplishment Mike. The point was that it is not accomplishing what was originally intended, crowning the "best" drivers of the region. You drove well in the right car in the right class, for which you deserve to be congratulated for under our existing system.

It has also become more apparent that Rick is not basing his PAX factors on any mathmatical model.

[MikeK]

Originally Posted by Dean

It was not my intent to diminish your accomplishment Mike.

Not at all, in fact I agree with the people saying that it isn't about driver skill ... I know there is no way I am a better driver than most of the old timers there. The only thing I am disagreeing with is whether or not it should be about driver skill.

How can I put this?

People forget (or don't realise in the first place) that being successful at autocross is not about having the most driver skill. It is about getting the right combination of 3 factors: driver skill, car type and car modifications. The person with the best combination wins. Hell Dean, when you drove my car you proved that. You beat me like I owed you money, yet with me in my car and you in your car I beat you in raw and pax time at just about every event. And Lucas jumping into Matt's car was the same thing.

Everyone (i.e. Jim Gandy) wants to change the pax factors so that autocross will be about driver skill (in their/his mind "about driver skill again"). But changing the pax factors will NEVER make it about driver skill, it will just change what blend of those 3 factors are required to win.

The people at the meeting who are saying that the pax system is unfair because it didn't allow the best driver to win are correct ... and they are also completely missing the point. The ONLY possible way to have a driver skill only competition is to have one car that we all take turns driving. Even in formula 1 you need the correct combination of all 3 factors to win.

So we change the pax factors, and instead of an Sti in ESP being the cheater pax car, it will be some other car in some other class. How is this any different from 2005? (Unless it is Jim Gandy's car I mean)

[dknv]

Originally Posted by MikeK

People forget (or don't realise in the first place) that being successful at autocross is not about having the most driver skill. It is about getting the right combination of 3 factors: driver skill, car type and car modifications. The person with the best combination wins.

I agree, with a modifier, that the factors are driver, car and course. i.e., some cars are suited to driving certain courses faster.

I'd say besides the STi, the Mini Cooper S was another 'cheater car', it's just that we didn't have a competitor in a well setup car for most of the season.

[MikeK]

Originally Posted by dknv

I'd say besides the STi, the Mini Cooper S was another 'cheater car'

Oh I forgot about the mini!

CHANGE THE DAMNED PAX FACTORS!!! Damned cheater cars

[dknv]

Originally Posted by Dean

It has also become more apparent that Rick is not basing his PAX factors on any mathmatical model.

How so? I know we've had this discussion before, i.e. the sts vs. stx finishes at the 10 NT's last year, but what we don't know is how the top finishes by class were affected by # of drivers, their setups, Rick's awareness of who the drivers are, or what each NT's competition conditions were that led to these results. I think he Does have a mathematical model but one that we can't have visibility to, or even if we did, one that we may not understand anyway.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by MikeK

Oh I forgot about the mini!

CHANGE THE DAMNED PAX FACTORS!!! Damned cheater cars

The PAX factors for 2006 totally boned the G-Stock Army. And who knows what things will be like with all the changes to Street Prepared and boost. I'm laughing my ass off if we ditch the PAX Championship and the new PAX factors/car classes would have allowed Miata's to suddenly be super-competative.

Mike, I think you hit the nail on the head in describing what it takes to win at autocross. Your statement holds true, not only for the PAX Championship, but also for the class chapmionships as well. If you want to win, you have to cross the line first. Being the best driver isn't the only thing that puts you in victory lane.

Look at MSC... does anyone think he went from being the most dominant driver in the history of F1 to a mid-packer over one off season? No, he's probably still the best (or close to) driver in F1. The difference is that Bridgestone couldn't produce a competative tire, and the Ferrari's lost some of their technological advantage to Mercades and Renault. 'Course, the other thing to note about the similarities to F1, all it took was Ferrari (the ousted champs) bitching to the FIA (Reno SCCA board members) enough to get the single tire rules changed (dropping PAX) for next season.

The longtime Reno SCCA members need to realize that as part of the evolution of the sport, the cars that were traditionally autocross monsters are now not as competative. For example, the Miata was an amazing car when it 1st showed up. For the first time since the british sports cars of the 60's was there a fun, quick, balanced car in the US. And since the SCCA was founded by people driving little british sports cars, it's obvious that the Miata would fit right in. Add the reliability of a Japanese car to the package, and you suddenly have a very dominant car.

The problem is that the Miata's strength is being bested by technology. The Miata was competative because it was easy to drive at the limit and had great manuverability, light weight, and enough power. Well today, we've got cars like the STI. Sure it's not a finesse car, but it's got 200hp *more* than the Miata, and technological advantages that make it just as easy to drive as the Miata. Of course it's going to mop up... and it's really not just the altitude advantage.

The bottom line is just as Mike put it, if you want to win, you have to drive well, with the right car, in the right class. That's what racing has *always* been about. If you used to be the champion, and now you're not, you have to ask yourself "what part of the 3 parts am I missing". Just because the answer isn't "well I guess I'm just not the best driver anymore", it doesn't mean that the competition is unfair. Sometimes the best driver doesn't win... look at Kimi and Michael in '05.

[Dean]

When I exchanged emails with Rick last year, asking him about data, his response was effectively that he does not have any data to share on his calculations, much less that there are calculations involved at all.

Perhaps it is just me, but I just don't get the impression he is doing the hours and hours of statistical analysis to come up with his numbers. I get the feeling he looks at results from 10,000 feet, and makes judgement calls. One of his comments was related to the classes "potential". there is no room in statistics for "potential".

[dknv]

Ouch for STX: I didn't see these last minute changes until just now:

http://www.autox4u.com/pax.htm

[Dean]

[Case] Yes, it is clear that F125, and STS have gotten slower over the past year, and STX so much faster... [/Case]