Ideas for next ECC

#1

Had a couple thoughts that I hope get discussed and head up the chain for next year. Feel free to comment or add your own ideas.

#1: Minimum pace. I believe there should be a minimum pace rule for ECC (and WCC for that matter). In a regional event, we always deal with pokeys and there are usually several in each race. No big deal, comes with the territory and, although frustrating, it’s expected. At champs, it’s a problem. The reason is the scale of the event. This is a big event for experienced racers competing against the best in the country. In that range, there will be leaders and end of pack runners. That group (based on extremely rough numbers) looked to be within 10% or so of each other. Then there were the outliers in each class that were 15-30% slower that really had an effect on the race. I had run-ins and i heard it all weekend from others. Their lack of experience or ability was obvious and affected many races for position. That is simply not fair to the competitors who are running pace.

My suggestion is that during each race session, there is a special flag displayed to a driver if he is not within XX% of the race pace as determined by ???. The driver should have a lap or two to pick up the pace and if he doesn’t then he gets the black flag. He may then return to the track for one attempt but if he falls out of range he gets the black again and is retired for the session. NASCAR does this as a safety measure and i think it’s warranted. Slow drivers would know signing up that they may not get to race the whole race and may think twice about signing up. Yes i get that numbers matter but so does race quality to the other 100 drivers. This could obviously be a race group-specific rule if needed.

#2: Competitor inspections: Under no circumstances should a fellow competitor be allowed to inspect another competitors car at any time for any reason without that competitor’s permission. It is the drivers job to drive, the officials’ job to inspect. Rumor has it that Larry Fraser struck again and inspected Maganioli (sic) during’ impound and turned him in for a body work violation. That may not sound like much but under that scenario, i could send 10 drivers to inspect his or any car and find all kinds of shit, not to mention the possibility of planted violations.

My suggestion is that if a competitor inspects another competitor after a race during impound and voices a complaint, that complaint, whatever it is, immediately becomes legal. In other words, if I, as a non-official, say “Scott, you have a turbocharger on there!” and tell an official, whether in passing or an official protest, that turbocharger becomes legal. If an official had found it, obviously it would be illegal.

Thoughts?

#2

This seems to be in line with the spirit and wording of the CCR, which says nothing about another competitor being able to inspect your vehicle, only that the tech inspector has the right to inspect what they want. It does go so far as to say that if the tech inspector is a competitor, you have the right to have it inspected by someone else. Point being, it should never be expected that a competitor would be scrutinizing your car.

17.4 Confidentiality
A competitor has a right to protect information about legal modifications and vehicle setup other competitors. If
a competitor feels that inspection by the Tech Inspector (e.g. if the Inspector is another competitor) will result in
loss of information to another team, he/she may lodge such an objection with the Tech Inspector. Once an
objection has been lodged, the Tech Inspector will remain in impound while the competitor locates the Race
Director. The Race Director will then make the determination of legality. The Tech Inspector may watch the
vehicle or assign someone to watch it, but shall not conduct any inspections, other than those agreed upon
between himself/herself and the driver.

That said, you should still be able to protest somebody for a suspected violation. If we’re all shifting at the same spot on track, and you keep pulling for another 1000 feet, obviously we are going to suspect that something is up and it would be appropriate to protest. But sitting there and scrutinizing somebody’s car in order to find something to protest shouldn’t be allowed IMHO.

#3

I agree on both accounts. It’s nice to have the bigger payout from Toyo but don’t want to be dodging a back marker or possibly getting blocked at the biggest event of the year.

The process for inspection if there is a suspected infraction is to file a complaint with tech.
No competitor should be inspecting another’s car.

Sure would like to see the HP/TQ numbers added together then divided by 2 to give us a maximum value for the Dyno. This is done in 944 Spec and it works great. There is clearly some who have figured out how to make higher TQ numbers than others.

#4

I also agree with both, and actually had the same thought on minimum pace while watching Chris Allen’s video - he came up on a slow 944 amongst other traffic in the bus stop, and it was real close to getting ugly. The tough part is coming up with a workable policy. On the flip side, I don’t believe the big delays I’m aware of involved any back markers in any way, so a new rule might not help anything. Perhaps the bigger driver is track selection. It kills me that I didn’t make it to WGI, and I still want to race there one day. But, the reality is there wasn’t much green flag action for an expensive weekend that should have been full of awesome racing. Too many incidents resulted in mangled cars and lots of time spent repairing barriers. I’ve never raced Sebring either, but it strikes me as another track that is pretty unforgiving and prone to FCY (maybe not?). Historic / bucket list tracks, but maybe not the best for this kind of event.

Cliff

#5

NOt all cars are slow because the driver is slow…for ex: some guy who pays his money and drags his car from 10 hours away shows up, he is learning the track and slow on friday, has mechancial issues which makes him slow saturday, doesn’t get to race sunday???

I think you guys need to relax, this is club racing…

fwiw its worth, the above story was me at mid-ohio at nasa nationals (2009? or 2010, 2008, i don’t remember which year) before I ever joined spec e30.

at the time i had been racing for 10 years, never been to mid-ohio before, I get there, literally when i pull the car off the trailer and to the dyno, acamshaft breaks. (this was in PTE, not stock cams, on my sentra it made the difference between 125 whp and 155 whp. A competitor who lived an hour away goes home and gets me a stock cam. So I miss all of friday, put in the stock cam, go out for sat warm up and then the race. Something is still wrong, the car is way off pace (for me), I finish 11th out of 12 (beat a spec miata who was running PTE also). BUT I GOT LAPS ON THE TRACK AND LEARNED THE TRACK…under your scenario, i wouldn;t.

I had a replacement race cam air shipped from california at some expense, install it sat night with Todd Reid’s help, go out for the race sunday and finished 5th, had a shot at the podium with a little luck, but didn’t get a break.

I killed my self on that car that weekend, got 4 sessions on track, only one of them with the car running right, spent a ton of money and swapped cams probably 10 times (finally figured out the chain jumped several teeth when the cam broke)…yet according to those on here suggesting this rule, I should have been black flagged and sent home, not allowed to race on sunday???

Nope, I would never support that rule, this is club racing, lighten up…