jbrennen wrote:Greg Phillips wrote:Again, if you are buying tires and wheels to autocross or go to the track, you should be running in a CC class IMHO
The SS rules should reflect the reality of car ownership, which is that tires are consumables and that most owners aren't particularly interested in doing the research to figure out what tire models were available for factory delivery on their car. They will buy the tire that gets good reviews, or the tire that's on sale, or the tire that's available for immediate delivery (rather than waiting two weeks on a back-ordered tire).
Once you accept the idea that car owners don't place any particular value on sticking with the factory tire model, and that replacing tires is not viewed as a "modification" by most people, you have a little bit of a problem enforcing your quoted sentence above... How do you determine if an owner bought tires "to autocross"? The guy who buys the Bridgestone RE-71R because he read about it on an autocross forum is sent to CC class, but the guy who bought the same tire because it had the highest dry traction rating on Tire Rack's website gets to run SS? (It does have the highest dry traction rating there, by the way...)
You don't have to tell me that tires are a consumable and all the reasons you could buy different tires I go through a lot of them and always looking for deals
I was not trying to have a rule about why you were buying different tires, only evoking the spirit of Street Stock.
But here is another thought that Steve Grosekemper mentioned as an option for Street Stock.
Each of the cars would be placed in their respective Street Stock categories based on their base points, tire size and any allowed performance points (ie factory options like PDK or limited slip). Modifications would be limited as they are now, but hopefully you would be competing against a car of more equal performance.
An example would be my 2005 987 Boxster. It is bone stock with 205 front and 255 rear tires. It presently would run in SS02 or with 409 points (359 base + 50 tire points) in CC05.
Under a new proposal, each SS class would encompass cars with a certain number of points, and they could move up or down depending on tire size and any added ALLOWED performance options.
If I increased my tires to 265 and 235, I would take 40 points and if I had PDK another 15 points. Depending on where you were in your SS class you may have to move up a class.
The main difference between CC and SS then would be that SS would not allow all tires, only those with approved treadwear ratings and that performance modifications would be limited to factory options or as allowed (muffler delete, catback exhaust?).
No aftermarket suspensions or engine changes etc.
There would need to be some work to determine how many SS classes to allow and what each of their point ranges would be, but I think the concept has merit.
We already have a formula for the performance potential and modifications, we would now use it for SS cars for their limited allowed modifications.
Greg