Kary- SCCA runs many practice events where you get as many laps as PCA does. The 3-lap thing is for championship points events only, and some people enter their cars twice and take X-runs at those events also, along with fun-runs afterwards, and get as many laps as we do.kary wrote: I am not really interested in running three laps for an event.
This is not really true. The additional time involved is 44 x 20 seconds (the average interval between cars) not 44 x 100 (the average lap time). Those four X cars probably added a total of 15 minutes to the event, but only if the drivers would not have entered in another car if X cars were not allowed. I think at least 2 of them (the Hauptman brothers) would have entered in their 914 if their Spyder replica wasn't allowed.If we were to exclude X cars from the last auto-x we would have gained back 44 laps at around 100 seconds a lp on average.
As a tech inspector, I have no problem in determining whether a car of another marque meets our technical requirements, according to the rules. I may not know how to get the hood up easily and where everything is located on the car as well as with the Porsches, but that shouldn't be a problem. Maybe it would take slightly longer.I think over time we will get into trouble with technical inspections, safety of cars and the fitness of these cars to run
That hasn't been a problem so far, and we have had X cars run at the fastest, most dangerous venues we use (WSIR and CA Speedway).we might get into trouble with our insurance
Again, if the member would have run their Porsche instead of their X car, have we displaced anyone?we might displace members who really want to run Porsches
All the more reason to make a Regional policy at the Board level that takes the decision-making out of their hands. I thought we had one already that said if more than 100 Porsches show up, no X-cars? Apparently, that wasn't applied at the last autox.We end up putting a great burden on our chair people to make decisions that are really not necessary which only adds further stress to volunteers that dedicate much time and effort to make our events fun and profitable for our club.
The original discussion around this centered on under-attended events, like the Q-DEs and some TTs at away tracks, where the extra entries have helped the club break even or maybe make money instead of losing money. This seems to me to be an obvious benefit to the club. If the drivers are a known quantity, I don't see why there would be any safety concerns in sharing the track with them either.So I still ask why do we really need to accommodate X cars? There are consequences to our events if we try and do this.
So wouldn't enforcing the limitation on X-cars whenever there were more than 100 Porsches entered at an autox do that? I thought we already had that covered, but apparently not. I don't have any problem with that rule.kary wrote: Then there are the other members who will complain about X cars and taking track time away (auto-x).
Sometimes we might want an additional load, in an under-subscribed event.This is an additional load no matter how you slice it.
Shouldn't they be black-flagged, then? There are ways to deal with that situation. I was in that run group at the first CFoS event and he didn't cause me any problems, except when blocking the track at the exit one time.Additionally, I was trying to keep Time trial/DE out of the equation becasue there were some very serious close calls the first year of the CFoS with some Corvette guys who did not follow the point by rules
If you want to stop that problem, make a policy that requires outside drivers to be Zone 8 TT licensed or signed off by an instructor ride-along in at least the first session, if equivalent credentials can be provided by the driver.This is an issue and will get worse if we allow many non-Porsche cars into the DE/TT events seeing as we only have the drivers word in many cases to establish there skill set.
There have already been 5 or 6 serious incidents this year, and we're still running, aren't we? This issue needs to be addressed by course design and safety policies.What would have happened if there were a serious accident in that event? Maybe banning of non-Porsche cars?
I know that, Kary, and I have run with them, in and with a wide variety of cars. I've had a lot of fun doing it.Tom, if you want to run X cars or anyone else wants to do so, there are plenty of venues by which to do this.
It has already been stated by others in this thread that this is not an issue with Zone 8 rules. The current Zone 8 rules already allow X cars, at the discretion of the event chair. If you are really so concerned about the hordes of bad-driving Corvette and rice rocket owners who are about to overrun our club, why don't you submit a rule change that no X-cars are ever allowed?That is just my opinion and if you would like to submit a change to the rules please do so, and good luck!
Kary, let me assure you that I am not offended, and yes, I am very close to this topic as I was caught up in the controversy at the last DE, and ultimately denied entry, after several flip-flops on the issue.kary wrote:Tom, I can't tell if you are somehow offended or just too close to this topic.
All I did was present my thoughts on X-cars in general without any agenda personal or otherwise.
kary wrote:For me one concern is that auto-x is too busy. I just attended one after a long vacation from auto-x and found that it is clearly over subscribed. I was still sitting there waiting for my time run session at 5:45pm completing around 6pm. The elimination of any X cars would have helped that issue as would some more efficencies during the day.
kary wrote:... The safest environment I have seen is POC time trail by far. There are many reasons for this, but the primary reason is that people are qualified, their cars are check out with more rigor (paper work and stamps), and the 13/13 rule is enforced without exception. They do not allow anyone in without these credentials so individual discussion will not supercede rules of admission. Having run almost the equivalent number of events between our Time trial series and POC Time Trial series I have had far less close calls and seen far less accidents in POC than PCA.
Also, I took my PCA TT license to my FIRST POC event. Got a check-out ride from an instructor and granted a POC TT license. I do know that POC is very strict and probably has THE best racer's training program in the West. But there are going to be people on track with you who may not have come up through the ranks (as Kary suggests).
Well, I'm not sure I agree with this statement 100%. I have seen some sort of incident at almost every POC event. Almost exclusively in the race groups, but still a LOT more mishaps than at the PCA events. As near as I can tell there were only 2 incidents at PCA TT's in the last 1+ years I have been attending.
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