Classify your car for 2012

[Mmagus]

Tim,

You should run in CC07. Your competition would be an underpowered 944S, a 968, a couple of older Boxsters, a stock Cayman S and a couple of older 911's. I didn't notice a single shark.

Mark... those are just the fish "bodies"... what makes them so scary are the "TEETH" behind the wheel.

[Kim Crosser]

Let me see - my "showroom stock" Boxster, no mods, on 200 treadwear street tires is a CC04. Also in CC04 is Tom Tweed? At Saturday's AX, Tom ran a 1:02.21 and I had a 1:04.78 (which I thought was pretty darn good). I did NOT leave 2.5 seconds out there Saturday.
(Although, had I run a 1:02.21 in my Boxster, I would have won Saturday's BRI by .68 seconds over Tom, who won the BRI by .46 seconds over 2nd place.)

Methinks that tire and lightening points aren't factoring in nearly enough...

I also notice that Paul Young and Steve Grosekemper have tentative CC04 solutions as well.

This system works better than the old system? How?

Looks like I need to sign up in one of the SS classes (SS02) - I don't seem to have a reasonable chance in CC04.

[Don Middleton]

This system works better than the old system? How?

Kim, it seems your being a little hard on yourself when you compare your times to one of Tom Tweed's BRI winning efforts. On another day, there might not be much difference. Still, you may be on to something with the tire points, which can be so different now with the tread width versus tread wear. We'll need experienced guys like yourself out there helping sort out the new system.
Stay in CC04, make them earn it while showing us where to take the new system!

[Gary Burch]

Let me see - my "showroom stock" Boxster, no mods, on 200 treadwear street tires is a CC04. Also in CC04 is Tom Tweed? At Saturday's AX, Tom ran a 1:02.21 and I had a 1:04.78 (which I thought was pretty darn good). I did NOT leave 2.5 seconds out there Saturday.
(Although, had I run a 1:02.21 in my Boxster, I would have won Saturday's BRI by .68 seconds over Tom, who won the BRI by .46 seconds over 2nd place.)

Methinks that tire and lightening points aren't factoring in nearly enough...

I also notice that Paul Young and Steve Grosekemper have tentative CC04 solutions as well.

This system works better than the old system? How?

Looks like I need to sign up in one of the SS classes (SS02) - I don't seem to have a reasonable chance in CC04.

Kim, I feel your pain. CC04 is probably where I will end up next year also.

I ran Saturday with RA-1's(old, but not that bad) I had a 105.01, which I thought wasn't bad(6th in the BRI) but Tom beat me by almost 3 seconds.

Now Tom is an excellent driver as we all know. But it makes me wonder about the points awarded for tires in this new system. My RA-1's will cost me 60 points and Tom can run on his 710's for only 20 points more, that's only 10 more than a strut bar.

I don't want to start a tire rant, but...

[Mark Garriott]

Is the hp/weight calculation off?

For Tom's car I see base of 2381 lbs & 130 hp = 219 points.
His modifications are 2220 lbs & 180 hp = 325

The difference between those two is 106 points, but the website calculated 97 points.

Is my math wrong?

[ttweed]

This system works better than the old system? How?

Kim, it seems your being a little hard on yourself when you compare your times to one of Tom Tweed's BRI winning efforts.

That's true, Kim, it was my best result all year--actually, the best since I completed the build on this FP car in 2009. The course seemed to fit my car and my driving style better than usual, for some reason, and I beat cars and drivers I normally don't. Although I have been flirting with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th on the BRI all year, this was the first time I have won on indexed time since the old days in GS with my '67 911S.

For reference, I ran a 1:04.55 in practice on 0-point street tires. I would be in CC03 on those tires, and may still go there next year. The V710s are being penalized twice as badly next year than under the old rules. They've gone from 40 to 80 points. I'm not sure what's right for penalties on compounds, but we've made a 100% correction on that already. I do know that the more we penalize R-compounds, the more people we will see on street tires. If that is the goal, then go for it. It will definitely be cheaper to go slower, and I can dig that. I can tell you I would never run race slicks anymore in our events, as they are definitely penalized beyond their value now at 120, IMHO, and there are people who would like to see those higher too!

There are going to be several trends with this new system that people are going to be "surprised" about, I think. The consolidation of classes is one. There is going to be a wider disparity of speed potentials running in the same class. There is no way around that. If you take 25 classes and squeeze them into 16, there could be no other result. Then there is the disparity caused by mixing all generations of Porsches in the same class. They may be equal on HP to weight, with a correction for tire size and age/technology, but there is no doubt that the smaller, lighter, and less powerful models from the early years are going to have an advantage in AX, and the bigger, heavier, more powerful newer models will have an advantage on the big tracks in the TT series. Without separate mod penalties for the different venues, you will see different relative results in the same class of cars depending on what track we are running.

This new system will definitely be a "work in progress" for several years, now. I don't even want to think about how long it will take to get the BRI revised and working half-decent again. The GGR PAX is a joke--I don't see how we can just "import" it into our system, and converting our indexes from old to new classes will take a great deal of analysis and more data.

TT

[pecivil]

i went through it for the Elise.

Base points 380
Mid Engined pts 15
Tire Points 40
Mod points 200

total 620 points CC09

looks like there aren't many CC09 peeps.

As an aside, Dennis Power in his Boxster S is also CC09 and me and him are usually within 0.5 sec on TT lap times so for what that is worth it seems to have dropped my X car in the right place lap time wise.

[ttweed]

Is the hp/weight calculation off?

For Tom's car I see base of 2381 lbs & 130 hp = 219 points.
His modifications are 2220 lbs & 180 hp = 325

The difference between those two is 106 points, but the website calculated 97 points.

Is my math wrong?

Are you taking into account the 2.5% "free" weight allowance in your calcs, as stated in the new rules? A 2381 lb. car is allowed 59 lbs reduction for no penalty. The 2220 measured weight becomes 2279 with this allowance. 2279/180 = 12.66 for the HP/WT factor, so (4000/12.66) = 316, not 325. That's the 9-point difference between 106 and 97 for the mod points. It looks like the web calculator is working correctly to me.

TT

[Kim Crosser]

Kim, it seems your being a little hard on yourself when you compare your times to one of Tom Tweed's BRI winning efforts. On another day, there might not be much difference.

If I was beaten by a second or so, I would "suck it up" and decide I just have to drive faster.
It was the 2.5 second difference (on a 62-second track) that stunned me. Either I was driving REALLY slow, or Tom's car and my car don't belong in the same CC classification. That is a 4% difference in times - that is huge...
Tom's later post ("... I ran a 1:04.55 in practice on 0-point street tires. I would be in CC03 on those tires...") doesn't make me feel any better.
If he is turning 1:04.55 on 0-point street tires, and I am turning 1:04.78 on 0-point street tires (a 00.35% difference, not 4.00%), that would seem to say we could well belong in the same classification when running 0-point tires, but instead, Tom would be in CC03 (with loads of points to spend on tires while still staying in CC04 or below) while I am in CC04 (and would bump to CC05 with ANY tire upgrade).

[ttweed]

My RA-1's will cost me 60 points and Tom can run on his 710's for only 20 points more, that's only 10 more than a strut bar.

That definitely confirms that a strut bar isn't worth 10 points, Gary.
I took mine out.

We can juggle the tire points all we want, that's what the rules revision process is for, and it will work just like a government tax subsidy program, re-engineering society and driving people in one direction or another, depending on the incentives. We just have to decide what kind of a "society" we want--a slow one or a fast one.

We'll never have a completely fair one, just like in real life.

TT

[ttweed]

It was the 2.5 second difference (on a 62-second track) that stunned me. Either I was driving REALLY slow, or Tom's car and my car don't belong in the same CC classification. That is a 4% difference in times - that is huge...

Looking at the results for this season, we have had time margins separating us of less than 1 to more than 3 seconds, Kim, depending on the track and what kind of a day each of us had driving. A 2.5 second difference isn't exactly an anomaly, according to past history. We have been as close as .86 seconds this year, and you have beaten me on the BRI.

As far as being in the same class, that is partly the result of the "class compression" that I mentioned earlier, and partly a matter of choice. We have apples and oranges in the same basket, now, if I may paraphrase Herman Cain. My car is modified purposefully and optimized for AX. You are essentially running a street stock car and choosing to enter the CC class instead of SS class, an option which I don't have. On a big track, your car would have a greater advantage and be more competitive, if not faster than mine, I would wager.

What do you perceive to be the unfairness in the new system towards your car? The 15-point mid-engine penalty? That's 10 points less than GGR assigns to it. The tire size penalty? The age/technology "rebate" my 43-year old car gets? Is the HP/WT formula wrong?

I'm just trying to get a handle on what changes you think are necessary in the new system to make it more fair.

BTW, I have to "de-content" my car slightly for next year to stay in CC04 class--I have to give up my adjustable sway bar. Maybe that'll slow me down some.

TT

[Cajundaddy]

Let the point games begin.
From a quick eyeball analysis while running a few what-ifs, it looks like soft tires and weight loss are pretty cheap while sway bars are very expensive. I have not run hp scenarios yet but I expect those numbers to work out pretty well. I still plan to run spec next year but it is interesting to see the differences within classes. As always, fine tuning the spacer behind the steering wheel will be the real speed secret in every 2012 class.

[Don Middleton]

...I'm just trying to get a handle on what changes you think are necessary in the new system to make it more fair...

Since you are asking, Tom, it seems to me that the more modified a car, the less relevant is the age "rebate" on points. I wonder if we shouldn't have a reduction on that rebate as the modification points build. Maybe something as simple as a small percentage of the modification points added back against the rebate?

[Cajundaddy]

What do you perceive to be the unfairness in the new system towards your car? The 15-point mid-engine penalty? That's 10 points less than GGR assigns to it. The tire size penalty? The age/technology "rebate" my 43-year old car gets? Is the HP/WT formula wrong?

I'm just trying to get a handle on what changes you think are necessary in the new system to make it more fair.

TT

This game is all about wt/hp ratio and tire grip. Everything else is just window dressing.

Tom it looks like you and Kim share wt/hp ratios that are very close. The difference here is you have 2-3 seconds more tire grip with v710s vs 200tw street tires. If you two very competent drivers swapped cars, the one with the quick tires would win every time on essentially every track or AX. You probably should not share the same class due to vast tire grip differences. I believe this potential issue was mentioned and soundly overruled here a few months ago

[rshon]

It seems that we've also stumbled upon another issue with the new points system: the tire width points scale is absolute, rather than being scaled by weight. We adopted HP-to-weight as a fair approach to acceleration, but we did not use "Grip-to-weight" to make adhesion fair. Now we (accidentally) have a system that allows lighter cars (which are usually the older ones) to take very few (or no) points for tire width and still have high cornering force potential, and on the other end of the spectrum, the larger/heavier cars are potentially taking a big penalty for front tires in the mid-to-high 200's and rear tires over 300mm wide. Such a car could take a 160 point hit for a 255/315 combination, but not necessarily have a grip advantage over a 2000 lb car on 225's. We also added wheel width points to the base number without scaling them for vehicle weight; these numbers are in the ten to forty point range...