crossthreaded wrote: I also have some factory installed performance reducers (e.g. additional weight). That should even out the advantage I get from the suspension!!!
).
Funny you should mention this. I once proposed a rule to allow point
deductions for being
over minimum weight. It was not well-received. Almost all "stock" Porsches are over the published factory weight spec. I also happen to think that the weight rule should be "with driver" as used in other series, but that idea has never been accepted.
Can someone give me the history behind this? “ttweed” mentioned that you used to have 4 points of mods to begin with, and no exclusion list. Were R-compound tires allowed in that class? Why were things changed? Why are so many things excluded from street stock?
There have been many rule changes over the years, but the "Showroom Stock" SS-class change with the 2 points and exclusion list was instituted prior to the last hosting of the Parade by SDR, in an effort to bring Zone 8 rules more into compliance with the PCRs and prepare local competitors for the Parade autox. Maybe it was 2005 (the memory is the first thing to go, they say, and I don't recall the exact year)? You can find the PCRs on the PCA.ORG site under the "Document Library" heading if you're interested.
Our older definition of SS included 4 points for mods with no exclusion list and tires of 100 treadwear or higher. There were R-compound tires available with a 100 UTQG (the Toyo RA-1 still is, for instance). The fastest ones have always been 40-80 UTQG, but this is a "relative" spec, not absolute, as it compares wear ratings within a manufacturer's line, and not against other manufacturer's products. The minimum UTQG was raised to 140 in our rules at one point to eliminate this loophole, and I happen to think that today's 140-200 high performance tires are probably faster than the 100 UTQG R-compound tires in the old days. There was even a penalty added of one point for tires up to 140 at one time, because they were getting so good after the growth of the SCCA Street Tire classes spurred development by various manufacturers.
I think we went a little overboard with a blanket adoption of the exclusions, as "Showroom Stock classes are available for a limited number of recently manufactured automobiles" according to the PCRs. This means that anything older than a 964 has no SS class at the Parade anyway, and is immediately progressed to a Production class. We corrected this in a recent year by allowing the older cars (classes A-J) to have a more liberal SS class on street tires, with 6 points of mods, a less strict exclusion list, and 140 UTQG tires. The newer cars (classes K-Q) have not followed suit, conforming still to the more strict PCRs. What I hear you (and others) expressing is dissatisfaction with that. Maybe it's time for a change. There certainly are enough proposals on the table to do something about it. I just don't want to see whatever is adopted for the SS class to impact the progressed classes negatively, where I play, and things are interconnected in many ways in the class structure.
What do the forum members think of 18?
The problem with this proposal is that it seeks to create a number of new classes by splitting existing classes and adding new ones for the highly optioned cars (factory widebodies, Cayman S, dividing front and rear engined cars in K, etc.) This creates an administrative problem for event organizers, and there are only so many letters in the alphabet. Don't forget that each year new models must be added. We could have a separate class for each Porsche model and option and the playing field would be level, but there would be few cars per class and a LOT of trophies at the end of the year.
I think it needs some rethinking and refinement to eliminate the new class creation component to be approved. Combining it with my previous suggestion to progress the factory widebodies to the next higher SS class might be a start, as well as abandoning the suggestions to split out the Cayman S and break K into two classes, etc. Perhaps combining that idea for the widebodies along with a proposal to make the K-Q SS classes more similar to the A-J SS class rules would solve some of the problems, be simpler to understand and implement, and thus more likely to be approved.
Just my $0.02,
TT
