It honesty makes me think twice about building my car to race in Production. Do I want to knowingly associate myself with a group that pisses and moans and bitches as much as many in the Prod group do?
Howdy, Brian, and welcome to the SCCA Production Forum! I see you're new here...if you have any qestions, please do feel free to ask!
If GTL is going to be added to F Production, then the addition of tubeframe chassis to it is a massive philosophical change (I said I was gunna let that word go...but I just can't...) I'm a 40 years member (assuming we're swingin' dinks here for higher Internet creds -- and you KNOW there's bigger dinks on this board) and I've seen it happen before. It will happen again.
But this time it's different...right?
You know where tubeframes* came from? Production-based categories that allowed the regs to expand beyond their imagination. Sure, add a tube here, and another there. Yup, you can cut away that bracket you're no longer using, and that unused sheet metal there (it's for safety). Sure, you can replace that panel with fiberglass (cheaper parts!) and yeah, that unused suspension pickup point can be cut away (as long as you stay above your min weight, what diff does it make?)
...wait a sec, so why do I need to start with a production chassis anyway? All those parts got cut away and there's really nothing left of the original car...what if I just start with the rollcage instead and tack everything on that? It's surely a lot less work and I'm sure it's cheaper and more dependable!
Inverse
Ship of Theseus...?
"In our constant club-racer quest to make our cars faster, safer and "more reliable" we have pushed for rule changes that simply accelerated the rate of entropy. Every class of production racing does this, of course, until it finally brings on its own demise." - Peter Egan
Wait,
"reductio ad absurdum, j'accuse!" Well, that's how we got here, so... <shrug>
Let's take your analogy one step further:
...when they allowed B-Spec to race in HP? Did "This radical rewrite of A, B & C applies to ALL of the Production classes"?
Here's the key difference: they didn't have to re-write either class' prep regs for that to happen. B-Spec is allowed to compete in HP
without any changes. As-is, you use the blue tape you took off the "BSpec" to make the "HP". Same with Improved Touring cars into Prod and/or STx.
Not so, GTL into FP: those cars will have to be modified to fit into FP. Unless the CRB is willing to completely adjust the regional GTL regs so that they fit their concept of inclusion into FProd as-is then it's not simply a "B-Spec into HP" correlary,
it's the creation of an entirely new sub-prep for F Production, a la GT2-STO, or Limited Prep Prod or LP American Sedan.
It is, in effect, creation of an entirely new class. Why? Just to give a dying class a place to run at our annual premium Championship event...?
And they're going to try to comp-adjust these cars to be competitive...but not
too competitive, of course?
So why do I care? Honestly I don't, as I'm not an FP competitor and really have no intention to become one. However, FP competitors - and Prod competitors in general - should be
very concerned, because as soon as the dust settles someone, somewhere, is going to find a hook where, for example, a tubeframe Miata sporting a street-port 13B looks to be a tasty entry into F Production (oh wait, we now have
engine swaps allowed in Production, too?? Even for non-tubeframe cars??
Read rulez, newb). And the PAC/GT adhoc and the CRB are going to swat that and then another example appears, only to get swatted again.
We are racers, after all.
At some point we'll get tired of the swatting and accept that as
The New Reality. Because we have a long history of admiring clever thinking instead of saying "no", and we change the regs to accomodate that cleverness (see tubeframe history above) and who doesn't want to be the next Smokey Yunick...?
Ultimately, FP risks becoming a de facto tubeframe and engine swap class - and we're back where we started. How far behind is EP and HP ("oh,
that will
never happen...right?")
Of course, the PAC and CRB will argue otherwise; after all they're really smart people, right? Yeah, well, no matter how smart they are, they're not as smart as the masses; in my tome "
On Writing Rules..." I note:
Tip #1: You can’t POSSIBLY think of all situations
Consider this: there’s a handful of you sitting around a table (or talking on a conference call) trying to find the best way to write an allowance to the regs (e.g., struts, suspension bushings, engine mounts, whatever). These regs will be viewed and interperted by a large population. Do you REALLY believe that you're smarter than all the collective brains out there? Do you really believe you can think of all possible permutations that the rest of the world will come up with? Of course you can't. The masses, as massive as they are, have a collective imagination that simply dwarfs your group's. Ergo, you are insignificant when it comes to thinking of all possibilities.
Be humble.
I'm not against these realignments; in fact, I have very little beef with these changes and about pretty much zero problem with the whole concept and its goals. But changes like we're describing here will have "unintended" - but predictable - consequences down the line.
Maybe I'm screaming the sky is falling. Or maybe there actually is a wolf out there...
We'll see soon enough. - GA
* Tubeframe cars are an anachronism, so "1980s" from back when things like silhouette cars actually mattered. They don't any more. Production-based "tub" cars are today's reality, and in fact so good that it makes
zero sense to build a scratch tubeframe car.
And another one: "slick tires". Right there with "so 1980s" (esp bias-ply slicks - they still make that s**t?) Today's top-end DOT-approved radial tires are so good and are the way to go (and 200TW tires are the t**s if you want slower cars -- yup, I wrote that).
