SCCA Solo C Street Discussion

[7thgear]

every so often, people forget what solo is about.. and start to create their own definitons of what it is that they do..

so let me remind everyone of what the deal is, by quoting the SCCA rulebook



I.1.4 Solo® Event

A Solo® Event is a non-speed driving skill contest suchas, but not limited to, autocrosses and slaloms. These events are run on shortcourses that emphasize the driver’sability and the car’s handling and agility. Competition licenses are notrequired and hazards to spectators, participants, and property do not exceedthose encountered in normal, legal highway driving. All Solo® events must besanctioned by the SCCA®, Inc. The Solo® Rules are mandatory for use in SCCA®Solo® National Tour and National Championship events and standards set forth inthe Solo® Rules must be adhered to by all SCCA® Regions who organize, sponsor,co-sponsor, or sanction a Solo® Event. While the right to protest in propercases is undoubted, it should be remembered that Solo® events are sportingevents to be conducted in a sportingspirit, that all events areorganized and managed by amateurs who cheerfully give their time and do theirbest, that the competitor may expect some imperfections of the organizers and ofhis fellow competitors, and that, to a reasonable extent, these things are partof the

chances he takesin entering the competition.





I.2.3 Core Values

The decisions of the SEB are based upon three core valuesthat together equate with member value. These core values are as follows:

1. Increased participation and involvement.

2. Providing a variety of classes to satisfy a range ofeconomies and commitments.

3. Evolving rules in a planned manner.


Each topic before the SEB is compared to these core values to ensure an overallpositive effect. It is recognized thatan individual decision may at times result in a disadvantage or increased costto some individual members, but that the decision reached is based on thelong-term benefit for the majority of the members.

[mrazny]

Originally Posted by simpleisbest

I think with more tweaking and possibly a move toward data based handicaps, it could've had real potential...now there's a pipe dream for you!

Why do handicaps in an RT structure when you could instead push out to 9 differing classes...

D Stock would be a waste of time since it's only got this last year coming up. C Street looks absolutely OK. You were mentioning the Solstii and ZOK as "problems" with 2013. Since they aren't in your street class, your identified problem isn't a problem though. Worry about the 370z when it's time to worry about the 370z.

SD is not a surface that translates to the rest of the nation. SD results wouldn't trouble me as much as El Toro. But also, I don't know Cawthorne, or how good he can be. His name doesn't appear as a National Champion so I don't have any go to on rating him. El Toro is supposedly really nice concrete, yes? Well so is Wilmington. Santel did a phenomenal job particularly when considering PAX times. It's hard to say without reservation what that precisely means, but I also think the ms-r and ZOK benefit greatly from cars that have been autocrossed a LONG time at the highest levels. They should do pretty well in B Street, just like the twins will do pretty well if not hold the mantle in C Street.

The 370z differences to the twin with be much more course dependent than against the MS-R and ZOK. Keep that in mind next year when comparing how the twins are doing in c-street vs. the Z.

You guys will be fine.

[G_Ride]

Originally Posted by mrazny

Why do handicaps in an RT structure when you could instead push out to 9 differing classes...

D Stock would be a waste of time since it's only got this last year coming up. C Street looks absolutely OK. You were mentioning the Solstii and ZOK as "problems" with 2013. Since they aren't in your street class, your identified problem isn't a problem though. Worry about the 370z when it's time to worry about the 370z.

SD is not a surface that translates to the rest of the nation. SD results wouldn't trouble me as much as El Toro. But also, I don't know Cawthorne, or how good he can be. His name doesn't appear as a National Champion so I don't have any go to on rating him. El Toro is supposedly really nice concrete, yes? Well so is Wilmington. Santel did a phenomenal job particularly when considering PAX times. It's hard to say without reservation what that precisely means, but I also think the ms-r and ZOK benefit greatly from cars that have been autocrossed a LONG time at the highest levels. They should do pretty well in B Street, just like the twins will do pretty well if not hold the mantle in C Street.

The 370z differences to the twin with be much more course dependent than against the MS-R and ZOK. Keep that in mind next year when comparing how the twins are doing in c-street vs. the Z.

You guys will be fine.

Most of those in CS locally right now in our off season series have already moved to street tires to get some testing done before our local championship series starts. There's one person with a 370z and even on street tires the car is looking pretty fast.

[simpleisbest]

Originally Posted by mrazny

Why do handicaps in an RT structure when you could instead push out to 9 differing classes...

D Stock would be a waste of time since it's only got this last year coming up. C Street looks absolutely OK. You were mentioning the Solstii and ZOK as "problems" with 2013. Since they aren't in your street class, your identified problem isn't a problem though. Worry about the 370z when it's time to worry about the 370z.

SD is not a surface that translates to the rest of the nation. SD results wouldn't trouble me as much as El Toro. But also, I don't know Cawthorne, or how good he can be. His name doesn't appear as a National Champion so I don't have any go to on rating him. El Toro is supposedly really nice concrete, yes? Well so is Wilmington. Santel did a phenomenal job particularly when considering PAX times. It's hard to say without reservation what that precisely means, but I also think the ms-r and ZOK benefit greatly from cars that have been autocrossed a LONG time at the highest levels. They should do pretty well in B Street, just like the twins will do pretty well if not hold the mantle in C Street.

The 370z differences to the twin with be much more course dependent than against the MS-R and ZOK. Keep that in mind next year when comparing how the twins are doing in c-street vs. the Z.

You guys will be fine.

Your totally right and I agree that with the ZOK and MSR now in B-Stock/Street, things should be more balanced. If they stayed in C-Stock/Street, moving the Twins to D or E would make more sense, imo.

My eye is on the 370z and as we will have a fast one in our region, I will monitor the times.

Cawthorne is very good and consistent. Locally he is labeled as the fastest guy to not go to Nats. Needless to say, I saw his times and his co-driver's times over the course of a that season and they were fast, but not MSR/ZOK fast. The decision to move those 2 out of C-Stock/Street was a good move, imo.

While I don't think the 370z alone will be an overdog, I do think that they will get much faster and capable with next year's wheel allowance. Fast enough to be a consistent overdog? We'll see. If the results in my region paint a picture of an overdog, I will do my part: speak up and write my letters.

PAX is a kinda different topic, but related. I know officially SCCA only sees it as an unofficial handicap, but for many regions (like mine) and for the PRO events, its used as an official handicap. Classes are typically grouped to create a local class stock/street class (example: grouping CS, DS, ES) to ensure class numbers. Class PAX is factored into the times and trophies/cash credit is awarded accordingly.

I know Rick Ruth's PAX factors have been pretty good for most classes so far, but with the available technology and data, I think that having an evolving/real time handicap is possible. For example, the general consensus in my region is that much of the PAX factors for C and E have to do with the National level aliens that have been driving in that class. No one typically cares about this stuff until it matters. For many of the local Stock guys competing in RT, it mattered for the first time and there was some mumbling about how the handicaps were created difficult for regional data to be incorporated. Index racing can be tough to enjoy, but in our sport it can be tough to escape regionally. More effort should be put into increasing the accuracy of our PAX handicaps, imo.

I'm sure some here have seen the DAX project of one of the SCCA members. Its a data based PAX system. What's nice is that it has the potential to factor out the driver and factor in how the cars are competing regionally. Still not perfect, but very interesting and has good potential. I would like to see more of this type of concept in the future for sure.

[Rexpelagi]

Originally Posted by mrazny

I can't claim to know anything about Michael Heinitz, and Lincoln is its own unique beast, but, that showing had plenty of parity. I also don't have any insider info on if Trev or Heinitz swapped out from BFG's and don't remember if i heard anything about their final tire choice.

Michael was on the Rivals. Trevor dumped the Rivals (and he wasn't the only one) in favor of ZII's before run 1.

I don't see a scenario where the MS-R gets beat by a Twin unless the course is very unusual, but the SEB agreed and moved the car. I don't see the base MX-5 being a competitor as I tried one and failed miserably, and then discovered that I was not alone with this result. ZII's may have fixed some of that though. Personally I think the RX-8 will be tough competition along with the 370Z, but the Z will be more course dependant.

[Kido1986]

The RX8 and twins will be close. We have two local(ish) drivers that finish similarly in raw times at nationals (driving the same S2000) that went head to head. One in my BRZ, the other in an equal or better level prep RX8 (Gen2 base) and the raw times were .1 second apart.

The Z is the real issue I feel, on national level courses. National courses tend to need power and the Z has gobs more. Yes it loses more on R vs streets but with 9/10" widths, it's not too badly hurt. One with minimal prep took 6th in RTR at nationals with an decent (but not top tier) driver.

I wish I had a local Z to benchmark against

[DylanFRS]

I know this is already posted as a topic in this thread but since I feel like most of the conversation/bitching/moaning/crying will revolve around the new C-Street index, I thought i'd repost it here:

http://home.comcast.net/~paxrtp/rtp2014.html

Screw you Rick!

[stevo874]

Seems mostly fair to me..

[DylanFRS]

Well just doing some quick math because I don't want to average a bunch of times shows a difference of .47 second between C-Street and STX on a 60 second course using the new index. So if an STX car runs 60sec, a C-Street car will need to run 60.47 seconds to get the same PAX.

Now, I preface this by saying that these are different drivers on different days and, yes, RTR may not have had as good of drivers as CS but...

The top RTR CS driver, who also happened to win RTR out of 55 drivers, ran a 58.003 on the west course. The top STX driver ran a 56.376 on the west course. Using the west course only because it is close to 60 seconds which was what I wanted to compare.

So... that is a difference of 1.627 seconds which is a FAR cry from the .47 seconds that it would need to be based on the new PAX. AND that winning RTR car got bumped out of CS this year!

Yes, that is not 100% accurate by any means and doesn't take into account a lot of things. But that is a difference of over 3 times!

[7thgear]

it would make sense if they dropped the ST* classes entirely and went back to the old structure, but then a lot of ST people would probably be pissed?

[stevo874]

I was in the process of making an edit, and yes I now do agree with you after doing a little bit of math.
I definitely think there is a larger difference from streets to r-comps.

But that's also proving that pax isn't always accurate. for example, a bone stock GTR will go into SSP, but if you choose to put on a lot of go fast parts, it can go into SM which has an easier pax than SSP. How is that fair for the stock GTR drivers?

I'm sure Rick will change it next year with more data.

[stevo874]

Originally Posted by 7thgear

it would make sense if they dropped the ST* classes entirely and went back to the old structure, but then a lot of ST people would probably be pissed?

I know I'd be pissed. But I won't argue with a merge between some ST classes since they have proven to have similar times.

[Rexpelagi]

Originally Posted by DylanFRS

Well just doing some quick math because I don't want to average a bunch of times shows a difference of .47 second between C-Street and STX on a 60 second course using the new index. So if an STX car runs 60sec, a C-Street car will need to run 60.47 seconds to get the same PAX.

Now, I preface this by saying that these are different drivers on different days and, yes, RTR may not have had as good of drivers as CS but...

The top RTR CS driver, who also happened to win RTR out of 55 drivers, ran a 58.003 on the west course. The top STX driver ran a 56.376 on the west course. Using the west course only because it is close to 60 seconds which was what I wanted to compare.

So... that is a difference of 1.627 seconds which is a FAR cry from the .47 seconds that it would need to be based on the new PAX. AND that winning RTR car got bumped out of CS this year!

Yes, that is not 100% accurate by any means and doesn't take into account a lot of things. But that is a difference of over 3 times!

Let's not forget that the top CS RTR car is now a BS car, so the difference will be even greater.

[Kido1986]

I'm appalled at Rick's deliberate "Screw you" action towards the new classes. So many of these older guys really hate anytime the SCCA changes anything from how is way 25 years ago.
@DylanFRS hit it right on the head with the stats. This isn't even close to fair. Do I understand they don't want to give too soft of an index to a controversial class? Yes. But the RTR/Street classes already had awful PAX results last year. I think the top RT* car finished 100 in PAX at Nationals.

I'd love to see where Rick's data ACTUALLY came from. Not saying that I'd enjoy seeing his old wrinkly ass...