Dennis wrote:
>I find the concept of the weenie protest personally offensive.
I think a lot of us do. However, you know what they say: "one
man's weenie is another man's steak." No, that didn't quite come
out the way I intended. Anyway, "weeniness is in the eye of the
beholder." Yeah, THAT's what was trying to say. Forget that stuff
about weenies and steaks. I don't know what I was thinking. ;<)
Anyway, in autocross, like in life, there's important stuff, like
"Where's the beer?" and more or less trivial stuff like "Aren't
your wheels two inches wider than they're supposed to be?" or
"Did your car REALLY come stock with a nitrous bottle?" and other
things in between.
If winning is so important that you resort to cheating (REAL
cheating, like forging factory TSBs to make it look like your
non-original gears are legal) OR to "weenie protests" just to
achieve that, then you're apparently suffering from delusions of
significance and need to acquire: a) a clue, and b) a life,
although not necessarily in that order.
>To me, a weenie protest is evidence of a small and
>petty human being,
Agreed. So is flagrant cheating.
>and that the rules structure may in some way encourage the
>weenies to me is just plain wrong.
The rules structure is neutral w/r/t/ weenies. You can be a
weenie about ANYTHING, including Solo II rules.
>As a final point on the "weenie" discussion, I think the
officials are given
>short shrift when we talk about protests.
And that's the point. Not everything that's illegal will result
in a competitor being disqualified. In some cases, people have
been told to fix the car before the next event (or the next day
of a two-day event), in other cases the result has been "item
found illegal. No penalty assessed." This is always a possible
outcome if the protest is not "well-founded."
Jay "apologies to Kevin Nealon" Mitchell
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