Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 11:02:56 -0500
Jay Mitchell wrote :
Scott wrote:
>Wondering if the sixth place guy or gal feels 'hosed' or'disrespected' if
trophies
>only go five deep in a class of nine? After all, it wasn't THEIR
fault........ :-)
>
>Where will this flawed logic end?
Jay responded:
<The flawed logic here is that a trophy in one class is or should
<be precisely equivalent to a trophy in some other class. That'll
<never happen. There will always be classes with tougher
<competition than others, and the "tough" classes will tend to
<change locally from year to year, depending on who just changed
<cars, took up golf, road racing, moved away, came back after a
<long absence from the sport, etc.
<If your definition of "success" is totally external - i.e., you
<"won" something - I would suggest you have issues that Solo II
<competition is not likely to solve. My recommended therapy: give
<it a break. The real winners aren't always the ones with plaques
<in their trophy cases.
Thank you Jay, this is the best wording I have read on this yet. We have a
large club, and most classes are well attended, but not all. We usually end
up with a couple single car classes. What we do is index them together. We
have used PAX, and this year we are using RTP. Whatever you use is up to the
club. If it is a concern to you, go to a meeting and bring it up. We also
index all of our results and give an award for the top 20 drivers of the
whole club on the index. We also run a street tire class using the index to
score them all together.
Is this the best solution, probably not, but it does work.
I have been running a highly modded street car in STu this year, and have had
very little direct competition. I have been in the indexed single car class
group a few times, it is not perfect, I have won and trophied, I have
finneshed low, but to judge how I am really doing, I look at the points I
score against the top drivers in our club in the overall standings. If I am
closer to the same top 10 cars, I did good, if I drop to 33rd like 2 weeks
ago, I screwed up and need to drive better. I like to go fast, and my 300 hp
turboed Celica is a riot, but my desire to have competition has put me in a
STOCK Celica for the Nationals this year. I have just run an event in it, and
consider I ran well, even though I was 4th out of 5. No trophy, but had a
better sence of accomplishment than I get winning against new guys still
learning how to get through a course clean. One day 1 I was 1.2 seconds
behind the leader with 2 more cars between us, and on the second day, I was
only .8 back with only one car between us. Not far enough up to make up for
my first day deficit, but very encouraging none the less.
This is gpoing to be my first nationals this year, I am in a car I have only
run 8 runs in so far, and the class is full of past champs and trophy
winners. As long as I drive well get a clean run on each course I will have
fun. I feel my chances of trophying are small, but not impossible.
Anyone running should set some kind of goal, whether you are in a single car
class, or a full class. If you are winning it, or several seconds back, it
does not matter, you probably want to do better. Find someone who runs where
you want to be, beter yet, choose a few, and try to close in on them. If you
target people in similar cars, you can even watch how they drive to see if it
will help you. When I run my turbo 83 rear drive Celica, I try to catch the
RX-7 twin turbos. The top one usually runs 1.5 seconds faster than me. One
day, I hope to beat them all, so far it hasn't happened.
Gary M.
First time at nationals, this is going to be fun.
I gotta find J.D. Kemp and let him know who he beat out for DTN ;-)
I will congradulate him, I swear.
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