"Jamie Sculerati" <jamies@mrj.com> wrote:
> I did a quick check of G Stock results from the Nationals and
> Tours for the last *three* years and found that the cars changed, but to a
> great extent, the drivers did not.
Bingo! Give the man a prize. Finally someone is starting to realize this.
> Now having the top drivers in a class go for the hot car of the moment is > a
hazard of running in Stock
Actually, for a certain subset of drivers, this constant car-hopping is much
more a driver psychology issue than a real issue of car performance. I know at
least one top GS driver that *needs* to be driving what he feels is the current
hot car, and the current hot setup for that car, irregardless of any hard data
proving that that car and that setup are any faster than any others.
I've seen people switch cars on the basis of *one run* with a margin of victory
of a couple of tenths.
> I saw no evidence of a mid-pack driver or backmarker getting
> the car-of-the-moment and overwhelming the front-runners.
I'm a case in point - it was my DSM that started the DSM revolution in GS, at
the '98 Peru Pro. McKiver (in my car) won, I took 6th - the last trophy spot. At
the next few Pros, I was consistantly just out of the trophies, and at the
Finale, I took 6th again (just .002 out of 5th)
Not bad for a rookie (I think :), but hardly "overwhelming the front-runners" -
and this in a format where the AWD launch (and my drag racing experiance) gave
me a leg up.
All season, McKiver was a consistant 1 second faster than me - in my own car.
That means that there's AT LEAST one second in nothing more than raw driver
ability/experience between a "shoe" and someone with my level of ability as of
the '98 season - whatever that was. If you consider me as a "backmarker", then
if you are getting beat by more than one second, then maybe you have a case that
your car is misclassed. If you consider me a "midpacker" or even (if you're
feeling generous) an "incipient shoe", then the margin of victory needs to be 2
or 3 seconds before you have a case for an overdog car.
Adding further complication to the method of using "backmarkers in the same cars
as the shoes" as indicators of performance is the fact that driver performance
varies widely from day to day - especially amongst backmarkers. I can point to
specific events where I was driving like an "incipient shoe", and other events
where I was 100% backmarker.
I am of the definate opinion that driver makes much more difference than car,
and that the top 6 or 7 different cars in GS are all rougly equivelent - with a
slight edge to the Type R and DSM. If we had an event where we put an Endicott
or a McKiver in a V6 F-Body up against a Bellom in a Type R or DSM, I'd put my
money on the F-Body, no doubt about it.
To my mind, the ONLY valid complaint ever raised about the Type R in GS was the
way it was classed right before Nationals - and that's a long dead issue.
DG
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