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Re: Sequential Stock Classes

To: <Andrew_Bettencourt@kingston.com>
Subject: Re: Sequential Stock Classes
From: "Paul Foster" <pfoster@gdi.net>
Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2000 12:11:47 -0400
>All it would take would be the 'inventors' of this idea to sit down
for 10
>minutes and really try to figure out how to do it.  It would take
soooo long.
>You would have to evaluate EVERY car on the market and every one that
has ever
>been made, slip them into performance parameters that you would also
have to set
>up...whoever thinks this is simple should try it.

I think it is far from simple but I still think it is worth a try.

If we restrict upper autocross speeds to ensure that cars do not
materially change their comparative behavior, then 9 classes give you
in incredible margin to fairly class all cars. Let's assume that there
is a 6 second difference between the fastest SS car and the slowest HS
car on the typical autocross course. That means each class boundary
should be approximately every .66 seconds. While this means that the
slowest car in the class will have a hard time to win over the
fastest, it is a lot fairer than what a lot of car owners now face
with the current class structure. It also means that you can go to
Topeka in your Buick Riviera and possibly have a good chance of
winning.

The existing classifications would provide a starting point for the
cars. The major initial difficulty is going to be melding the F and G
cars into their respective positions but it will all work out over
time given that we can come up with a solution to the biggest problem
of developing a reasonable formula for determining the car's
performance index based on the results of major autocrosses.

No, this approach is no panacea. It is far from simple. But it
provides a way of removing most of the human factor from stock car
classification. You will still need humans to lump particular models
together into mini-Bobs and we can still argue that there is an
inherent advantage of using the '83 Riviera as opposed to the '84
because of stiffer bushings or something. You still need to draw the
class boundaries to determine who will be on top of a particular class
and who will instantly have a .66 second disadvantage where it used to
be the top dog.

But wait, I see another windmill that requires the need of some
immediate tilting...

Paul Foster




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