> Back to the OSP topic. It sounds like what you're saying against OSP as a
> National class is that there would be no way to control the amount of
money
> spent on a car, therefore, encouraging some sort of mean/nasty cutthroat
> element.
Halfway. For a National class, the "mean, nasty and cutthroat" is assumed
at the very start. We do what we can to discourage it, but it cannot be
legislated away.
However, limits have to be placed that limit the effectiveness of Big
Money. You cannot _eliminate_ the effects of Big Money (not even in Stock
class) but you can keep it so that the return on the dollar invested curve
falls off very quickly.
For example, one can buy $300 Koni shocks (in Stock) that are 95%
effective. Or you can build $3000 JBZ shocks that are 96% effective. That
$2700 price difference doesn't buy you much in the way of extra capability,
especially if the range in driver ability on a given day is in the 75% to
100% range. The extra performance advantage due to the cubic money falls
into the driver performance noise.
It turns out that, for autocross, suspension and chassis are very much more
effective than engine power. (You can see this by identifying all
Stock-class cars that have 150-ish HP from the factory. They range across
all Stock classes, but yet perform very differently) It also turns out that
suspension and chassis development is many times more expensive than engine
development. Any monkey can make a 400HP motor, but effective chassis
development is a rare and expensive skill.
So in an OSP-type class, where pretty well anything rules, the guy with
$20,000 invested in suspension and chassis development will walk all over
the guy with $2000 invested in suspension and chassis. This is not
necessarily the case with engine development - and in fact (I have
firsthand knowlege of this) more power often makes the car more difficult
to drive. You've driven the Phantom, imagine what it would be like to drive
if the power output was doubled....
Because suspension and chassis work is so effective, a superior
suspension/chassis can often make up for differences in driver ability.
Once that happens, you've got a real problem, because now any rich hack can
buy wins. Once you cross THAT line, you slaughter class participation,
especially if the majority of your participants are somewhat
underfunded....
To a certain extent, that happened to ESP this year, and no, I'm NOT
talking about Bob. Bob is well known as a Daddio-class driver, so when you
get beat by Bob, you're never really sure if it was the car or the driver
that beat you. But when you get beat by a rich first-time-to-Nationals
no-name with a clone of Bob's (very expensive!) car (I'm paraphrasing some
ESP friends here - right or wrong, that's how they see it), then it tends
to reduce one's enthusiasm for participation.
The root problem in ESP this year was a mis-class - the overdog car has a
much better chassis and suspension than the rest, and the SP rules prevent
the changes that would equal the balance. The solution is to re-class the
offending car, and I understand that that is happening. OSP, being
all-inclusive, doesn't have the reclass option. If you get hit with an
overdog, you're stuck with it - unless you ban it, and then you have a
whole NEW can of worms, as the message you send to the competitors is "do
too well, and we'll kick you out" which of course removes a lot of the
motivation to succeed, and can kill a class just as surely as the overdog.
> In a class like OSP, where it is a given that there are essentially no
> rules, it would be really amazing to see what would happen, or more over,
> what is already happening in small sections of the US. Maybe _I_ wouldn't
> run there. I haven't the skills, money, nor garage. But if there's
already
> an existing contingent, why not?
Because I think the "old skool" existing contingent wouldn't enjoy it very
much, as the whole makeup of the class would change (for the worse) in a
hurry.
Let's say that OSP was brought in for 2001. The SFR guys, having 10+ years
of development under their belts, do very well. Their cool and amazing
cars, being cool and amazing, attract attention. Perhaps they even attract
some sponsor money (although there are problems with OSP with that -
manufacturers are hesitent to kick up money for cars powered by Other
People's Powerplants). So now they have some fame, and some money. Life is
good, right?
Well, that fame and money will attract those that seek fame and money,
because it's fame and money that powers "serious" motorsports. So you get a
TC Kline or a Roger Penske bringing a car out to play. They have a good
driver, and they have the money needed to do the suspension and chassis
development that pays such huge performance dividends (and costs so damn
much) And the car they bring stomps the old skoolers into the weeds, and
does so SO BADLY that they can tell that they won't be able to become
competitive again without a similar level of investment. And you lose a
large proportion (perhaps all) of your Old Skoolers pretty well overnight.
But it gets worse. Someone else with the resource levels of a Kline or
Penske will want to come play, to get their share of the fame/money pie,
and they will bring more money, and the bar will raise. And then Kline
either responds with a similar investment, or leaves. Left unchecked, the
bar will rise higher and higher, getting more and more expensive (and
losing more competitors along the way who just can't keep up) until finally
the cost/benefits ratio swings the wrong way for even the richest
participants, and they pull out. And now you're done. Game over.
THAT schenario has played out many, many times in other motorsports, and
for motorsports with very high levels of benefits, the bar has gotten
raised very, very high indeed. Autocross does not, as yet, have the level
of rewards needed to sustain a very high level bar, so the bar does not
have to go very high before it's too expensive for all involved, and the
class is dropped by those competing.
In SFR, the bar is so low right now (no money, little fame) that the cost
of entry is still reasonable for most everybody. That's healthy and good.
Things are stable. But tip the balance far enough, and you'll lose that
stability, and the class with it.
If you want, you could probably even test this theory. Have NAP put up a
$10,000 prize for the top SFR OSP winner - and then sit back and watch what
happens next.
SM, by the way, isn't totally immune to the "Big Money" problem, especially
since we are actively _seeking_ (at the National level) the kind of fame
and money that has the potential to ruin the class. But so far, it appears
that the rules limit the effectiveness of Big Money to the point that while
Big Money could (unquestionably) buy a SM championship today, it couldn't
get the bar high enough to put it out of reach of smaller fish determined
to work at it - just like Stock or SP.
At least, that's the theory. And we have the will to tweak the rules if
needed to keep the playing field reasonably level, should Big Money turn
out to be more effective that first surmised.
This, incidently, is why Porsches aren't allowed in SM. Porsches cost big
money to buy. They cost even more to modify (the markup on Porsche parts of
equal quality to Civic or Chevy parts is astronomical) And they perform
very, very well, as they start off very well engineered, and they have a
lot of tuners out there who can build very much MORE capable cars if you
throw enough money at them. Any rich hack can buy a Porsche capable of
dominating SM for quite some time, until the engineering and development on
the other cars finally reached the point of equality - assuming you had
enough competitors stubborn enough to stick it out that long. If it looks
like you need a $150K Porsche to win, where's the motivation for the guy
with the $5000 Civic?
Anyway, I think OSP is one of those ideas that is fantastic as long as it
stays local. Exposing OSP nationwide would cause more grief than benefit,
I'm afraid.
DG
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