Howdy,
Ok, I promise my comments on this topic won't make everyone think I'm a
dickhead. I've already done that and see no need to keep proving the
point... :-)
I'm curious why electric tire warmers are disallowed? Is this a potential
safety thing or a "keep the costs down" thing?
If its based in cost, I would bet that a set of tire warmers & a generator
ends up being considerably cheaper than a tire-warming co-driver that it
seems like a lot of people use, particularly over a couple seasons.
I've got experience with electric warmers from mc racing and they very
definately do make a difference both in initial stick and also in tire
wear (no "cold-tearing" and you can reduce the heat cycle count to one per
run group rather than one per run).
Having said all that, I've got no idea what car-sized tire warmers cost.
For the bike warmers, you could get a set for $600. I would assume for
cars you'd be in the neighborhood of $1k to $3k. $1k is one set of tires
for me, about a season's runs for a codriver (not to mention additional
wear and tear. Oh, and its really hard to flat spot a tire with an
electric tire warmer... :-)
There's also the physical aspect to consider (ie. you gotta be able to
have the car in one place pretty much until its ready to run, then strip
the blankets and go). For Nationals / Tours this doesn't seem like a big
issue, but for ProSolo you could probably only really use them in pre-grid
(since you gotta be able to move the car in grid), limiting their
effectiveness somewhat.
So whadda folks think? Is it time to remove this rule? Provided there
are no safety issues that I don't know about, it would give folks like me
that don't have tire-warming co-drivers a way to close that gap a bit for
similar or perhaps less cost.
Mark
(btw, tire warmers can be a PITA. More stuff to haul around, more stuff
to setup when you get to grid, gotta be able to quickly strip them before
you run, etc. I don't think I'd bother for anything less than divisional
& up competition.)
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