Being an infrequent reader and having never posted here before, I
don't know with whom it is politically correct to agree or disagree
with in this forum. However as a competitor in the FW National
Tour, I feel compelled to agree with Mark Sipe. I have a reasonable
idea of the speeds attainable in my car in various gears, and can
say that based on the gears I had to use, I doubt I ever got to
70mph in my FS Camaro. To my knowledge, none of my fellow
competitors driving LS1-equipped F-bodies (generally
acknowledged as one of the faster stock cars) ever left second
gear. That would indicate that they, too, did not stray from the
guideline speeds in the rulebook. Many of us were suprised by the
length of the course (damn, that was a lot walking!), but nobody
should confuse course length with the top speeds attained on the
course. In fact, this event, as long as it was and with its large
number of entries, had the fewest spins or other losses of vehicular
control of any event I've attended in a long time.
I have also been a member of the Houston Region for quite a while
and can attest to Mr. Rogerson's comments about what actually
causes safety problems. With two exceptions, every single
incident I have ever seen at any autocross anywhere has always
been the result of transition maneuvers that were supposedly
designed into the course to lower speeds and increase safety. The
two exceptions were both stuck throttles, and in both cases the
drivers had _lots_ of time to turn the ignition off and avoid an
incident, but panicked instead and did nothing. In no case have I
ever seen speed creep cause a problem. I also attended the event
that sparked the SCCA crackdown on Houston a number of years
ago (still have the t-shirt, in fact!), and can state with confidence
that the speeds that were rumored to have been attained by some
entrants were grossly exagerated. I say that from the perspective
of one who drove one of the faster stock cars at that event (this
was a time when 5.0 Mustangs were actually relatively fast cars).
While not intentional, this exageration catalyzed a lot of
unwarranted interventions IMO, and also probably caused more
safety problems than it solved because of the akward transitions
that had to be incorporated in post-crackdown courses.
In short, it is very easy for after-the-fact discussions such as this to
become a rumor mill, and it has been very easy in the past for
knee-jerk regulations to result from said rumors. I hope that will
not happen in this case. OTOH, it is very hard to go back in
hindsight and determine how fast people _really_ went at an event,
once the cones have been put away and everyone has gone home.
Without speed-logging equipment, we must resort to subjective
recollections (or, at best, quasi-emprical data such as mine above)
of what really transpired. I intend to take Mr. Pickerell's advice and
write to the appropriate committee members so that they have
another persepctive than that which they apparently have so far
been receiving.
Matt Miller
mmiller@wt.net
http://web.wt.net/~mmiller
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