>> From Nats 2000. Winners:
> No, let's look at Nats 2000 _entries_. And compare SP with Stock,
> Prepared, Mod, and SM.
Go ahead. I assume you have a calculator? How about doing some work and
bringing some facts to the discussion instead of just sniping from the
sidelines?
> The _new_ SP class (FSP) did better than SM in terms of
> entries at Nats 2000.
Hardly suprising when you consider that the decision to run SM as a
separate class was made **at** Nationals. I'm astounded that SM got as many
cars as it did, given that there was nothing in **any** of the official
SCCA literature that said that it would be run at all.
I rather suspect you'll see different numbers this year.
> SM's rules aren't yet sufficiently stable for anyone - even
> someone as omniscient as yourself
How about dropping the cheap shots? You're not doing yourself any favours.
> Come back when SM has proven that it can survive as a Category.
It doesn't have to - that's the beauty of this idea.
Once you have established that Class A and Class B run equivelent times,
you can safely amalgamate them with no penalty to either class. At that
point, it's all up to Darwin. If Class A is innately sucessful, then people
will build cars to those rules and compete in it. Ditto Class B. And if
either A or B is fatally flawed in some way, then people will not attend,
and those rules can be safely chopped off once attendance is down to the
required amount.
Done this way, the sole arbitrator of "success" is attendance. You do not
need anyone - me, or you, or the SEB, or ANYONE - to make a decision that
such-and-such a category is innately superior, and to convert the rules in
a sudden shot that affects everyone.
Someone else asked if I thought that 2 SM classes could replace 6 SP
classes, and do so fairly. As it sits _right now_ (so I'm leaving myself
some wiggle room for later developments) I see no need for an "SM3" class -
so yes. But I'll also admit that I may be completely wrong about that. IF
this "consolidated classes" idea were put in place, we'd find out without
cost to anybody: if the SM rules are more attractive to the majority, then
we'd expect that, over time, CSP, DSP, ESP, and FSP's raw material would
gravitate over to the SM portions of the 2 combined classes and the "old
skool' SP classes would attrit below the Nationals cutoff point and go
away. But if the SM rules are NOT attractive to one or more (or indeed all)
of the "old skool" SP classes, then the "old skool" classes will stay
active and vibrant, keep their numbers above the extinction limit, and keep
on keepin' on.
No matter how it actually plays out, everybody wins: we trim at least 2
classes, the playing field remains fair and equitable to everyone, nobody
is forced to do anything they don't want to do, and the decision on if a
given ruleset is or is not superior to any others is squarely in the hands
of the actual competitors - where it belongs.
The one serious issue outstanding is deciding which classes get married. It
is absolutely essential that the performance of the married classes be
equal to each other, and I agree 100% that it is too early to predict with
any certainty which classes will wind up the performance counterparts of SM
and SM2. My educated guess is that SM==BSP and SM2==ASP, but that
definately remains to be seen. Forcing the marriage before that assessment
has been made is to do an injustice to *both* classes - this is why I made
a point of claiming that it would be 2004 or so before this could go
forward, even if the entire SCCA thought the concept was a good idea right
now. It's going to take that long to sort out the performance potential and
the staying power of SM.
But with this idea, if we wind up with a strong SM (as I think all the
evidence is indicating that we will) then once we have that established and
the performance potential realized it gives us a way forward that doesn't
hurt anybody and reduces the number of classes - we can all agree that's a
win, right?
DG
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