The stupid thing about SP is that the SEB let the category get away from
them.
When it was invented (in 1983 -- and note that it did not have to endure
several years as a "supplemental" class at Nationals), it was meant to fill
the very large gap between Stock and Prepared. The original concept was
"bolt-on options," but basically they got it wrong with what was allowed
under that concept. Bolt on a bigger carb, sure! Only after that genie was
out of its bottle did they realize that SP did not fit into the Stock>Prep
gap, but went off in a different direction. "Street Prepared" was a
prescient name -- it is still Prepared, just different.
It was more than stock, originally less than Prep, but not really a natural
steppingstone since it permitted things Prep did not allow. And nowadays, it
has gotten to the point of being very nearly equal to Prep. --- From this
year's Nationals: The ASP champ was half a second slower than the AP champ.
The top 4 in ESP would have trophied in CP. The top 5 in BSP beat the BP
runner-up and the BP winner would have been 3rd in BSP. CSP/DSP and DP/EP
are harder to compare because the car mixes in the classes do not really
match up. But I can tell you from experience that a well-prepped and
well-driven Miata is just as much an overdog to me whether it is DP or CSP.
As Danny Shields said, ST is what SP should have been. But with 18 years of
history behind it now, SP is not likely to be going away anytime soon. At
this point, it is not necessary that it be any kind of steppingstone. It has
survived quite well on its own and probably should just be left alone.
Of course, part of the problem with Prepared is that it, too, was originally
two different rulesets -- Production and GT rules taken from road racing
(and nothing wrong with that! perfectly good rules!). But Prod is much more
restrictive than GT. In some classes it did not matter -- All BP and CP cars
were basically GT1s. In some it did -- DP and EP had some cars built to GT
rules, some built to Prod rules. But it was manageable. Now that AP is this
weird "Mod Light" class, and DP/EP/FP have their own rules divorced from the
roadrace rulebook, it has become less manageable. The last thing we need is
still ANOTHER ruleset coming into the category to muck it up some more.
As for steppingstones -- in one sense we have it and it is just fine; in
another it does not matter. The first sense is that we have classes of cars
built to low, medium and high levels of preparation. It doesn't matter that
they are not linear levels. We have three levels and a person can choose
which he would feel comfortable in (ignoring Mod, and leaving ST out of the
conversation for now). The second sense is that almost no one buys a car,
then slowly builds it up through the various steps. When someone decides it
is time to move up, more often than not it is with a new "project" car.
Those who do have a Stock class car they want to take up the ladder tend to
choose either the SP or P direction and go that way. Once there, they have a
car they run in that category until they decide to sell it and do something
else.
--Rocky Entriken
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Sirota" <mark@sirota.org>
To: "Eric Salem" <eric@mail.brown911.com>
Cc: <autox@autox.team.net>
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 3:40 PM
Subject: RE: Proposal for SP cars to compete in P ???
> --On 10/8/2001 9:39 PM -0500 Eric Salem wrote:
> > I'm with Randy on this. Brown Car and I went from ASP to FP because I
> > couldn't afford the OEM 911 engine parts. Why spend more money for a
> > slower motor?
>
> It's not immediately obvious to me that Prepared motors are inherently
> faster than Street Prepared motors.
>
> In SP, you have free intake, exhaust, and ignition with stock internals.
> So you are limited by the amount of air that can flow through the heads.
>
> In Prepared, you have fairly restrictive intake with fairly free
internals.
> So you are limited by the amount of air that can flow through the intake
> system.
>
> Different approaches to limiting grenade motors, but neither is
necessarily
> better. Prepared is probably cheaper on average, though...
>
> > Plus, why would any sane committee create a class for stock motors with
> > $8k suspensions? SP was probably a good idea in it's day. That was many,
> > many days ago.
> > ...
> > $8k comes from the price of a full-house set of Penske shocks, altered
> > to be SP legal, plus shock dyno time and development of same.
>
> And those same $8K shocks are legal in every other preparation category,
> and just as helpful. Not an SP phenomenon.
>
> > Is it really fair to ask the kid who dropped an Acura 'R' motor into his
> > othersise stock civic to run with the D Mod cars?
>
> That's why chapters 13-16 and Appendix A are not mandatory. The only
> mandatory sections of the rules are those called out in section 1.1.
> Regions should be encouraged to bend any other rules to accomodate their
> needs, including to increase retention.
>
> Mark
>
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