Charlie, then John, said:
The Civic is still a good Regional car, though when there is
lots of "flat
on the floor" time, it just doesn't have the power needed to
win... "
- -------------------- End Original Message --------------------
I believe that message applies to lots of us with small displacement
engines. The real question is: Are you, Mr. SEB member, going to do
anything about it?
The situation at Castle threw SCCA's car classifications into a cocked
hat,
to put it politely.
- --John Kelly
I guess Situation = Course + Weather? Obviously the course had an effect.
Charlie told me that his Civic was extremely disadvantaged (my paraphrase) by
the course at Nationals last year. I feel disadvantaged by every course with
multiple tight slaloms, 270 degree turnarounds, and 20 MPH corners.
When you look at the overall results from Round 10 (not that these are
important in the Regional standings) there's perhaps more distortion _between_
classes due to the variable weather, than there was movement within the class
due to the course. This former effect occurs at any event that doesn't have
uniform weather. What we see at Atwater is that STX/STS don't even show up in
the PAX until past the 25th percentile, when at SFR events those drivers are
often bunched from 2 to 25th percentile of the field. Much of that has to be
attributed to the first two run groups being done in the rain.
I totally respect you guys' opinions. OTOH, Charlie managed to run away with
the STS trophy last season. I have a big wide STS car, so the Atwater course
was theoretically closer to my ideal. What came in ahead of me? Protege',
Civic, RSX, Civic, Civic, Protege', Civic, SE-R, Esteem (eeeek! Nice drive,
BTW!), Civic. From my perspective, the 6 cylinder sedans just moved back a
couple of places. So even at the Tour, all that happened was that I managed to
squeak past Jeffrey, and that was in the "low horsepower" regime of Saturday's
rain.
So how does that mean that the car classifications were invalidated by the
situation? Sounds like much fury signifying little, to me. Your comments
welcomed as always!
PaulT
(p.s. when responding, unless you have a very personal =8-o message, I'd
prefer that responses just go to the list, thanks.)
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