Mounting soapbox...
>Also, look at any set of historic photos from club racing, and you'll note
Yeah, but I can look at those same photos and see guys driving their cars
in short sleeve shirts, stringback gloves, little to no roll bars with only
hay bales between them and the public. Doesn't mean that what was done in
the bad old days is something that should be done today. People should
learn from mistakes and not try to repeat them.
>open-wheelers running with sedans. Sure, one isn't as safe in an
>open-wheel car
>in a confrontation between the two (many drivers eschew open-wheel cars in
>general because they're inherently more dangerous in confrontations even
>among
>their kin), and it's certainly not a practice that most clubs routinely
>endorse,
Maybe back in the days of old spindly Formula Cars before racing benefited
from the efforts of the Jackie Stewart's and Bill Simpson's of the
world. Today I feel very safe in my Formula car. It is stoutly built with
crush zones and the knowledge that no one racing a car in my class can ever
remember anyone ever dying in one - this goes back to the late 1970's.
Injuries, sure, but even there they have not been that bad. For example
check out this series of this triple flip by an F500 in T5 at Road
America. The driver walked away with nothing more than a bump on his ankle.
http://www.f500.org/june_sprints_01_jondal.htm
>but there are some drivers who welcome the opportunity to actually race with
>someone at their performance level and are willing to take the extra caution
>(is there any such thing as TOO MUCH caution in racing, btw?) that the
>situation merits.
Just because one car "can" be as fast as another car does not mean they
have any business racing. Why should a car in car type #1 that does not
have enough of his own class to race against need to get in an mix it up
with car(s) in class #2 that are actually racing for a class win. If you
are on track with other people and don't have a "dog in the fight" and you
interfere just so you can have fun is not only pointless and possibly
dangerous but rude as well.
My old F440/F500 can't run with the fastest of the current F500's but I am
more than a match for the F-Vee's. Does that mean I should screw with
them? Maybe if a single Vee is out there running the two of us can have
some fun together but if he is in a pitched battle with another car I
should have the sense to not spoil their race by getting in the middle of it.
A few years ago I was driving a Pro-7 (I am/was the track record holder in
that class at Firebird - so I do know how to drive fast in a race - not
just open track) and two friends of mine were driving Spec-7's. I was the
only Pro-7 there that day so the three of us decided we would play
together. The Pro-7 was lighter and faster on the straights and the Spec
7's were faster in the corners with their wider tires. So we were pretty
evenly matched. While T/S was not showing us as racing each other in our
minds we were. The point is that we had decided among ourselves to race
each other. Just because one guy wants the thrill of wheel-to-wheel
competition with some other cars does not mean that they will feel the same
way about what they rightly should view as an interloper in their race.
getting off soapbox (waiting for tomatoes to start flying...)
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