... so, in regional races, the Tiger campaigned by Doane Spencer and Jim
Adams managed some overall wins, but that's not impressive, since they only
came in third in their region at the end of the season. Nevermind they sat
out a good part of that season due to Jim's broken leg (and Doane's
reluctance to let someone else drive a 'production' Tiger with a
non-homologated quick-ratio steering box). Also nevermind that they were
running B production, and getting an overall win required beating the A
production cars. I suppose all the A production racers in the California
region were just a bunch of hacks. Ron Dykes also did very well even though
he had even less factory support than Doane and Jim.
Then in European rally competition they won more than half the rallys they
entered, but since they were only class wins and not overall, that's not
impressive either. When the Tiger didn't win its class, did the winner of
the over-2500CC class win overall?
Jeff, I don't see exactly what you're trying to argue here. Ron Dykes'
performance in the ex-Doane Spencer car is probably overshadowed by Doane
and Jim's because Doane built the car to begin with, and the change from the
Tiger's 1964 competition performance to that of the 1965 season was much
greater than the change from 1965 to 1966. However, I would expect that Bill
Martin's upcoming book will relate Ron Dykes' 1966 season in a lot more
detail than it's been previously written up, and he won't just be a footnote
in the Hollywood Sports Car's Tiger history anymore.
Look at it this way: Racing is done using cars with numbers on the doors.
Any car on a race track with numbers on the doors is a race car. Conversely,
if your car doesn't have numbers on the door, then it's not a race car.
Whether or not it would be a good race car IF you put numbers on, depends on
how much other stuff you do to help it get from the green flag to the
checkered flag.
Best regards,
Theo
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