I've been mulling over this discussion for several days, with a vague
idea of how I wanted to reply. You see, I have two vintage race Alfa
Spiders, a '57 for VSCCA "preservation class" that is stock except for a
bolt-in rollbar, konis and stiffer springs (a standard Alfa factory item
as long as I remember) and a '62 Spider that is "fully prepared" to SVRA
rules.
While the '62 car was originally a 1300cc, single Solex carb, 4 speed
car, it has been upgraded to 1600cc, dual 40DCOE Webers, 5 speed, with
disk brakes, all allowable SCCA mods when we originally raced the car.
Yes indeed, it the very same car my brother and I raced from 1964 to
1968. During that period, the car was developed from street stock with a
rollbar to probably the fastest 1300 Giulietta Spider (normal) in the
US, certainly in the Southeast. That involved a lot of rulebook reading,
I can assure you!
For the total story of the car, look at :
http://www.std.com/fotec/spider62.htm (The story of my '62 Spider)
My point is the SCCA rules in the 60s became very liberal, very quickly.
By the end of the decade, full fledged factory support was available for
most sports cars and "win on Sunday, sell on Monday" was a rule to live
by. Homologation parts existed everywhere. I have a copy of the Alfa
competition handbook - it's two inches thick - and the details of the
mods availble would blow your mind! Oh, I used it too!
It would be very interesting to find copies of the SCCA rulebooks for
'60,'67 and '72, the cutoff years for many of the vintage race groups,
and compare them to vintage rules. (I have a copy of the rulebook for
'53, but it's just fun to read!)
But as Brian said, rules lead to cheating. I personally prefer the
attitude "if it looks like a vintage race car, it's ok", barring only
wide sticky tires and flares, and concentrate on safety. If people want
to spend tons of money trying to beat everybody, it just helps the
economy...
--
Jim Hayes Winchester, MA, USA
hayes@mediaone.net http://www.fotec.com/jim.htm
jeh@fotec.com http://www.fotec.com/
All generalizations, with the possible exception of this one, are false!
|