Art,
Good comments. Well stated. A couple of points to add:
I agree about gridding open wheel cars separately. Unfortunately, there
are too few early open wheelers (early F3, early Juniors) for most clubs
to justify giving them their own group. Most clubs either mix them in
with slower sports racers or production cars, or they only have 1 open
wheel group. The sports racers also have enormous speed differences to
deal with. A Lotus 11 LM is nowhere near as fast as a Can-AM car. A
small sports racer, even a fast one, probably would not appreciate being
gridded with a Trans-AM Camaro. Bottom line, gridding by speed is a
nice idea, but if you also want to keep radically different body styles
apart for safety (the visibility issue), then you end up with a lot of
groups, and nobody gets much track time. Fast production, slow
production, fast open wheel, slow open wheel, fast sports racer, slow
sports racer makes 6 groups. Throw in a Pre-War group or another
specialty group, and you have too many groups. 2 groups may not be
enough to accomodate the production cars, too. As cut-off dates slide
forward, the older cars seem to be getting scared into hiding by the
influx of later cars. I don't have a good answer to this problem.
I totally agree about the attitude issues. If each driver values his
own car, no matter what it cost, and they also respect the value the
other guy places on his car, then they should not be coming together
over issues of ego. In my Bourgeault Formula Junior, I've been lapped
by Peter Giddings in that Maserati 250F. He thinks MY car is pretty.
;=) He always gives me a wave when I point him by.
|