sjfehr

Autocross means different things to different people. Even if I was flat up given an ES miata (or a DSP BMW or an STC Civic or an STU STI, or any other car people over the years have unironically told me I should sell my 986S for), I'd leave it in the garage and drive my daily driver 986S to the event instead, because autocross is ostensibly a driving skill competition, and I want to measure that by how I drive my normal commuter, and on the same tires I commute on. Not to mention, I need that outlet to keep temptation at bay, lest I try to do it on public streets instead. Mostly, though, it's an insult and a pet peeve- nobody should ever be told they need to sell their car to be competitive; if that's the case, it's an utter failure of classing/indexing.

At least SCCA has finally recognized Street as a legitimate class. I was getting horribly frustrated running my (mostly) stock car in my local street tire class with an r-comp index. I just wish 2014 Street-class PAX was a little more realistic.

Petevb

Clearly. However when in doubt, SCCA is going to screw Porsche.

For example, while the Cayman S wasn't really competitive with Vettes in previous classing, they didn't move down a class in the new structure with the Vettes and the rest of the cars. The fear (with all Porsches, really) is that with street tires they will have a traction advantage that could turn them into over-dogs, and any time you put a Porsche vs Vette classing question in front of SCCA you know how it's going to turn out.

I do agree Porsche has too many cars and options to class them all well, and some are going to get screwed. You'd think they could slice up the pie a bit more equitably if they would play favorites a little less, however.

Re tires, Rivals would be good, but I'd probably try to get the MPSC 2s. The will likely be hard to find, but you can get 245 (or 265) fronts, and the michelin website lists a 305 20 rear (the 458 Special uses that size) that's the right diameter and also 180 tread-wear. Might need a run to get some heat into them, but 6:57 around the ring says they will be sticky if you do.

Hudyman

Pedal faster makes an excellent point. Thanks for the correction, and I am one who agrees that we have TOO many classes. Fewer, bigger classes are better.

It is a riot that a 996 GT3 has won the last three nationals, and before that a Lotus Elise won. Just goes to show that it is more a drivers sport anyhow. I pray that a Corvette does not win nationals

Petevb

Between SS, AS, and SSP including Ladies classes, they took four of five class wins at nationals last year. In SS where they didn't win outright they took eight of the ten trophy spots.

I think you need to pray harder.

PedalFaster

It's impossible for every car to be competitive in a system with a number of classes small enough to also produce large class sizes -- that's not a failure, it's an admission of reality.

As for indexing as a panacea that removes the need to have the car to have, I think your faith is misplaced. Let me give you two examples from my personal experience.

In 2012 all of the Road Tire classes ran together at Pros. I ran the first two Pros of the year in an S2000 and did okay, but came to the realization that AWD cars had an advantage on PAX at Pros. For that reason, I talked my way into AWD cars for my final regular Pro of the year (which I won) and the Pro Finale. I wasn't the only one -- the top five cars in Road Tire at the Pro Finale were all AWD cars because of their advantageous PAX.

In 2013 the AWD cars were separated from the rest of the cars in Road Tire. Also, in 2013 the Pro PAX indexes changed. I ran the first two Pros of the year in an MX-5 and did ok, but this time came to the realization that this year GS cars had an advantage on PAX at Pros. Unable to find a GS car to borrow, I ended up buying one just to run at three events. My strategy was "successful" -- I won both of the remaining Pros (the Packwood Pro and the Pro Finale), beating people who had beaten me at the first two events, and winning the RT2 class championship in the process.

Now, unless someone suddenly develops omniscience, it's impossible to create a perfect PAX for every car, and that challenge will get harder, not easier, if we attempt to create surface- and condition-specific indexes. Under the current system, the cars to have are relatively stable and predictable. Conversely, in an all-PAX system, we'd be encouraging people to follow my example and purchase a new car every year to take advantage of the new indexes. I think that would suck, and I imagine my competitors this year would agree.

PedalFaster

Not sure of the point you're trying to make here, but it's also worth noting that sixty of the seventy-eight drivers in the classes you mentioned (77%) were driving Corvettes. Given that, in a equitable classing system, you'd expect that they'd snag almost exactly as many jackets and trophies as they did.

abqautoxer

I do chuckle when I read these, especially from you. No one is deathly afraid of making a Porsche the car to have. The problem is two fold. One its a new chassis with potentials we haven't seen tapped into by a top rate driver who can maximize both driving and setup. Secondly, due to the way Porsche offers cars is there are ways to build very extreme examples at great cost that 99.999% of the buyers never will but the possibility is out there. the Cayman S for A Street is perfect example with some expensive and lightweight line items such as GT3 seats.

Bingo. We try to aggressively class things but some we just don't know. We have the 12 month rule to reclass anything needed for Street though we hope to do a minimum of changes if any. Also some of us have major concerns of enough vehicles in Super Street to even make a class.

Tom
SAC member

Petevb

Yes, but in an equitable classing system would 77% of drivers really be driving Vettes? Modern Porsches and Vettes are almost exclusively classed against each-other. As of 2012 U.S. Boxster, Cayman and Carrera sales equaled Vette sales (of all tyes). If you look at the 2005 to 2012 time period Porsche sold 40% fewer total sports cars in the US vs the Vette, but that's still a large percentage. These cars have depreciated rapidly and hence many are very affordable, both to run and to own, and there is a huge number of people autocrossing them on any given weekend.

So does the fact that these cars are outnumbered by Vettes 10:1 really suggest it's an equitable classing system? You can't find a way to make any of those huge number of Porsches bar the GT cars competitive?
This is a chicken and egg problem- if you class the car uncompetitively no one will ever give it a shot. Would you take a shot running one knowing that the rules would likely be changed around you if you looked competitive?
Line item vetos have been used with success before- you can ban ceramic brakes, for example, and the guys running them can sell them on the used maket. Porsche guys know which options to cross off to make the bulk of the cars more competitive. Of course you're not going to bring Porsche guys in if they know they are going to get the short end of the stick every time the rules change, etc. Like not keeping the Cayman with the rest of A stock when it moves.

I understand the desire to be cost conscious, but that's achievable. The GT3 that won superstock was cheaper than the cars that followed it. Used mainstream Porsches are affordable and widely available. The fact they are not represented in the field in numbers coming anywhere close to their sales figures seems a clear indication of bias, intentional or otherwise, in the classing system. Or politics, to put it another way- the vettes have numbers, and are going to get their way it seems.

abqautoxer

Yes I have. The point is there are features of those vehicles you aren't aware of upon release. Vehicles that can or cannot fully default stability or traction control systems and are different than prior years, wheel sizing possibilities, the performance being greater than the sum of its parts or the opposite. The FRS/BRZ were a great example of a car being better on paper in Stock than it was due to the rev limit and torque dip no one could have known about prior to autocrossing one. There is little to gain by aggressively classing a car at an unpopular price point but more to lose by pissing off the established though that is only one factor. With street being a new class and really not knowing the full extent of the effect on the Corvettes/Vipers, it really was hard to say what that will do to the balance of power.

I don't know of a single line item veto currently used in Stock/Street?

Strano's vette, 3rd place, is a $40k used car today. G J's loaner car surely wasn't that cheap was it? We are still waiting to see the 997.2 GT3 that went into SSR/SS prove its potential dominance. Tell me people aren't buying and showing up in that car because it's not competitively classed...

Petevb

I wasn't referring only to stock. If you're basically condemning virtually all Porsches to uncompetitiveness because you're worried that one or two cars could have left the factory too good, ie with Porsche's chinese menu option system you could spec a 100k Cayman with PCCBs, GT seats, etc, then maybe the rules system needs to deal with the chinese menu and that one car rather than the 20k that will become uncompetitive if you class that where it should be. I'm not saying it's easy, just that participation number show that what's done now isn't working.
Cost of ownership for that rapidly depreciating vette vs the GT3, I'd take the GT3 any day of the week if it's my money. But I agree the GT3s have been given a fair shake at the pointy end of the field, but they represent less than 2% of Porsches sold. It's the other 100k sports cars that Porsche shifted in the US between 2006-2012 that seem to continually and unfairly draw the short straw. Or go back further; Porsche's represent a huge percentage of the sports cars still on the road in the US...

PedalFaster

Here's the thing -- it's not a chicken and egg problem. There have been multiple eggs, and they've all come up stillborn.

Breaking out of the analogy -- Porsches have often been classed extremely competitively, as in best car in class competitively, but they still never come out to SCCA events in any meaningful numbers.

Some recent examples:

• The Boxster was classed in A Stock in the late '90s and Andy McKee won the class at Nationals in one in 2001, but despite that relatively few people ran them
  
• The 968 M030 was classed in B Stock in the mid-2000s, but despite Ron Bauer having a dominant year in one (I think he only lost to that year's national champion once all year, unfortunately at Nationals), no one else campaigned one nationally again
  
• The 996 GT3 has been classed in Super Stock since the late 2000s, and there have been four national championships and two Pro titles won in them, yet they're still very rare at the national level

Compare this, as you've done, with the Corvette, which is perennially popular even when it's not the top car in the class. Given the demonstrated fact that few people campaign Porsches with the SCCA even when they're competitive, I don't see the benefit to trying to class them aggressively.

Nitpick, but that's not correct. I've been waiting for years for 996 GT3s to depreciate to a level that I could justify spending, but it still hasn't happened -- it's very rare that one's for sale below $50k, and those are usually beat up and/or high mileage examples. The last prepped GT3 that came up for sale that I'm aware of (Gary Thomason's a few years ago) had an asking price in the $60s.

Conversely, the two Corvettes to have in SS can be had all day long in the $20s (C5 Z06) or $40s (C6 GS). There's a fully prepped C5 Z06 in abqautoxer's neck of the woods right now for sale for $17k. Compare that also to the 991s that we're debating here, which start at $84k without any of the options you'd want for autocross.

This is all coming from a guy who's owned five Porsches and campaigned two of them nationally (one of which was the aforementioned 968 M030 that dominated B Stock for a year), and who'd be embarrassed to be seen driving a Corvette in public. I'd love to see more Porsches run competitively at the national level, but because of all of the above I can't support classing them more aggressively than they are today.

abqautoxer

I'm only involved with Stock/Street classing and only for the last year and now going forward. We strongly considered a 997.1 non-GT3 move to AS but felt we missed the deadline for Street. It's not forgotten but again we aren't looking to change much so I dont think you'll see it moved for 2015 either. No one is against Porsche, in fact you have a few that really like Porsches on the SAC right now.

FWIW that is one of my old Z06's, if anyone is interested let me know and I can give you background on it and help you with the seller.

Petevb

There have been a few guys trying to persistently give Porsches a go, but it's rare. Why?

In two of the examples you give above the competitive cars, ie M030 968 or GT3, are exceedingly rare. How may M030 968s came to the US? 996 GT3 was far more, but still ~1000 came to the US.

Now we've heard in this thread that people are willing to switch horses to get a competitive car, but these are difficult horses to switch to, for many reasons: they are hard to find, they are rare and relatively expensive, and if the investment is made and the car becomes competitive 50/50 that your investment will be wiped out when SCCA changes the rules on you.

If the straight Cayman S or 997S, no PCCB option, etc was classed competitively and stably I'd argue it could have legs. There are lots of them, you can buy them for as little as 30k, and if you ban PCCB, etc they would be a reasonable proposition. Find one of those that can be classed well against a vette and keep it there and I think you could start the snowball rolling.

I know of another one, prepped, that went for ~58. Should have bought it. As you say, they are not coming down, so cost to run (in that class) would have been very reasonable, probably better than the "cheaper" vettes over the long haul, assuming the rules stay stable. But that's the gamble that makes it difficult to take the plunge.

PedalFaster

Argh, I wish you hadn't said that -- I'd love to campaign a 997 in AS.

abqautoxer

I would have been tempted too. After driving Von's (member here) at a local event, I enjoyed it more than the 987 Caymans.