SS Grid @ Nationals East Course: Drew Kim's GT3 is in the foreground, and going on down the line, Patrick Washburn's red Elise, Iain Mannix' Elise, Charles Kim's white GT3, Justin Gates' elise, Chris ***'s black GT3, my black Boxster S, and Kevin Kirchoff's green Cayman R. From there, it's kinda hard to see Bryan Carbon, Billy Sapp and John Ma's elises.


e: vv thanks, fixed!

 

That's Ian's Lotus Ann co drives and they have both been kicking my butt until I messed up my foot. They are both great folks, Ian has been trying to get me up to speed with my driving.

 

Great pic! And nice meeting you as well as the other SS competitors. Great group of folks. If you want pictures of your car, check out the site below.

http://www.gotcone.com/photos/2014-s...championships/

 

Was great meeting you, too! Was cool to meet people like you, Charles Kim and Ed Fisher, who I talk to all the time on forums. Ended up talking a bunch with Ed at the banquet, too. I probably met a ton more but didn't make the connection; tough to place faces to names to cars to screen names.

Ric Quinonez took a bunch of photos, too, including our heat: https://www.flickr.com/photos/438129...7646884196080/

 

Stan, Was this your first time at Nationals? Great driving in any case.

I'd like to know more about your car and what you've done to it. For instance, how does the PDK do at Pro-Solo start? and what mods have you done, like shocks, for instance?

 

Great article in the latest Panorama on the mods to a Cayman that was the TTOD car at this summer's Porsche Parade, still street drivable.....TTOD is usually won by highly race modified 914-6's.

 

Stan is a great driver...and modest. He is a two time National Champion, B Prepared in a Corvette and F Prepared in a Miata.....

 

Anyone see the November fast track? Moving 997 gt3 to the SSR exclusion list. The SCCA sure hates us porsche guys. They can't even give it more than one year?

 

Wan't there only a 10th of a second between the first place GT3 and second place Lotus? Maybe they want a Lotus only class.

 

It's out for member comment.

Also, nitpicking, but didn't the car go into SS in 2012? According to my calculator, 2016 minus 2012 is four, not one.

 

SS is unaffected -- the proposal is for SSR only. Also, the proposal is for the 997 only, not the 996. So basically, no.

Jeez, I know you guys think the SCCA has it out for Porsches, but at least read the proposals before complaining about them...

 

I'm thinking SSR won't survive. Sad, as it's always been my favorite class, and the one I've most aspired to compete in "one day."

 

SSR had better attendance than SS this year at national level events, including the Nationals where SSR had 29 entries to 16 for SS. I don't think it's going away.

I wonder what the thinking was behind excluding the 997 GT3 (non-RS) from SSR because the 996 GT3 seems to be even better for autocross. As I recall, the 996 GT3 can fit wider tires up front, which can be a big advantage. And even if the 996 and 997 GT3's have similar autocross performance, the 996 GT3 that won SSR this year was just barely ahead of 2nd place, same as last year. It isn't as if the GT3's are lapping the field.

It sure would be nice if the SEB would give some explanation as to why moves are made or proposed. They don't have to explain every single move, but at least a high level description of the philosophy behind the changes would be helpful. For example, they dumped A LOT of cars into HS for 2015 and I can guess why, but why not just tell us?

 

The 997.3 move is out for member comment. So write your letter with a well formulated response if you want it to stay.

My take based on what I've read on forums is this:

The sacred cow in SSR is the C5 Z06. It's inexpensive, plentiful, and still nationally competitive. SCCA generally has an interest to protect cars like this - The C5Z, the 86 twins, Miata, WRX, S2k, and now apparently both the Focus and Fiesta ST, all get somewhat special treatment. It's good for the club if the popular, inexpensive performance cars are favorably classed, because that's also your member base.

By making a very expensive / rare car even the perception of being the "car to have" it kills a class. See the S2k CR as a precedent. The 997.2 is perceived as too expensive, too light, too narrow, too much acceleration, and too adjustable, even though it hasn't actually won anything but the Toledo Pro (iirc) this year.

The thinking is that having that car in the class is keeping others from campaigning in SSR. Kicking it out might draw some competitors.

Me, I think SSR is dead no matter what. It didn't make numbers this year, and nobody is going to prep a car for next year for a class that might die. Kicking a few of this year's competitors out will just lower the numbers next year.

That said, SSR has some of the most powerful and vocal people in the organization, so we'll have to wait and see what happens.

 

The 997.2 apparently has a lot more grunt than the 996 due to its bigger motor. Consensus opinion seems to be that it'll be quicker for that reason. Also, the 996 has been in the class for a while, so maybe they're reluctant to make a change that could be perceived as a bigger takeback, especially since the 996 isn't much pricier than the Viper or C6 GS and Z06.

Having said that, yeah, I'm not convinced the 997's any better than the 996.

You're confusing classes. The change is proposed for SSR (R-compound tires) only. SS is street tires.

At the risk of being indelicate, the top SS Elise drivers in SS this year were more credentialed than the top GT3 drivers, so I wouldn't read too much into the apparent equivalence of the GT3s and Elises.