Ed Newman

Colin, I concurr with your classes, but where are all the Carrera GTs going to run!?!?! I have spoken via email to a number of people at National regarding the classing mess in B,C & D and they agree that a major overhaul is needed. I think Colin's classes are a good part of it and the second is to adjust the weights in the classes to make the rations more equal. A X51 car needs to weigh 50 lbs more than a 3.6l and it 50 lbs more than a 3.4l or whatever, you guys get the point. Porsche will always keep coming out with something newer and faster and our rules like our cars need to be nimble enough to accomodate rapid changes. The 996 GT3 mk II's are about to get their doors blown off when the first person shows up with a new 997 GT3RS. They are about to go from the quiet guaranteed winner to the complaining underdog.

A.Wayne

Hey,
I say ban all the stock class sissy cars and focus on the GT classes only
Then we don't have to worry about who , has the am/fm cd player combo or who had too much salad at lunch , creating a weight penalty

______________________________________________
Pleae note the above mentioned statement has nothing to do with the mental stability or instabilty of the aurthor and was not directed at the aformentioned individuals of such sissy vehicles , but was more directed to the thought that there was a need for some comical cavorting, due to the uptight nature of said sissy vehicle pilots....

NJ-GT

- The X51 Carrera gets moved up to B, but the 996 GT3 Mk1 stays in C.
- The X50 996TT gets moved up to A, but the 996 GT2 stays in B.

It would be so easy to abuse B class with a GT2. I wonder why nobody does that?

Larry Herman

Shhhhh!

Greg Fishman

Because you could run a "real" race car (Cup Car) for half the price and have 4 times the competition. B class at this point has only a few cars at each race.

JimB

Obviously the power package rule was really poorly thought out but I'm not going there again.

There was a GT2 in B a couple of years ago. I believe he converted it back into a street car and bought a cup car. There were two MKI GT3s in C this year. I think one of them is a RS Club Sport. When developed they will be very fast. Much faster than an X51.

38D

So rather than disadvanatge 1-2 X51 996s, you'd rather have all of C class disadvantaged? Sure the 993RSCSs are unfair as well, but at least the normall 996s just moved up a place. As I have said before, I will be proposing a class realignment for D, C and B classes. But I proposed the power package rule in Sep t of 2005, before I had ever seen a 993RSCS race (though I ran only marinally slower times than the best 993RSCSs at Watkins Glen in my D car, so maybe there are no all that great...).

Jim's results with his current X51 car had he been in B class:
3rd at Sebring Sprint
1st at Mid Ohio Sprint
2nd at Mid Ohio Enduro
1st at Mid America Sprint
1st at Mid America Enduro
2nd at Road America Sprint
1st at Road America Enduro
2nd at Daytona Sprint

Now I will be the first to admit that the reason these results would still be so strong is that B class is still relatively sparsely populated.

The GT3 Mk1s are more a question of driver than car. The 2 cars in the country are still piloted by slower drivers. In the hands of someone like Jim, I am sure it would destory everything in C and be banished to B quite quickly.

Glen

B would suck, no cars there to race at all. The lighter/ higher hp Mk1 stays in C...what a bummer Jim, I understand Your frustration. Looks like its time for the NASA races where Your car will fall well with their HP/WT classing system. Or just go win a few races in it and sell it to a NASA guy so You can get somewhat fair value, then You can move into a Cup, or F the 2 largest classes. If You want to run C I still believe the 993 TT is the loophole car for that class. Then You are spending Cup $ again though if not more. Early Cups are the best bang for the buck these days, especially since they will be allowed in the new series. I wish I had not sold both of mine, but I know the 7 Cup will be fun. Nothing like going into turn 1 with 40-50 other cars though..woohoo!

JimB

Colin,
Here's another way to look at it. If I had been in B last year, what would have been different in C?

Sebring Sprint - RSCSs would have been 1st & 2nd rather than 1st & 3rd.
Mid-America - RSCSs would have won both sprints and the enduro.
Road America - RSCSs would have had a sweep. 1,2,3 in both races
Mid-Ohio - bingo, a 996 would have won but only because it rained all weekend so it was a pure drivers weekend. And, there were no fast RSCSs.
Daytona - would have still been a cluster (no offense Larry ) but Phil's RSCS would have all three track records instead of just one.

The only racers that benefit from the rule change are the RSCSs and maybe the other fast C cars like the MKI, 993TT, etc. I'm not sure what that's accomplished. At least before the 996 owners had the option of spending the $$ to make their cars competitive like Chris and I did. Now it's get beat by the RSCSs, etc or prepare your car and get beat by the MKII GT3s.

I know I'm beating a dead horse here but you keep trying to justify the change. The change did nothing to improve club racing. Nobody that wasn't competitive last year will be next year. All that's been accomplished is to hurt a couple of avid club racers. And since you are in the process of selling your car like I planned to be, think about what the rule change has done for that. With the stroke of a pen, I went from selling one of the top C cars to a complete unkown.

Glen,
I really want to get a 996 cup car. That was/is the plan. You guys have too much fun not to join in!
Jim

Rick

Maybe I'm all wet here but but can't this be made a lot better by tweaking weights? I see Jim's point - I wouldn't want to go to a class that rarely has many cars in it in addition to not (perhaps) being competitive. That's one of the reasons I like E - there is a lot of competition (I'd rather finish 10th out of 25 cars than 3rd out of 4 cars).
Why not leave a car like Jim's in C and determine a weight adjustment to counter the power pack benefit?

(I hope I didn't just just cross into the heritic zone here).

Glen

No sweat Jim, let me know when You are ready and we can run through the pros and cons of each out there. I know most of the cars and what really matters as You look at Your choices. If You want You can have it down here in DFW and we can give You significant seat time prior to the season to bring You up to speed quickly. The track is 1 hr from DFW airport so its easy to get some time in and fly back home.

M758

I posted this idea in this thread a few pages back. Response... .... ... Silence.




Really the best way to make these cars equal is to tweak the weights. Trying to make cars of 15 years of production with various hp levels and chassis potential all "even" while sticking to "Curb weight" is just silly.

In fact I feel that Classes H and up to A all could be make much more even and level if you could adjust weights +/- even as little as 75lbs.

Larry Herman

In fact, it's more than silly, it's impossible. Porsche has always tried to improve the performance of it's models, even with-in a series of cars. Typically the ones at the end of a lineage have much better perfromance than the early ones.

In fact there is already a precedent for this with the 84-89 Carreras. The early cars have 207 HP, while the later cars have 217. It made a difference. Finally, they granted the early cars a 94 lb break back around 2001.

DHinkle

This has been an interesting thread. My perspective comes from someone that decided to race C stock this year in a 993 RS and my friends, Chris Dooley and Ed Oblow elected to run in C with 996's.

Daytona was a good sampling of drivers in all classes east of the Mississippi (basically the Southeast based drivers and the Northeast drivers coming together along with the Southwest and Midwest). It was obvious with the results of Daytona that the X51 package was the way to go with 996's.

In my opinion, C stock will grow significantly and comments about the dominance of 993RS cars is somewhat skewed by small number of racers in C stock this year. I raced three PCA events this year and each 993RS that I raced against has very good drivers and Phil's car is in an unbelievably strong and he can wheel it. Racers that I've raced against in 996's (Non X51 cars with 3.4 & 3.6 engines) appear to be newer to PCA racing and the cars appear to be less developed.

Jim Breaky, Chris and Tim Sanderson are all excellent drivers in very strong cars. Based on the small class in B where the best racer has moved into a Cup Car, they should still be at the top. As I evaluated options of what to race, a GT3 B stock car wasn't attractive as I would end up in Cup Car money based on market values plus upgrades needed for the conversion.

My preference would have been a weight adjustment to set off the additional hp of the X51 package making C a real strong class. Karl Poetel of Racer's Edge is currently developing a suspension package for a C stock 996. If he achieves the same success he has as an F stock racer, he will become a very strong competitor in C and will give us all a chance to see what a great driver in a well-set 996 (non X51) can do in C stock.

I do agree that the MK1 GT3 (both of them) should be classified in B and if a quick racer had raced successfully this year, they probably would have moved up. I also think that the Cayman 3.4 should be moved into C based on the 996 3.4 staying in C.

Time will tell if the changes are good for PCA or not. 996's will become more prevalent in PCA over the next 5 years.

Rick

This has been an interesting thread...I was just looking at some of the new classificaitons for my class (E) and find myself scratching my head. Here's why...

• My '88 951S new specified weight (with me in it) will be 3148lbs (2998+150) with a stock horsepower rating of 247 and 12.74 lbs/hp.
• The base Cayman has just been classfied in E with a weight of 2866lbs with a horsepower rating of 245 and 11.67 lb/hp).
• The 2006/07 boxter has been classified in E with a weight of 2855/2877lbs with a horespower rating of 240/245 and 11.90/11.74 lbs/hp):

Looks like I may be following some new cars next year.