Some friends of mine have started racing in a class called GT Lite. I don't know a whole lot yet about it but the main limit seems to be h.p. Most everything else is wide open. Fiberglass fenders, hoods, Lexan windows, etc are okay. Cars are either partly or all tube frame. Cars weigh in around 1800 lbs. and have about 170 hp. My buddy bought a race ready car for $5000 and it came with spares. He ran at VIR last weekend and qualified 2nd but ended up getting punted from behind and was back in the pack for the finish.

They are trying to get their numbers up but there seems to be some good racing in there. Just another idea to throw in the pot.

 

Another difference between IT/SM and SRF is typically, SRF is NOT an entry level class, where rookie drivers learn at your expense. normally there's less contact, and better sportsmanship, in the SRF...

 

Let's see...where to start ? Have lots of personal experience in SRF, SM, various IT classes, Showroom Stock, and some other crap.

Where is competition the closest, where is 'driver skill' the main determinant ? SRF. A top Nat'l driver can slide into any old pig, spend a few sessions tweaking and put the car on the podium or top-5 in a 40-car Nat'l field. Seen it happen. I also dismiss the "guys buy 5 motors & dyno them all" thing as primarily BS. I own/race these cars, know the guys who own/race them...and know that while it may have happened, it's very very very rare. And it usually doesn't make any difference. Mid-pack spuds spending lots of money are just poorer mid-pack spuds. Check out the "trap speeds" for SRF at the 2006 RunOffs...and check out the dyno sheets on the cars they dynoed...the top 5 cars at the finish should have been buried mid-pack, based on their trap speeds and dyno numbers...but they were up front at the finish. The level of driving at the front of a Nat'l field is incredible. While I can regularly podium/occasionally win an SRF Regional race, I'm scratching to stay in the top third of a Nat'l field...and only have a few top-10's and one top-5 there. If I had to sell all but one car, I'd probably keep the SRF. Nothing like being on the grid of a 60-70 car Nat'l or Pro race to get your adrenaline flowing.

IT...it's where I started, as that's where the HUGE grids were, waaaay waaay back when. No point racing alone. IT suffers from the 'car of the week' syndrome, although not as rapid a change as in Showroom Stock. For a bunch of years, VW's and 2002's were the killer cars in ITB...then the Volvo 142's showed up. I abandoned my long string of VW ITB cars (Rabbit, Golf, Scirocco, another Golf) and got a Volvo. Now there is a resurgence of VW, with the A3 Golfs...people are now just learning to make them fast. Advantage of IT...cheap shells and organ donors. Also run Miatas in ITA, and have, after 15 years of screwing around, gotten the ITS 240Z running. I've totaled more IT cars than any other class car...if you're looking for a data-point.

Spec Miata ? Incredibly fun and easy to drive fast...and that's the problem. Any idiot can pedal one hard...but they may not have the race-craft and crisis-management skills to cope, when it all goes pear-shaped. Incredibly close competition, and up front the level of driving is outstanding. Big disparity between a top-shelf SM and a wooly old beater SM. You can end up spending stoopid money on an SM...but $$$ alone won't get you to the front. I have one of these, too...it's the 'enduro' car, since 3am in a light rain in an open-cockpit car REALLY SUCKS. Back when we were running Nissans in Showroom Stock, I always felt sorry for those guys who didn't have a defroster, heater and operating stereo as we watched the moon cross the sky and prayed for sunrise so we might actually see where we were going.

Showroom Stock ? It's sad what they've done to the SS classes...I had a lot of fun in SSB and SSC cars, won a bunch of races...but I'll stay far away from what SS is evolving into.

Production classes and GT classes are money pits, if you want to run up front...and 'up front' usually entails finishes in the top 3 in 3-5 car fields. Yeah.......right. Not quite the 'mad scientist' classes as CSR or DSR (sorry, Sunday !!!), but Prod and GT are right up there in the 'mad scientist' realm. "Catepillar cars"...there are always legs sticking out from under them as those guys are constantly working on their cars.

So, where does that leave you ?

SM...lots of close racing, Significant risk of regularly writing off cars, or at least doing major repair work. Price of entry is $8K-20+K

IT...less close racing, reduced risk of wadding the car up, but still good racing. Price of entry - $4k-20+K, depending on class and zoomy-ness.

SRF...amazing close racing, all thru the field. Best place to develop 'race-craft', as you're alway in a battle. Cars are tanks...I've 4 major hits that would have totalled a production chassis...and in those cases, I was racing in two weekends or less. In half those cases, it was :"crash on Saturday (remove whole suspension corner, for example), race on Sunday". Price of entry - $16k-20k, race it for 5-10 years and sell it for what you paid for it. Nobody in their right mind buys a new SRF, unless they're really OCD, or some other undiagnosed pathology.

Pick your poison.

 

Thanks Prof...good stuff.

 

Hey Prof, there's nothing like being in your SRF at 3 AM in the 24 Hours of Moroso in a downpour. Absolutely nothing! That was about the only time I ever asked "what is Mrs. Parker's baby boy doing out here in this!" Funny thing was, about 8 hours later when it was all over and we'd finished fourth overall it was like "I can't wait 'till next year!"

I've also been on the Sebring circuit more times than I can count slogging through the puddles trying to see where that SRF is ahead of me that I must be getting close to because the spray is so heavy now I can't even see the track! Then passing about 7 or eight SRFs, in various states of disassembly, spread out all over the front straight after spinning on that 10-foot wide painted checkerboard start/finish line in the wet.

As Phil Hartmann used to say "Good Times!

 

HA !!! You may remember a black Showroom Stock Nissan trundling around Moroso for a bunch of those 24 Hours...that would have been me/us. As the windshield wipers slapped back and forth, I would think "those poor bastards in the SRF's...". Or one year, when I climbed into the car at about 4am and it was 35 deg. F. IN FREAKIN FLORIDA, DAMMIT. Yeesh. Again, I would think "oh those poor bastards in the SRF's", as I turned the heater up. I also distinctly remember having to stay alert in dark, as the SRF contingent would deposit tail sections randomly all over the track as they had their little scrums for position. SRF was the best battle to watch on-track, from inside another car. Packs of 3-5 cars would come sliding by below our doorhandles in braking zones, all intent on not letting the other SRF's get a 5ft. advantage...and this went on for 24 hours.

Last time I raced Sebring was at the January National about 6-8 years ago (?)...66 SRF's on the grid, and rain was starting/stopping. Yeehar again. Q'ed mid-pack, spun on the first lap and went to DFL, drove it back up into the low 30's or high 20's by the checker. Even made outside passes in the Safety Pin (!). Love that track. I can live without Moroso.

 

So many reasons that after I get my growing pains out of the way in the FC that I'm going to be getting a SRF. 2-4 years is my rough plan and I'll have me a SRF.

 

I'm not going to try to change your opinion here and now, but want to make a comment. As you know, I'm a member of the ITAC and we have done a complete top to bottom review of all cars in the category and run them through the classification process we are now using to try to get and keep consistency in classification/weights. The process is not a pure formula, but there is consistency. We allow for things that are hard to quantify as well. Our goal is to get classification weight within about 50lbs of what should be "correct" for each car. To get within a smaller range than 50lbs would require greater data than we have available to us.

As a result, IT should be far less a "car of the week" category than it ever has in the past. The E36 Bimmer was a clear screwing of the pooch, but that happened before the bulk of the current ITAC arrived and we have addressed it, hopefully once and for all (finally). What remains of the "car of the week" syndrome should only be the usual "me too" syndrome where someone sees someone successful in a particular platform and decide they need it too. I will admit that IMHO there are a couple of notable cars that I think are not classified well or properly, but I also feel this will eventually be rectified as well.

Herr Processor, I'm very curious about your viewpoint on this, mainly as a member of the ITAC. Specifically, I try to be a student of how good categories can go bad and try hard to keep IT from sliding down the wrong path. There have been and still are some temptations that I think could do this to IT. So, if you are willing to share your experienced viewpoint, I'd be very interested in hearing it. If you'd just as soon keep it off this thread to keep from thread hi-jacking or just to be able to speak candidly in private, or any other reason, I'd be happy to continue this discussion through PM or e-mail.

 

George, I'm curious about the Porsches in ITR. SC doesn't seem to get a fare shake against the 994 S2, Boxster and 968. G versus F in PCA.

In ITR the weight differences versus PCA are:
SC - 70 lbs
944 S2 - 272 lbs
968 - 181 lbs
Boxster - 99 lbs

I can't figure out how an SC that runs in lower class in PCA would have been given the lowest weight drop of the group? It makes the SC even less competitive when it started in a lower class with PCA to begin with.

 

Sean, I'm not that familiar with PCA racing. Don't the 944 guys think the 911 is favored in PCA?

It's been a while since we worked up the weights for ITR, but I do think the SC was made to carry some additional weight for some more subjective matters. I seem to recall some discussion about how much power the engine could make in IT trim, but that's something of a crap shoot sometimes. I do know specifically that the 944S/S2 has limitations in the amount of power than can be made. This was from direct discussion with Jon Milledge and that I know factored into the weights for that car.

Perhaps Ron can chime in a bit about the weights for the SC. He and Jeff put together the original proposal (VERY well put together I might say) for the class. He probably has stronger recollection than I, although he would not have been privy to the ITAC conference call where we finalized weights.

It may sound like a cop-out, but please consider that PCA may not have gotten it right. Maybe they did, but we have to consider hundreds of cars in our classifications and it's very difficult to have intimate knowledge of all 300+ cars listed in IT. We certainly don't profess to have perfect knowledge (although we have 2 Porsche owners on the ITAC) of all cars and are always willing to review our classification/weights, especially with well documented new data to consider.

 

Maybe I need to go back and check the allowable engine modifications, but I'm hard pressed to think how an S2 should get a 200 lb weight reduction advantage. I'd be curious to hear more about the original proposal. I'm sure it was well thought out, I just can't figure it out. Difficulty of course is that any of the allowable engine modifications would move you out of class in PCA, which I understand is not necessarily the case with BMW who has mapped IT classes to their club classes.

 

Pretty simple, really. Go look at the SSB & SSC classification lists. It's now 2007...but scroll down and look at the model years of cars that are currently classified in both B & C...it's pathetic. They're trying to kill SS thru attrition and neglect. And they'll probably succeed. It seems the goal is to have a bunch of 'Touring' classes which ratchet up the costs dramatically...and they won't get there until SS is dead.

We were beating SS cars around for the past 15 years, but when the old war horse got too old 3 years ago, we bailed and now aren't even looking for "crashers" to build into SS cars.

SS used to be "affordable" (ha !) close racing. Even correcting for inflation, the direction that it's heading isn't what I'd call "affordable".

 

Oh man, Prof, We were racing the same years! It was great fun. I used to have Mick Robinson help me with the spec. It was blue on the sides and white on top. Normally ran either 44 or 46 for numbers. I didn't care much for Moroso either. I ran it because it was close to home in Orlando. Homestead was fun, but a pretty long haul as was Road Atlanta or Roebling Roads (another track I'm not real fond of!) I did enjoy running Daytona though. It was a blast slip streaming along and trying to guess what the bus-stop chicane on the back stretch was going to look like this time by. Just one big long-line of cars around the banking, passing in the braking zones at 1, the hairpin, the horseshoe, and of course the chicane. Wasn't unusual to pass/be passed four or five times a lap in the road course. On the last lap we'd be four, five or six-wide in the tri-oval trying to beat each other to the line. They were great times and great fun. I definitely miss them.

 

I’d have to agree with George that the car of the week days in IT are past. The current ITAC has done a lot of work to help insure parity and IT racing, at least in the Southeast, is on the rise. Once the BMW 325 was out of S then everyone bought their “obsolete” S cars out to play. Since that time 2nd Gen RX7s, 240Zs, 1.8L Miatas, Porsche 944s, have all had pole positions and wins in the last six months. Even Jeff’s good old TR8 pulled off a second about two months ago in a heavily contested ITS field (I pulled a last, but at least I finished!). This was not the case when I came to IT three years ago and BMW 325s were extremely strong cars that were clearly out of their element in ITS.

With respect to the car classifications, no, I seriously doubt that ITR is perfect. We worked with less the perfect data in all cases and the tendency was to err on the side of caution to avoid a BMW 325 debacle.

Think about it this way. IT is a mainly a suspension class. Allowable engine mods are few – 0.5 compression bump, port match 1 inch into head, stock valves, stock cam, stock cam timing, stock valve job, 0.040” pistons max. Ignition timing and exhaust are free, must run stock carbs/EFI system (can be tuned to heart’s content). Lots of blueprinting, parts selection, normal race tricks. How many rear wheel dynojet horsepower would you suspect a 1972 Datsun 240Z with a SOHC head and two valves per cylinder make in IT trim? Probably not much you'd say. But it is well known that 175-177 rwhp on a Dynojet is achievable with a 95% or so build. Non-SCCA Datsun guys never believe it, but it is true and the cars are very fast. Attention to detail is paramount. And it seems the ITAC got it right with these figures since Z don't run over ITS field.

Newer cars were run through the process and used a standard modifier for hp gains across the ITR spectrum. These were then tweaked a bit based on empirical data and knowledge that various folks on the ITR proposal and ITAC had. But, with some cars it is extremely hard to get good hard data on. A Ford Taurus SHO is in ITR, but we were not successful in finding anything like a full bore IT build to get some horsepower numbers from. The same is true about some other cars and in those cases an estimation was the best that could be done. Many things were taken into account as best we could, but I’m sure there are some mistakes, there have to be.

Jon M. helped with the Porsche cars via the ITAC. The 944 cars look reasonable, but I’m not sure about the 911 – I don’t have much experience with them and as I recall the standard ITR modifier was applied. However, one must realize that the ITAC does not guarantee competitiveness of a car in a class. So, if you WhatsFluzit GT doesn’t run at the pointy end of the grid they will not take your single data point and adjust the car.

Scary? Not really, I think it is fair because you can never know at what prep level a person builds a car or what attention to detail they have put into the build. There is speed in every part of the car, and for IT you’ll need to be looking everywhere, particularly in the Southeast and Northeast where IT racing is very popular with large fields (ITS has been around 15-25 cars as of late for regional races, sometimes more but clearly ITR is new so few cars there. Good chance to pick up some first place finishes in ITR for your wall though!).

If the “no guarantee of competitiveness” clause is worrisome then the spec classes would be a better choice. Still, it is shades of grey there because “spec” doesn’t necessarily mean spec. There are plenty of SM drivers that have bailed on SM for IT due to this perception. At least in IT you have an idea of what can be done to the car and as long as you don’t pick an oddball you have a reasonable chance of success. On the other hand, in SM or SRF you can't pick a dog car and lose out. I know, I've been there.

Still, for me in SCCA I’d race IT, SM, or SRF. All three are good. The level of commitment and skill to run up front in any of these classes will be extremely high.

I liked the earlier line about “caterpillar cars” for the Prod cars, very fitting!!!

Ron

 

Bear in mind the reverse is true from the BMW side of things. They have mapped IT into their classes, but if I'm not mistaken JP classes allow many things IT does not, and you'll have an IT car that is not at the same power level of the native BMW Club cars.

Ron