forklift

what's your problem dude?

SundayDriver

In honor of some of the posts here, I have decided to update my sig.

bobt993

Wayne,

Jim is a solid driver with a smart and realistic plan to race. He will be at the front in his first race. Not sure why your harping on drovers you don't even know.

Jim basically repeated what I said. PCA seems to think that limiting the mods will reduce costs, but this would only be true if they had "spec" rules for stock class down to a sealed engine. Freakin carpets and interior should be optional, just make HP/weight. It wayyyyyyy cheaper to drop car weight or even driver weight than to build a big motor that is supposed to be stock.

Veloce Raptor

How much time do you have?







Professional Racing and Driving Coach

A.Wayne

You should first ask yourself this , before throwing out such negative retorts .


Bob , has nothing to do with his driving , has more to do with his disposition .
read back , i never got into forklift , it was he who backed into me..

PCA is on it's way to becoming GT3 club of america , the old cars and there owners will find another play ground ( some have , others to follow ) I have not seen anything by PCA to address this situation.

Nasa on the other hand has , so yes i do expect to see people with older cars like "JIM bwoy " jump ship and move over to Nasa.

In honor of a post here i have updated my sig...

dave morris

I'm getting a little concerned by some of what I'm reading.

PCA racing is fabulous. I like everything about it. I have no desire to race in NASA/PBOC/SCCA/PRC or anything else. Well, maybe HSR.

I'm hoping to do 4-5 PCA races this year. I did none last year. It's a long story but I didn't want to race in a car with just a roll bar and didn't want to put a cage in my previous car.

So I went out and bought a PCA D car. To race in PCA. I'm sure hoping we aren't seriously considering changing the rules yet again! More than 5 races/year is probably outside my budget, so I have no need or desire to race with anyone other than PCA.

Major rule changes every couple years is not wise IMHO. If some prefer racing in NASA or whatever ... I'd say go for it. But let's please leave PCA racers out of it.

bobt993

Dave,

Are you basing your opinion on having raced with PCA and other organizations for a long period of time? The basis of the thread is to ask what pros and cons are to each organization. Please share as this is not meant to be a negative thread. I think more importantly, it is looking for a possible compromise amongst all the racing groups out there.

dave morris

Hi Bob, Not sure I agree that the basis of the thread is to ask what pros and cons are to each organization. Bruce asked why some who post in this forum have quit PCA club racing. As I said I quit last year because I didn't have a cage in the 964 Cup and didn't want to race with just a roll bar when pretty much everybody else had a cage. So I think I answered Bruce's question.

I'm sure NASA (or whatever) racing has tons of attractions, but I have no particular need to get intimately acquainted with it since I'm very happy with PCA club racing and can fill out my 5 race quota in PCA. Did Sebring in February and will be at WG later this month. Hope to do VIR and a couple others.

My view is that major rule changes are very disruptive. IMHO we need consistent rules within PCA that racers can feel confident will be in place longer than a year or two before they are changed again. Some people leave PCA racing because they can't keep up with the rules changes. Like I did last year. Just don't want to see it happen all over again.

Hope this is helpful.

Larry Herman

True, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet and make the change once and for all. The huge re-organization of the modified classes made a lot of sense, and hopefully will provide better racing. The stock/prepared classes have been patched and pasted together for too long, and the rules no longer make sense or have a clear focus. Plus as others have mentioned they don't allow for cross series participation. I think that I will start a thread to expound on my views.

Cris Brady

After having a PCA license since 2000, last year I didn't bother to renew it. My main reason was competition in my class/type of car had shifted to NASA/944Cup. I had been running my 89 944 in both 944Cup and PCA for several years. For me it wasn't too onerous to run both series as an 89 had a good sized weight penalty in both series to offset the 2.7 motor. So to run PCA I pretty much just had to add 150 or so lbs of ballast and my snap in interior to my 944Cup config.

Life got better when PCA brought in the SP* classes and my car could run as is in either series. However, if you like to race and not just collect podiums, PCA wasn't where it was happening here on the east coast. SP class entries were modest while 944Cup races would routinely have 20+ entries in my class. Plus IMHO the MidAtlantic Cup series has some of the best 44 drivers around who are continually pushing the limits of those cars. I want to race and also get better myself - good competition improves us all - so last year I spent it totally in 44Cup.

The other things mentioned, cost, ability to have mutliple races closer to home, etc. also came in the picture. But the main driver was competition.

Now this year, PCA has thrown out the welcome mat for 944Cup, inviting it to come play. The competition is there, over 15 in SP2 for the Glen at this point. So I'm back in the fold for at least the Glen and NJMP. Kudos to PCA for this, I've missed the Glen and my pca buds.

944Cup

Nine years ago my son and I took our PCA Stock 944's and we did our first PCA race in the Potomac Region and had a blast. Can't say enough good things about the great people that volunteer their time and effort to make PCA club racing possible. Hard to beat the organization and structure PCA brings to a club racing event.

A year into racing, we moved away from PCA to pursue putting together a series for the front engine Porsche, as a championship series didnt fit into the PCA format. Other aspects of PCA racing that that we thought could be improved at the time were the single car 13/13, one race a weekend, price, and low class counts. Since then we run with numerous other organizations like NASA, EMRA, Redman races, Turkey Bowl races, etc.

In the years we have been gone however, PCA has continued to evolve and has improved its race program. The 13/13 rule has changed for the better, prices are now competitive with other organizations for a 3 day event, as many if not more races in a weekend then anyone else now, and the inclusion of some non-GT classes, like SP, that allow stripping interiors, etc.

From what I see, PCA offers another great place to race our Porsches.

Seth Thomas

Who are we talking about here?

APKhaos

Not sure where this 'NASA is a crash fest' legend came from, but it often comes up in these threads.
I ran almost three full seasons of 944SuperCup with NASA. The series was 14 races/year, so thats a lot of track time. Over this entire period I had one minor car-to-car contact, and that one was entirely my fault [rejoining after an off]. I was running hard the entire time, typically starting at the front end of a large field. More importantly, the faster SuperCup times meant we regularly got deep into the SPecE30 field [the Sped E30 class ran in our race group] and the 994Cup class field.

Based on my experience in NASA and PCA CR, its hard to say that one is more contact-prone than the other.

Veloce Raptor

I believe Overcompensator Wayne (who has never been on a racetrack in his life, by his own admission) is referring to the fact that I was 2 seconds slower than you at Mid-Ohio when we did WC there together 3 years ago, you in the E90 and me in the E46.







Professional Racing and Driving Coach

Steward B.

Thanks for all of the posts (or at least thanks for the posts that responded to the question.....)

A couple of comments.

First, I can assure all of you that there are not going to be any significant changes in the PCA club racing rules this year. We have had a couple of years of major changes and as with this past year, we would like the rules to largely stay the same for a few years, in order to bring some stability to them. As a practical matter, as of this AM there have only been three rules change submissions anyway, which would seem to indicate that most of our racers are largely satisfied with the current rules or at least want to run under them.

Yes, it is likely that the rules committee may address a couple of technical issues, especially ABS issues with the newest cars but I don't see those as major changes.

Historically we've had a roughly 50/50 split between stock class cars and GT cars. We've got data going back to the beginning of the program on all kinds of matters, including registrations for races. Although we added the GTC classes earlier this decade, we consider those as being part of the general GT groupings. And, the 50/50 split continues between stock class cars and the GT cars (including GTC) for races to date.

At some of our events the GTC classes have larger turnouts. At Sebring this year they made up roughly 1/3 of all registrants. However, at many of our races they make up a much smaller segment. At a couple of upcoming races there are less than 10% of total registrants that are GTC cars.

On the other hand, looking at sheer numbers, our stock classes continue strong. Yes, we had a dip in the number of "shop built" GT cars as GTC cars came in but the numbers show that we are seeing a mild resurgence of those cars, as a more economical alternative to cup cars and a way of going faster than the stock class cars.

Accordingly, I'm not sure where someone could get off stating that PCA club racing is rapidly becoming the GT3 club. All I can assume is that whomever stated that hasn't been to a PCA club race for a while and hasn't really looked at the true numbers.

In the last few years we've made some adjustments to how regions are charged for national staff and insurance costs, in order to keep the costs for a host region down. National now pays for all travel expenses of the national staff, with the local region only responsible for housing and food costs (as would be expected of a good host). Ken Laborde, the national insurance chair, has worked hard with PCA's insurers to keep the cost of liability insurance down. We continue to work with smaller races to make it economically viable for a region to host a club race.

Unfortunately, the actual costs of a race are not small. Many tracks have gotten the idea that PCA and its members is a good profit generator for the track and some tracks have raised their rental rates significantly in the last few years. For safety we have to employ a number of good corner workers, have ambulances on site fully staffed, have fire rescue, etc. etc. Frankly the costs to a region from national are a pittance compared with the total costs to run a race.

Unfortunately local sponsors are dropping like flies as the economy stays stagnant. For most races, the primary sponsor has been the local Porsche dealer and for many races, those dealers have pulled back partially or completely from sponsorship. Despite that, almost all of our regions have renewed their races this year, realizing that their club race is a major part of their events each year.

I do appreciate the responses to my query. Unfortunately, I don't think there is anything PCA club racing can do about your personal finances, which appears to be the biggest reason racers have quit racing. Let's hope the economy turns around so that everyone can get back racing.

regards,
Bruce Boeder
PCA club racing national chair