I am extremely new to F500 but from what I have experienced I love it, but then most of my years have been with British prod cars and a few years in FVee. So my opinion is biased at best. My home track before moving to FL was Lime Rock. A good, very good time ina F,G H prod was in the 1:00, 1:01, 1:02 respectively and talk about unreliability and car count?????? Just talked to Quadrini after the first Lime Rock Nat and hear Brent put the car outside pole against the Fords. Not too shabby. And yes, Mike is a great driver but Quadrini offfered the car to me for A LOT LESS MONEY than a F/F. Sometimes I miss the art of shifting but overall I am very pleased with the speed and I was driving (up until a few weeks ago) a 1995 Dolphin. As for reliability, only time will tell but I stayed with F G Prod for over 15 years so I may ot be a good example. As for being an overgrown GO-Kart, I shared the Dolphin with my nephew who came out of shifter Karts and he said that there was no camparison except for a stiff ride. He also said that it was difficult at first to get used to the sustained high speeds where the karts were at speed for a brief second. He is also very concerned racing with SRF that weigh nearly double, can't see us and can't stop like we can. For now I'm sold on the class and will do whatever it takes to increase the numbers. tom
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cory, The snapped belt may not be expensive in and of itself, but when the entire weekend is thrown away because it breaks in lap 2, the effective cost is the entire weekend, i.e., entry fee, hotel, tow gas, tires, etc. From my experience, my actual finish rate hovers around 50%, and I do a LOT of preventive maintenance, and have never hit another car, hit a wall, or otherwise created a driver-error DNF. Under any circumstances, I think you missed my point (or I just didn't get it across well). If you ask most people in the paddock what they think of F500, you will get several responses, and these are what limit our attractiveness to those who come into SCCA with no understanding of our class structures. 1) Unreliable 2) Noisy (almost as bad as RX-7s or FMs) 3) 'Not real race cars' or 'overgrown go-karts' 4) Just another formula class with 2 cars on the track To solve perception #4 by growing, we have to deal with perceptions 1 through 3. Also, if I may, has anyone thought about trying to get the word out by putting information in karting magazines? Putting ads into SCCA is talking to those who already know who we are, IMHO...... Marshall Mauney 2002 Red Devil In a message dated 7/23/2006 5:44:14 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: <<Marshall regarding reliability. If you run your engine stock/legal and replace the belts on a reasonable cycle, I beleive our cars are very reliable. The guys who got me into racing were IT drivers and they were also having to work on their cars all the time. A big difference was when they had a mechanical DNF, it was something much more expensvie than a $50 belt. I do agree that you can race a SS or IT and have long periods where you don't have to spend so much time between races on maintenance (like we do), but the guys that do that aren't winning national or ARRC races. In addition to spending $25k for an engine from Sunbelt, how much reliability do you give up when you tweak an SM to the point where it can win national races? I am not trying to flame Marshall, I just beleive that it is accrate to describe our class as very reliable.>>> _______________________________________________ F500 mailing list - [email protected] To unsubscribe or change options please visit: http://f500.org/mailman/listinfo/f500 *** Please, DO NOT send unsubscribe requests to the mailing list! *** --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail Beta. _______________________________________________ F500 mailing list - [email protected] To unsubscribe or change options please visit: http://f500.org/mailman/listinfo/f500 *** Please, DO NOT send unsubscribe requests to the mailing list! ***
