On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 11:28:20PM -0400, Doug Franklin wrote: > Larry Colen wrote: > The reason that we don't run Spec Miata is that, in the southeast, at > least, they tend to tear up a lot of bodywork and a nontrivial number of > cars. The first SM race we ever saw, 54 cars took the green flag ... > two came back banana shaped on flatbeds, two came back unscathed, and > the other fifty came back with bodywork damage ranging from a couple of > hundred bucks to several thousand. They've gotten better, but they
That's a lot worse than around here. In a 70 car field, figure that two will badly crunch, and a few more will be pranged. There is almost always one class where you can build a competitive car for the least amount of money. That is the class that will attract drivers with more enthusiasm than skill or experience. That is also the class that will have the most cars that have nearly equal performance, and often 10 times the number of cars in that class than most other classes. When I started racing there were two classes that fit that description: ITC (Datsun 510s) and Sports Renault, aka Sports Rambo. We'd always watch the start of the ITC races at the first turn, especially if it was raining. With a run group of 50 or so cars, with a lot of them novices in nearly identical cars, all trying to win the race in the first turn, there was pretty much guaranteed to be a crash. In retrospect, I didn't see nearly as much carnage racing SM as I ever saw racing ITC (I had a Cortina GT rather than a 510). In ITC it wasn't unusual to have 4 cars come in on the hook after a race. -- The first step is learning to take great photos, the second step is learning to throw away ones that are merely good. Larry Colen [email protected] http://www.red4est.com/lrc -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
