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Re: Rules for 2015.... Electric cars and events to drop

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 1:09 pm
by Challenger392
walterclark wrote:I dont agree that P or SP are broken. They assume a car is fully developed within those rules. Nothing prevents one from making a 1975 Corvette the equal of your Z06.
As well as a driver having a car fully developed for their class, they also need to complete 5 events in their competitive car to be competitive. But I do see why you are frustrated, even if you had beat me at Ascutney, I still would have taken the class win just due to the fact that you had a competitive field at Okemo 1 and I didn't at Philo. But I think that this is more fair than excluding people from season points because they show up to an event and no one else in their class does.

Re: Rules for 2015.... Electric cars and events to drop

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 4:03 pm
by RacingFrog
sachilles wrote:Currently it is the below scheme.
SP1 and SP2 are 1.5 and above cc/lb
SP3 and SP4 are 1.061 to 1.5
SP5 is .901 to 1.060
SP6 is .900 and below.
My point remains, why cc/lb and not hp/lb?

Re: Rules for 2015.... Electric cars and events to drop

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 4:12 pm
by RacingFrog
Challenger392 wrote:
walterclark wrote:I dont agree that P or SP are broken. They assume a car is fully developed within those rules. Nothing prevents one from making a 1975 Corvette the equal of your Z06.
As well as a driver having a car fully developed for their class, they also need to complete 5 events in their competitive car to be competitive. But I do see why you are frustrated, even if you had beat me at Ascutney, I still would have taken the class win just due to the fact that you had a competitive field at Okemo 1 and I didn't at Philo. But I think that this is more fair than excluding people from season points because they show up to an event and no one else in their class does.
I am not frustrated at all, I just do that for fun and I even didn't know there was a championship until the end of Burke 2! You had a very nice season and I am happy that you got the championship title, you deserve it.
I brought the 1975 Corvette because it currently sits in my shop and my neighbor (the owner of the car) wants to try it at hillclimbs next year. We were discussing classes and figured he would end up in the same class as my Z06. He is a really competitive guy and if he had a legitimate chance at a championship he would show up at all events. Now that the classes are cc/lb and not hp/lb, he knows that it's not worth trying (for the championship) but I might convince him to show up for an event to try it out.
And to Walter's point, yes pretty much everything (and not just money) prevents a 1975 Vette from being the equal of a C5Z.

Re: Rules for 2015.... Electric cars and events to drop

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 4:16 pm
by drummingpariah
RacingFrog wrote:My point remains, why cc/lb and not hp/lb?
(playing the devil's advocate here)
Easier to rank, harder to measure. If we're assuming a vehicle is as well prepared as possible, why not calculate (treadwear and contact patch width)/lb? At that point, who cares how you make your power, it's just assumed you make as much power as your tires are capable of putting down?

I think there's room for improvement in the current system, I just don't know what to propose as a rules change that solves more problems than our current system does, without introducing new problems.

Re: Rules for 2015.... Electric cars and events to drop

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 4:39 pm
by sachilles
RacingFrog wrote:
sachilles wrote:Currently it is the below scheme.
SP1 and SP2 are 1.5 and above cc/lb
SP3 and SP4 are 1.061 to 1.5
SP5 is .901 to 1.060
SP6 is .900 and below.
My point remains, why cc/lb and not hp/lb?
Your suggestion is independent of mine. That being said, the devil's advocate in me thinks you will run into these arguments:
What HP number do you use? The car's actual HP? Are we going to use some sort of portable dyno or use manufacturers oem number?
While cc/lb may be less than perfect, it is quite a bit easier to verify.

You then have to develop what makes sense HP to LB for each class. Basically starting over.
We do already have an established system, that does seem to work for the most part. Like everything as it ages, it needs a little tweeking.

Re: Rules for 2015.... Electric cars and events to drop

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 4:40 pm
by sachilles
I swear, I didn't see Jesse's post before I wrote mine.....he snaked me.

Re: Rules for 2015.... Electric cars and events to drop

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 5:08 pm
by drummingpariah
sachilles wrote:I swear, I didn't see Jesse's post before I wrote mine.....he snaked me.
I disagree with everything you said. We're obviously not thinking the same things at all. :lol:

My biggest complaint about the current classification rules:
They assume all manufacturers put equivalent wheels on their cars. For example, on the Datsun, I have to start with 14x5.5 wheels, where something like a Corvette would be an 17x9.5 (or wider) without penalty. Just getting to the point where I can buy decent tires, I'm looking at a 3.5" modifier. That's certainly not a dealbreaker though.

Re: Rules for 2015.... Electric cars and events to drop

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 11:48 pm
by Rabbit Farmer
But equal cars would come with equal tires; comparing apples to apples.

Yes, the Z06 could have 15" wide rims and my car came with 6.5", but we aren't in the same class.

Re: Rules for 2015.... Electric cars and events to drop

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2014 8:35 am
by RacingFrog
drummingpariah wrote: They assume all manufacturers put equivalent wheels on their cars. For example, on the Datsun, I have to start with 14x5.5 wheels, where something like a Corvette would be an 17x9.5 (or wider) without penalty. Just getting to the point where I can buy decent tires, I'm looking at a 3.5" modifier. That's certainly not a dealbreaker though.
Actually the Vette is a staggered setup. It's 17x9.5 front and 18x10.5 rear. So which one would you pick?
But I use an 18 square setup anyway. I have a fat ass and need the wider contact patch ;) I won't take discrimination from the skinny man! :D

Re: Rules for 2015.... Electric cars and events to drop

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2014 9:58 am
by walterclark
sachilles wrote: What HP number do you use? The car's actual HP? Are we going to use some sort of portable dyno or use manufacturers oem number?
While cc/lb may be less than perfect, it is quite a bit easier to verify.
As we will not likely ever invest in anything like a dyno or portable scales, we will need to continue to use methods that are freely available, accurate and can reasonably predict a cars performance potential for classification purposes. Fundamentally that means using numbers produced by the vehicle manufacturer.

I think that in In U class - where engine modifications are not allowed at all - using engine displacement as the basic value to determine power, yields the largest performance discrepancies between same class cars.

Without doing a lot of study and a fair amount of math I dont know if using published HP and or torque numbers would be significantly better or not. Theoretically it should help with the issue of older models having less power:cc than newer ones. However defining power such that it is equitable from manufacturer published info may be difficult since to really get a good picture of it requires knowledge of the output across its operating range combined with gearing and tire size to predict how it would translate to acceleration. Who exactly would be responsible for developing this and ensuring it is correctly used for each car entered? I know who will not. The present tech team.

As it is we get new competitors - regularly - that show up and dont know what their cars door sticker lists for GVW or its displacement, or have any idea what class they should be in. This is not limited to U by any means but Don and I have become fairly good at classing new cars on the fly that have made it thru registration and to tech without anyone taking a qualifying look at the car class on the registration. So if the formula were to be made more complex, additional checks would need to be put in place to ensure this is sorted BEFORE tech. Frankly I would like to see it done with the present set of rules.