rnoll98: Grintch:
When the M3 finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 7th in '06 in SM for '06, was something done? That was much more dominate than 1st & 3rd for the Evo in '07. SM actually looked very competitive for '07, 2 AWD, 2 RWD, and 2 FWD cars in the trophies.
And we didn't do anything to change that. I don't think ANY car from the '07 trophies will have to change, including the winning Evo. The AWD "change" is actually a move to maintain the status quo.
You are misinformed here. My EVO (3rd, SM, 2007) weighed around 2850# at Nats depending on fuel level. It is now just under 2800#. That is with all bolt in readily available aftermarket parts. No custom one-off titanium spindles, no carbon fiber driveshafts . . . no stupid money.
The EVO's certainly have not been dominant compared to the absolute reign of the Bimmers, and the STI's have yet to even prove competitive. Where is the need to slow us down? If Bob Tunnell ran SM this year and won, would these proposals be on the table. If Vic Sias were 100% healthy at Nats and won, would these proposals be on the table? It just kind of seems like a knee-jerk reaction because the EVOs "may" get even faster when they get "more developed". I can tell you this will not happen. We have all the power we could ever want (I found out there is such a thing as TOO MUCH ;-). There are only miniscule gains left in suspension design/geometry while staying within the SM rules. I took the aerodynamics allowances to the Nth degree by making as much front downforce as I could and using the rear wing to balance the car. The EVO platform (not including the X) has been around for years and has had a HUGE amount of racing development done overseas before it even made it to the US. There are no big brakethroughs left out there. Actually, it is for all intents and purposes a stagnating platform. No more factory backed R+D. Most of the largest shops are moving on to the X. In 5 years it will be like the DSM is now - lots of cheap parts and easy to mod, but nothing new to raise the performance bar. That leaves weight as the last way to dramatically improve performance. And the current AWD weight limits are very reasonable - they will be difficult but not impossible to attain. That is how it shoud be.
Back on the topic of why people feel the need to slow down AWD cars (rather, just the EVO) - instead of slowing down the class, why not continue to make it faster? So far it historically has not proven to be much faster than ASP, BSP or CSP. The other SM proposals are trying to make it EASIER to lose weight from your car (carbon trunk lids, aftermarket mirrors). There are other proposals to speed up the smaller 2 wheel drive cars whose tire-of-choice is currently 275 or smaller. Not that they really need it. The Travis/Antunes Honda has trophied every year for at least the past 4 years -- 2004 7th, 9th ; 2005-3rd, 4th ; 2006-5th, 8th ; 2007-4th, 6th. The influx of AWD cars has not hurt the performance potential from this FWD contender. Its performance appears to have remained fairly stable. Now let them drop 200# with 275 tires and they should catapult right to the front of the pack.
Is that what we want to do? Are we trying to make it so that all cars out there can be equally competitive? Instead of making a class and creating a framework of rules for that class and then letting competitors go out and build the car that they think will be fastest under those rules are we instead going to keep tweeking the rules every few years to make the slower cars faster and the faster cars slower?
Thanks for listening to my rants :-)
Jarrod, SM #78