Patrick said:also airgas is doing a site survey of my shop when the addition is done so i can have mother bottles delivered to my own personal filling station
I need to remember this if I ever do a NOS'd up OneLap car/van/truck. Even a 75shot is going to go through a bunch of bottles over the course of a week.
I think Dale Seeley had 4 20# (?) bottles when he was running trunkmonkeys on Neons and SC2's back in the early 2000's of OneLap.
Patrick said:In reply to Tom Suddard :
Ummmm.
you know I'm going to do this if it's legal.
also airgas is doing a site survey of my shop when the addition is done so i can have mother bottles delivered to my own personal filling station
I think he's counting on it.
Lof8 - Andy said:I saw the "example of a 12 point concourse score" article. And the example was a white, stockish MR2. It seemed to be a sign that I should take the 12.
I'd like to hear more details about your car. It was very fun to watch carve through the cones.
In reply to bigben :
It's a relatively stock 2002 MR2 spyder. I picked it up about a month before the challenge, did a fair bit of weight reduction, added used Ebay coilovers and Hoosiers and gave it a rustoleum paint job. It handles like nothing else I've driven! Except maybe a go kart. You can check it out a bit more in the latter pages of my Builds thread
It looked like a go kart sticking flat to the tarmack.
Team #16 was disappointed that the presentation left us with a 11.16.
While not particularly innovative, the car was clean, shiny, well detailed, and we had a good story that we struggled to express to all of the judges due to space.
Was the score fair? "Taking the 12" would have given us a single position higher in the standings. So ultimately, it was not a big difference in the standings. The MR2's presentation put them in front of us for the HS win, deservedly. But CSmith was disappointed to beat that car in both moving events, then lose out the HS class due to the concours.
I guess my frustration with it is that we could have had .83 higher score doing nothing. I get that there is a bit of a Miata penalty here, and that we were likely to get a 12 +/-1 or so.
But it's still very disappointing to make an effort to show well, tell the story of the car, and come out below those who opted out.
We definitely plan on coming back next year though.
In reply to Greg Smith :
If your car isn't something pretty special, "opting in" is a gamble. I've done the Challenge 6 or 7 times now, and my entries are never beauty queens or engineering marvels. I've taken the 12 ever since its been an option.
Greg Smith said:I get that there is a bit of a Miata penalty here
I'm not a judge, but I think that's a huge part of it. There's almost nothing that you can do to a Miata at this point to make it interesting for this event in my mind. They're just so cheap and available, parts are abundant, and literally anything you can think of has been done to a Miata already. I'm not a hater either, I own a Challenge-budget-friendly Miata and I'd never bring it for this reason. They're obviously great cars, they just aren't interesting.
n8 said:Greg Smith said:I get that there is a bit of a Miata penalty here
I'm not a judge, but I think that's a huge part of it. There's almost nothing that you can do to a Miata at this point to make it interesting for this event in my mind. They're just so cheap and available, parts are abundant, and literally anything you can think of has been done to a Miata already. I'm not a hater either, I own a Challenge-budget-friendly Miata and I'd never bring it for this reason. They're obviously great cars, they just aren't interesting.
You should check out Dusterbd13's build for the challenge this year. As a judge there were not so many Miata's this year that they blurred together. That may have happened in the past, but not for me this year.
In reply to Greg Smith :
One thing I learned with the Vette 2 years ago is that the “story” can be good editorial, but isn’t one of the categories for concours judging. Yes, sometimes a good story can help you gain points, but you need to focus on the 3-categories of the concours judging first, then try to weave the story into those(if there’s time & they’re somewhat related).
The “story” is what you need to tell Scott, David, or whoever else from GRM is photographing the cars that year & taking notes.
In reply to Pete Gossett :
Which can be a reason to present instead of taking the 12. I strongly encouraged Bob to present on the Hyundai knowing that he was going to go through a whole lot of effort for not much upside. He got 12.33. What he also potentially got is the ear of GRM that his Hyundai was going from the Challenge to another GRM flagship event, One Lap of America, the first Challenge car to do so. You weave that story and you get it out there.
In the past there have been several high school and college teams that have had small writeups about their efforts in the magazine and those can be helpful for securing future support and funding.
Sometimes I think it can make sense to try and earn 12 instead of just taking it.
I appreciate all the feedback, and frankly, it's a pretyty small thing - as I said, the difference in standings it made was a single position over taking the 12.
But it does still burn me that with the Concours, you get a 12 for opting out. Autocross, you get 1000 instead of 43-60 seconds or so. So you HAVE to compete in both moving events and do reasonably well in both.
I understand the magazine's reasoning for the 12.
I get that last year, the 12 seemed to be a "floor" for scoring. And that this year I'm pretty sure there was a specific interest that some judged cars at the low end of the spectrum fall below the 12 mark. (otherwise, there's no real incentive to take the 12)
I understand the Miata penalty. I don't like it, but it's a fact of life.
it does bug me that doing *nothing* can get you a better score than trying. "Don't judge me" maybe should be the average of the bottom 5 judged or something. I don't know.
The "do what's right" part of me says we should always make a presentation.
And I get that Dusterbd13 / Michael's Miata was a "Miata with bolt ons", as he referred to it. But that's a mastery of understatement. Aero, drivetrain, and finish alone set that car apart, as long as all the judges could hear what was actually done to the car.
The problem with the "miata penalty" is that they're fantastic cars at 50% of the timed events. Everyone here knows Miatas crush autox. In a weird way, going around your ass to reach your elbow is a more worthy cause than the conventional sense. Taking the obvious solution is...obvious.
LEt me make two suggestions / wrinkles.
Seeing the stock? new Mustang at the Challenge was neat. Using a modern car (Musttang v8> Miata? Something else? as a reference car could be ... interesting. Maybe there's a local rental place where such a car could be rented for the weekend pretty consistently?
And for a future year, I would love to see a "Classic Motorsports" class where a large portion of the visible car came from a vintage chassis. Many of the cars at this year's event would have qualified, including the overall winner.
And... additional editorial fodder for GRM's sister magazine. Just a thought...
As usual, I enjoyed the challenge very much. I regret not making more of an effort to come out every year, whether I have a car to enter or not. Spectating isn't nearly as much fun but it isn't without it's charms.
My father and I were both pleased to be able to contribute in a small way to the communal supply of cold water and other such small niceties. Many thanks to all who shared their food, drink, energy and time so freely. Doubly so to the staff for their tireless efforts.
It is great that I made a few new friends this year and a true pleasure to see old friends once again. It will probably be a couple of years until I am physically able to field another entry of my own but I am always in the buying mood so I really just can't say...
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