Autocross changes for 2010

fifty wrote:

friedgreencorrado wrote: ..but OTOH, NASA seems to run like a business, instead of a club.

NASA is a for profit business, IIRC.

At the moment, that'd be all I need to avoid them. But I'll admit it's for personal reasons, and not for anything they actually do "wrong" or "right". Plenty of people are happy with NASA.

fifty wrote: Also, what's the SCCA's definition of a "supplemental class" - in the context of:

Nov Fastrack said: ITEM 46) Add new supplemental class SMF as follows: - New 16.B.3: “Street Mod FWD (SMF), a supplemental class for two and four seat front wheel drive cars.” - New 16.C.3: “Street Mod FWD (SMF) Supplemental Class: a) All front wheel drive vehicles.” - Add in Appendix A as follows: Supplemental Class SMF Eligible Vehicles: All front wheel drive vehicles. Minumum Weight Calculations: All listed weights are without driver. 2 Seat FWD: 1650 + 125lbs/liter 4 Seat FWD: 1550 + 125lbs/liter Cars running in SMF using tires with a nominal width of 275 or less will NOT receive the weight break as stated in SM.

That's SCCA copying NASA! Making a class for folks who would otherwise go elsewhere. That class is for guys running FWD who are tired of getting beat by the go-cart Nissan S13s that the drift guys build...

But on all that "nominal width" tire stuff, ya got me. It looks like they're trying to keep fat tires off light cars, but letting us with heavy cars use them.

I'm really not trying to "dis" NASA..I'm just saying they might not be for me.

No, I'm asking if "supplemental class" means regional only, doesn't trophy at Nationals, something along those lines.

I'm not hip to SCCA semantics and need some help.

fifty wrote: No, I'm asking if "supplemental class" means regional only, doesn't trophy at Nationals, something along those lines.

It just might. I have to admit, most of my experience with the SCCA rules is from my road racing years ago. There are several road racing classes which are regional only, but IMO they're some of the best classes we have.

Perhaps I was incorrect when I said SCCA was copying NASA's approach..in autocross, at least. My faulty memory leads me to believe that SCCA has always attempted to write the auto-x rules to where everyone coud run, regardless of what they have..but have also tried to insure the National Championship isn't a place where somebody can't win a Nat'l title by "accident".

fifty wrote: I'm not hip to SCCA semantics and need some help.

I don't think I'm the right one to help you with this. I'll admit, a lot of us in SCCA have to ask the rules board folks what on earth the new rules mean when they change.

Moot point.

270 car field w/ 100+ novices in an 8-hour, 4-run day is just pointless (that was the last time I did an SCCA event--maybe 4 years ago)

The new classes mean nothing to me.

NASA is run as a business because, well, it is. Their view is they serve their 'customers' vs SCCA providing 'membership benefits' and being run by volunteers who may or may not have a position of authority for purposes other than giving back (ego, inside power for rulings, etc). I'm not saying one is better than the other, it's just two business models.

To be fair, SCCA went after NASA when they first started hosting autocrosses and NASA used the SCCA rules out of convenience. SCCA was not amused and gave them the legal smackdown. Ultimately, NASA found a 'better way' by creating their current rule book. That NASA may want to protect that isn't any more or less evil than SCCA holding their creation close to home.

While I do quite prefer one organization over the other, there is enough customer base out there to keep both busy. Just pick the one you prefer (assuming you have a choice in your area).

z31maniac wrote:

oldsaw wrote: One needs a current rule book, a lot of time and perhaps a lawyer to digest the whole thing.

The rule's for a particular class aren't really difficult to digest.

Your claim is sometimes true, because it is class-dependent.

Check out the forums on SCCAforums.com and you constantly find debates on "what's legal?", "what does rule mean?", "can I do this?", etc., etc.

Even the most experienced competitors have debates over rules and the club doesn't always have a timely answer on how to interpret the rule set.

^Yes, I even have a question on there about a SM legal mod. I "knew" it wasn't legal, but I wanted to see if I could walk around it so to speak.

And most of the posts are obviously from people to lazy to read.

"Can I upgrade my brakes in XXXX class? Is a Carbon Fiber hood legal in XXXX class?" etc etc

NASA was claiming that if we used their ruleset, we'd be opening them up to some sort of liability. Some sort of legal skirmish in the karting world was the precedent. I didn't take notes, I was ambushed out of the blue with a phone call that threatened all sorts of nasty if I didn't comply.

Granted, we were really piggybacking off their rules - we even had a link to their online rule calculator on our site. But still, we're a small club in the middle of Colorado with a few dozen people that runs events designed to cover the cost of facility rental and insurance and nothing else. We don't have the resources to develop our own ruleset from scratch and there's absolutely no benefit to us becoming a NASA affiliate other than higher costs for us. There was no downside to NASA if we used their rules - given that we're at least 250 miles from the nearest NASA events, we certainly weren't competing for entry money. The whole episode left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, it was very anti-grassroots. I should point out that I am a NASA member and hold a NASA license, but I've never actually taken part in an official NASA event.

Now we don't have any official classes at all, we just run for fun. Not that we ever gave out trophies anyhow. But if anyone ever asks to start running classes again, we'll probably develop a ruleset that is very very close to NASA out of sheer coincidence. Of course, our class names will be different.

A few years ago, my club,AMEC, was holding some autocross's. I sought and got permission from NASA-NE to use there rules. the only stipulation was that we had to anounce that we were using their rules. AMEC will be holding an auto cross on a paved stock car track. Here are our classes. Stock- Street driven car with no modification. Exhaust and intake changes allowed.
Prepared- Street driven with modifications. Modified- plus forced air and or DOT "R" tires. Classes will be split at O/U 2.5 L. We have 70 cars preregistered with a waiting list.

Yet another reason I've been less and less thrilled with the SCCA since the years I've started autocrossing...rulesets that make mortgage contracts look like actual English.

Capt Slow wrote: I finally got around to looking at the NASA classing rules. What a neat idea, The engineer in me apreciates that lattatude the points based system gives me to make modificiations.

Thanks! This is what we had in mind when they were written. Also we were interested in the ability to class a car somewhat fairly that wasn't built just for autocross (i.e. no "you gutted the interior? welcome to Prepared" or whatever.) And of course we wanted to make a classing system that didn't require a Masters degree to understand... and didn't require an entire day to read either.

Thus far, NASA-X classing has been very well received and continues to improve with each passing season (and results sheet, and suggestion from a participant...)

Thanks again,

Jon (NASA-X national director & classing co-creator)

ddavidv wrote: To be fair, SCCA went after NASA when they first started hosting autocrosses and NASA used the SCCA rules out of convenience. SCCA was not amused and gave them the legal smackdown. Ultimately, NASA found a 'better way' by creating their current rule book. That NASA may want to protect that isn't any more or less evil than SCCA holding their creation close to home.

ddavid, I honestly didn't know that. It must have happened while I was not competing. That being said, seeing the reaction of some of my SCCA reps when NASA first hit the scene..I'm not really surprised. Disappointed, perhaps..but not surprised at all.

ddavidv wrote: While I do quite prefer one organization over the other, there is enough customer base out there to keep both busy. Just pick the one you prefer (assuming you have a choice in your area).

Well, like I said..I like a lot of the things NASA is doing. I haven't visited one of their auto-x' yet, but every time I see a Spec E30 in the magazine, I think, "..hell, I could probably do that if I sold off a street car or two..".

I'm just tired of the whole American Corporate Business Nonsense at the moment, since my once independent lil' company is now part of a larger corporation, and the workplace environment has degraded from "happy workers are productive workers" to "employees are an expense we must control".

"Think of the stockholders"? You betcha. Every time I go to the pistol range.

But that's my hang-up, not NASA's. Like I said, a personal problem, and not the fault of the sanctioning body.

Furthermore, for all the boasting SCCA does about being a "club", the realities of racing in the current climate is impacting our road racing program, IMO. Road Racing is becoming so expensive that many of our classes are largely populated by the "arrive & drive" driver, who doesn't spend much time socializing with other members of the club (workers, fellow drivers, etc.).

Im curious why the stock class that a maserati biturbo or detomaso pantera fits in is an important matter. lol Although I think autocrossing a pantera would be pretty awesome, I dont think someone would go out and buy one just becasue of the stock class it falls in. I actually have seen an XKE run in stock class, wire wheels and all, and it was pretty fast.

Jon, since your here maybe you can tell me why there doesn't seem to be a NASA-X presence here in northern California? It seems odd since there are quiet a lot of NASA road racers around...

Ian F wrote:

jstein77 wrote:

friedgreencorrado wrote: Locally (Atlanta), there's some noise about the Focus SVT moving from GS to HS.

That is an interesting move; it would seem that the SVT would be a very good car for HS, maybe even competitive with the Mini and the Mazda3.

I'm curious about this as well. Does anyone know how Cooper and SVT times compare? As much as I enjoy running a MINI in HS, the class does seem to be more or less "Spec-MINI" at the National level... I remember looking at the Solo National results for this year. Of the top ten, I think there was one non-MINI?

As was mentioned a Mazda 3 was 6th and a BMW was 7th. I had times for 8th, but barely got cones on my best runs each day, so I finished 13th. I've been beaten by a variety of non-Mini's (4th gen Civic, 6th gen Civic, 7th gen Civic, Impreza L, Escort GT, RSX, Scion, etc) at various events. With that said, a top flight driver in a Mini is tough to beat, especially on narrow courses that seem to be the trend these days.

The NASA rules are terrible for serious ccompetitors. If you really sit down to exploit them, you'll figure out that your stock Mini may be classed against a gutted, turbo'd, coilovered CRX on wide R's, etc, etc, etc. Also, how in the heck are you supposed to know if anyone else is classed right?

Capt Slow wrote: Jon, since your here maybe you can tell me why there doesn't seem to be a NASA-X presence here in northern California? It seems odd since there are quiet a lot of NASA road racers around...

Wish I had an answer for that, but I don't. Bringing NASA-X online in all the regions - and even some areas where there aren't any NASA roadracing chapters - is one of our longer-term projects.

steverife wrote: The NASA rules are terrible for serious ccompetitors. If you really sit down to exploit them, you'll figure out that your stock Mini may be classed against a gutted, turbo'd, coilovered CRX on wide R's, etc, etc, etc. Also, how in the heck are you supposed to know if anyone else is classed right?

With each passing year the number of points-free mods decreases and the number of mods that incur points increases. I have the tentative list of proposed 2010 revisions right here in fact, and it serves to further equalize the playing field in that regard as well as others. As I said earlier the changes have been proposed by competitors as much as by officials, if not more so. I get a lot of emails that start with "Hey Jon, here's a way we might be able to make things more fair..."

Custom base classes (i.e. your turbo'd CRX example above) are issued by national staff for any swapped or hybrid-ized or FI'd or otherwise significantly modified cars. These are based mostly on power-to-weight limits, and require a dyno sheet + weight on trusted scales just to initiate the discussion. A car that is FI'd and gutted could easily jump up several base classes. And the new custom base class applies only to the car's power and weight related mods - the usual points would still be taken for those coilovers, wide R's, etc.

As for knowing if someone is classed right - certainly at any national level NASA-X and at (m)any regional events... competititors will/would/should need to declare all their points on a classing worksheet that is filed with the officials:

http://www.nasaproracing.com/rules/nasa-x/NASA-X_ClassForm.pdf

This form is then used for everything from routine weight & points checks at impound to the first step of an official protest (i.e. it is available to other competitors upon request.) This system has worked quite well in our TT program...

Jon, how does the weight thing work?

I don't have the chart in front of me, but IIRC, my SCCA classed HS 2008 Mazda 3s sedan is 250 lbs lighter than your listed base weight.

The weights are provided by the national office. That chart is very similar for our PT roadracing classes, TT, and NASA-X. I don't know why the weight would be that far off for your particular model, but I'll look into it.

Generally though, as long as verifiable weight with driver and enough fuel to move under its own power (i.e. "declared minimum competition weight") is above that listed number (i.e. "base weight"), you're good to go (i.e. you take no points.)

Serendipity! What I got out of this whole thread was that NASA does autocrsses!

That's cool! I was told by NASA officials (just last year) that NASA did road courses and they left the autocrossing to SCCA.

Now I've just got to find some NASA sponsored autocrosses

getfast wrote: The weights are provided by the national office. That chart is very similar for our PT roadracing classes, TT, and NASA-X. I don't know why the weight would be that far off for your particular model, but I'll look into it. Generally though, as long as verifiable weight with driver and enough fuel to move under its own power (i.e. "declared minimum competition weight") is above that listed number (i.e. "base weight"), you're good to go (i.e. you take no points.)

So I would have to take points just because I bought an '08 instead of an '06?

carguy123 wrote: I was told by NASA officials (just last year) that NASA did road courses and they left the autocrossing to SCCA.

Who told you that? (Feel free to tell me privately, or not at all.)

Autocross is the perfect gateway drug, and an important part of the NASA "ladder system"... a few weeks ago at VIR I counted something like 19 of my current or former regional autocrossers in the various HPDE ranks

steverife wrote: So I would have to take points just because I bought an '08 instead of an '06?

If you don't mind, could you please shoot me an email with further details about a specific model/year/weight/points type of inquiry? So I can pass it along as necessary. nasa-x (at) get (dash) fast (dot) net - that's official communication, forum posts aren't. Thanks!

+1 on NASA.

-1,000,000 on SCCA.

That's why I left SCCA for NASA (and if my financial situation got better, I'd be able to participate again).

Oh yeah, and just try to get in contact with a high-ranking SCCA officer if you're a non-member. Especially when you're trying to offer ideas on how to improve their program.

I've been to a few different NASA events, and at every event, I was given ample time to make my pitch to an interested NASA official (Jon, actually, as well as others). And my idea was immediately discussed with every other member of "upper management".