I'm going to suggest a change to the Challenge format

My challenge car will never be good at drag racing.  I'm hopeful I can maybe eek out a 13.X this year.  Does that make it a Crap Build and me a Bad builder?   

The challenge is a fun event and I have massive respect for people who dedicate their builds to being really good at it, but I don't really think acting like the challenge is some crucible of vehicle/builder quality is quite fair.    There are Thousands of Really high quality builds made by insanely talented builders that would not excel at the challenge, nor even be legal for it.   Some people build really high quality cars just for fun that aren't even fast.  

Only 1 car won the challenge this year does that mean 39 crap builds showed up?  Maybe people's comments are meant as good natured trash talk, but to me ultimate performance is not the final arbitrator of build or builder quality.  

As somebody on the outside, looking in, but having followed it since the $2002 challenge, with the urge to build one...

Outright performance in any one (or all) categories wasn't ever the point, in my opinion.  It's always been about the creative use of junk, creative way to cook the books (which has been addressed somewhat in recent years) as well as a showcase for people to show off their insane but hilariously awesome junk, they've cobbled together, themselves, without the ability to cut a chassis shop a check for $30k, a bodyshop for $15k, a shop to wire the car for $4k and on and on. 

The dichotomy of drag racing and auto-x is one I am sure that most people do enjoy. The chassis setups to excel in either area couldn't be further apart, and therein lies the beauty. It's also not something you absolutely *need*  a Pro-driver to throw up a good time. The ability to have a pro driver, for auto-x is great. If I ever get off my ass and build a car... I'll be making use of that. As its been 20 years since I've done any Auto-x. And it was negligible at best, back then. It's also a LOT easier on the cars and parts, than hot lapping a track would be.  Not to mention serves to level the playing field, by quite a bit. 

There are plenty of track day / time trial events to get your rocks off, at. To me, that just doesn't fit the spirit of what the challenge has always been about... being E36 M3 thrown together on a budget, to show you don't have to spend a million bucks to have fun. In relatable events, to the average guy.  

Just my .02 of a buck. I for one, like and appreciate the events setup the way they are, and wouldn't change a thing - if it was my baby. 

Thinking about it some time- one thing that might be interesting are spec tires.  And by that, I mean not R compound tires, but the hot 200 tires.

And I would limit tires to 6- 4 specifically for autocross, and two for the non-drive wheels/tires for the drags.

Of course, that would only be possible if some tire maker was interested in supplying their tires to the field and GRM could get a good price.  But it would normalize some of the performance between the cars- since the top of the field run R compound and special drag tires.

BTW, my memory could be wrong, but hasn't a winner been both FTD and fastest drag racer?

In reply to nocones :

The whole thing is how to balance two very different performance requirements.  Which is a very interesting challenge to take part in.  Some people lean toward trying to be FTD at the autocross (I chose that path, too), others do the drag race.  And the change to be a total dynamic time is better than it used to be- where it was weighted based on the fasted car in each part, and that was when the rules heavily biased drag racing performance.

For you, you need to be ~3 seconds faster autocrosser than the fastest drag racer.