It's that time of the year! We just finished picking a date and confirming rules for the Grassroots Motorsports $2017 Challenge Driven by General Tire. A few of you–our most experienced competitors–have already read these and given us your input.
Date: October 20-21, 2017
Place: Gainesville Raceway
Not sure what we're talking about? Check out the full recap from the $2016 event here.
Before I get into the rule changes for $2017, let me address the elephant in the room: Safety. Despite an overwhelmingly positive safety record, a few cars at the $2016 event weren't up to the standard we want to set. For this reason, tech inspection will be completely revamped at the $2017 Challenge.
For legal and logistical reasons, GRM has always outsourced its technical inspections to NHRA tech inspectors. Clearly, they weren't performing to the standard that the Challenge requires. Expect tech to be hard at the $2017 event, with fresh faces and more time allotted for it.
Read the SCCA Solo and NHRA safety handbooks, and if your car is radical in any way, shape, or form, we highly recommend you talk to us about it, then go to a local test & tune night and let a NHRA inspector look at it before coming to Gainesville.
Next year, tech will be vigilant, and we will send unsafe cars back to the paddock for repairs before we issue tech stickers. On the bright side, this should make for some interesting paddock fixes.
Now, onto our next elephant: The Porsche 917 at this year's event. Team T-Bone built a cool car, but they didn't build a safe car. No, it wasn't as bad as the internet made it sound, but it wasn't built correctly. Our outsourced tech inspectors let it (and other questionable decisions) out on course, and no protests were filed against the team. Additionally, we audited the team's budget, and did not find any discrepancies under the $2016 rules. For these reasons, Team T-Bone will keep their second place trophy, but we will not allow that car back into the Challenge without substantial modifications. T-Bone, we love you, but call us before you start next year's entry–we want you to build cool, safe cars, and we're willing to help.
Now, about protests. The new rules clarify their role and the process. Protests are important for the success of the event. As the field of entries grows and the cars get crazier, we have a need and an obligation to police each other. It's not that GRM wants to make $50–in fact, there's a pretty darn good chance we'll give you the deposit back no matter what the outcome of the protest is–it's that we need your help, and quick asides to staff members are not the correct process. We debated making the protest deposit $1, but decided $50 was the correct amount after reviewing our peers' policies. We've also clarified when protests may be filed: Until two hours before the awards banquet.
About the concours: This year, a few scores were messed up due to a human error. This has been fixed, and scoring will not be an issue in the future. To avoid judges' bias against a particular make or model of car, we will have more judges at the $2017 event. We'll also have a more diverse group of judges. They'll also be taking breaks more often to refresh and reenergize themselves. Additionally, we've set a time limit on judging, and will have a timekeeper present for each car. Each team will be allowed three minutes to present their build, with bonus time awarded for spectacularly spectacular builds. I should also mention this: Concours judges will not judge safety. We purposely separate church and state in that department, letting tech inspection handle safety issues and concours judges handle everything else. If a car has a tech sticker on it, then it will be considered safe unless there is a protest, something breaks or something is changed–no exceptions.
We've also clarified the budget recoup rules, as well as added a few safety exemptions. Please take note also of the "Reese Rule," and the "Stampie Rule"
Last but not least, build books. New for $2017 is a recipe of what's expected. We'll have a budget spreadsheet template that all teams must use available on the $2017 Challenge website by Monday.
With all this said, I'm hopeful for the future of the Challenge. It's always been my favorite event. And it's always full of my favorite people. We're headed in a great direction, and $2017 should be the best year yet.
Without further rambling, here are the $2017 Challenge Rules.
