SCCA classes available to a Miata?

Keith wrote: As someone who's had to make the change from R comps (Toyo RA1) to tw140 (Toyo R1R), lemme tell you there's a huge difference in performance! Wow. No difference in price or lifespan as far as I can tell, the tw140s just don't work as well.

When you say 'no difference in lifespan', are you talking apples-to-apples, tires-changed-at-the-track lifespan? Another scenario? Details?

I'm guessing treadwear ratings are not calculated on autocross courses, so I guess it's not as surprising as I'd like it to be that under that sort of abuse the TW140s wouldn't last significantly longer. OTOH, if R-comps are supposed to be more durable than slicks under the same conditions, maybe I would expect some greater degree of longevity out of TW140s...

I'm mostly a denizen of SM, but with the possibility of talking my girlfriend into a WRX as a DD for the next couple of years while the 2002 is under construction, this becomes somewhat less academic...

I loved running R comps in stock class, but I do see the argument for street tires in stock class. Personally, I think you'd save a ton of money on tires. Moving from HS to STS, I probably spend 1/3 to 1/5th of what I spent on R-comps (some of that is given back by trailering the STS car).

With that said, I would quite autocross before I would run a stock class car on streets. Stock class is bad enough on R-comps.

Well, we actually ran ES this weekend. It was a complete "shakedown cruise" type of a day with the crappy all seasons that came with our car, so we didn't expect to be anywhere near keeping up and we didn't. We had completed a mechanical run through on the car, but haven't even had an alignment done yet. I'm pretty much tossing the rest of this season in hopes of getting familiar with the basic handling of the car and starting fresh next year. It was, however, abundantly clear that even at an informal "club" level, the guys with the r-comps are going to be all but unbeatable if we stick with street tires of any kind. Unfortunately, a move to STR means we will again by racing pretty much by ourselves, so I still haven't decided which direction we're heading. Also, I'm not inclined to switch clubs as some have suggested. The one we primarily run with, while I find it unfortunate they roughly follow SCCA stock classing, allows my son to work and to ride with me during the racing, so I'm not giving that up. All things considered, we'll probably just relegate ourselves to backmarkers and stay in ES so we'll at least have someone to race with.

Bummer about the competition thing. It is often hard to find in all but the biggest clubs.

In our club, PRO class is pretty constant and everything else is kind of hit or miss and it changes year to year.

...but you just have to look at raw times or pax times or whatever and make the best of it. I never thought I'd be one of the "PRO" guys, but I gradually ended up there and while I've never won the class, I'll probably trophy about 40% of the time.

Good luck finding a niche. Personally, I would build STR and aim for fastest time on street tires.

Seems odd there's nobody running STR in your region. It's been pretty popular here, with a couple of cars really built to the rules. Judging by the Nationals registrations, it seems like it's one of the more popular classes overall. One of my day-dream builds is a S52 M Roadster set up for STR. Again, like my desire to run in ES, because there's guys (and a fast gal) to run against here.