So long SCCA Stock; hello Street

tread depth is measured as new ... after that who cares ... all tires eventually become "shaved" ....

My region has been doing a "street" class for years, so this if great in my opinion. It is usually the largest class by far.

racerdave600 wrote: ...and it won't take long for someone to start creating tires for this purpose only.

Unlikely... the TW200 rule sort of prevents that. While there will always be some tires that wear better than others, TW200 tires seem to wear pretty well and anything that doesn't could find itself on the exclusion list pretty quick. When the RS3 came out, people questioned the 140 rating because tire wore so much better than the other popular 140 tire (Toyo R1R), but about the same as the Star Spec (TW200). Hankook said the 140 rating was purely marketing so nobody really complained when they changed it to 200 this year.

The whole "purpose built autocross tires" issue is what created the R-Comp can of worms in the first place back in the 80's... so it's pretty much guaranteed they will be keeping a tight leash on what constitutes a TW200 tire.

I'm somewhat intentionally ignorant about scca-classing, but am i the only one who finds it odd that a "stock" class allows modifications at all from stock?
i mean tire and brake compounds are almost a more subjective alteration than any other change in parts since theyre wear items as well as extremely variable without changing the physical fit. limiting tire choices based on TW ratings strikes me as arbitrary at best.

i just hope my supply of used up 275/35/15 hoosiers doesnt dry up from this.

WilberM3 wrote: I'm somewhat intentionally ignorant about scca-classing, but am i the only one who finds it odd that a "stock" class allows modifications at all from stock?

Some are for safety. Sway bars make cars less likely to roll over. Other mod allowances are for convenience. Factory service parts dry up, and often cost more than non-OE replacements.

Boost_Crazy wrote: In reply to oldsaw: Wait a minute here... who says this is just for newbies? I think this does more to balance the field by taking one big variable out of the equation. Of course those with more skill should beat those with less. We aren't talking about skill, we are talking about tires. Are you implying that only those who lack skill would want to drive on street tires? I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of experienced racers that would like to not have to buy, store, and transport race tires and still be able to compete. If bolting on race tires that help you stay ahead of better drivers on street tires in otherwise equal cars makes you feel special, then I feel sad for you. Besides, there will still be a stock car- race tire class. If people really want that, then there should be nothing for you to worry about. I hope you don't take it too hard when some casual autocrosser hands you your ass and bursts your bubble.

I ran my Mazda 3 in stock pretty "seriously" for 2.5 years in HS. One of my frustrations is that I had several people at locals tell me that the ONLY reason I beat them was the Hoosiers. They had it in their head that race tires were worth 2 seconds, regardless of course length or surface. Nevermind that I ran popular ST tires back to back with my Hoosiers several times and found that the Hoosiers were worth about .18 seconds per 10 seconds on our courses/sites.

I would have been thrilled to run agains those folks on a more level playing field. :)

FSP_ZX2 wrote: The rumor now is that because of a drastic drop in demand, Hoosier will pull back on the A6 and only offer the R6--if so the SP types, like me (who will use a Hoosier only 275/35-15), get hosed. Hope the rumor is only a rumor...

That sounds like FUD, they probably sell more A6s to road racers as qualifying tires or time trial tires than to autocrossers at this point.

Hmm, may put money into the all-stock ZX2 instead of the already modified Miata...

mazdeuce wrote: This is a big one. To put my 2 on Hoosiers would have cost me $1000 for tires and another couple of hundred for wheels and I'd only be able to use them twice a month maybe and would need a new set for nationals. It was $550 to order a set of Star Specs and have them put on. The lasted a year of twice a month autocrosses and 12,000 miles of street driving. I still would have needed a new set for nationals, but I could have driven there on them, learned that I was slow, driven home and run them for another year. Hoosiers are one of the reasons I got out of autocross the first time. I couldn't afford them with two little kids in diapers, and without them I couldn't even measure myself against the fast guys. Sometimes that extra $500 is the difference between a guy staying and getting better, and packing it up for a decade.

Thank you, its what I've been advocating for awhile now. Throwing slicks on a stock car for a "Stock class" was moronic at best.

steverife wrote: One of my frustrations is that I had several people at locals tell me that the ONLY reason I beat them was the Hoosiers. They had it in their head that race tires were worth 2 seconds, regardless of course length or surface. Nevermind that I ran popular ST tires back to back with my Hoosiers several times and found that the Hoosiers were worth about .18 seconds per 10 seconds on our courses/sites.

Okay, you're right, that's not two seconds. but I'm going to call 1.08 seconds a huge margin on a one-minute course. That's enough to dictate the outcome of any two-person competition which would have been close on more similar tires.

yamaha wrote:

mazdeuce wrote: This is a big one. To put my 2 on Hoosiers would have cost me $1000 for tires and another couple of hundred for wheels and I'd only be able to use them twice a month maybe and would need a new set for nationals. It was $550 to order a set of Star Specs and have them put on. The lasted a year of twice a month autocrosses and 12,000 miles of street driving. I still would have needed a new set for nationals, but I could have driven there on them, learned that I was slow, driven home and run them for another year. Hoosiers are one of the reasons I got out of autocross the first time. I couldn't afford them with two little kids in diapers, and without them I couldn't even measure myself against the fast guys. Sometimes that extra $500 is the difference between a guy staying and getting better, and packing it up for a decade.

Thank you, its what I've been advocating for awhile now. Throwing slicks on a stock car for a "Stock class" was moronic at best.

If you guys are so hung-up on what "stock" means, you should also focus your attention on all the other allowances. Wheels, pads, swaybars, shocks, and exhaust should be "stock" too, right?

As long as you're consumed by semantics, throwing "slicks" on a stock car is not moronic if someone wants to run in Prepared or Modified.

In reply to oldsaw:

You're missing the point......in "Modern" vehicles, a set of shocks, one of two sway bars, brake pads, or catback exhaust aren't going to give nearly the gain over your competitors that the r-comp does. Aside from the guys dropping 2 grand plus on a set of penske shocks, everything else listed there would a negligable advantage at best. The whole point of this was to level the playing field, and because the scca is losing memberships, not scare off newbies.

z31maniac wrote: Meh, people will buy street tires instead of race tires and the way the SCCA rules are setup and in a few years it will still turn into to "X car is best at this class" and guys will run shaved street tires instead of the purple crack.

Even if that's true, the folks who show up with race only tires on trailered cars will now have a much smaller advantage over the arrive and drive people, and that's a good thing. Frankly, this fear has not borne out in the ST classes as many nationally competitive drivers drive to events on their competition tires when feasible (often for out of town events, trailering is more about logistics and planning than streetability of the tires).

There are plenty of young enthusiasts who work/live in more urban areas where keeping a trailer or an extensively modified car would be quite difficult. These people tend to have good jobs and disposable income and are exactly the sort of people the SCCA should be targeting to grow their aging membership base.

In reply to Josh:

That group of people sound just like the attendees at the BMWCCA and PCA events I used to attend. Most were running mostly stock cars and couldn't stand the SCCA for not being competitive(They could drive btw)

yamaha wrote: In reply to oldsaw: You're missing the point......in "Modern" vehicles, a set of shocks, one of two sway bars, brake pads, or catback exhaust aren't going to give nearly the gain over your competitors that the r-comp does. Aside from the guys dropping 2 grand plus on a set of penske shocks, everything else listed there would a negligable advantage at best. The whole point of this was to level the playing field, and because the scca is losing memberships, not scare off newbies.

My point is that all the above items are available to everyone - just like tires. Anyone who chooses any/all those options except tires will still have a decided advantage over those who choose otherwise. The playing field is still not level, it's just a bit cheaper.

Banning r-comps from "Stock" is like banning Hawaiian vacations because most people can only afford going to the lake.

In reply to oldsaw:

So, I presume you're a "Take my purple crack from my cold dead hands" group of people......duely noted.

Obviously you haven't seen the issue unfold where a stock class has 12 entrants and only one is on r-comps. Needless to say, in my years running those classes, I rarely saw people coming back due to not being able to even come close.

You CAN come close with a comparable set of street tires to those who have maxed out the rest of the stock class modifications but were still running street tires. Most of those who never returned were already using competitive ST tires(at the time the RS2, azenis, original z1, etc) as their summer DD tires.....so, how many of those would have kept returning if the r-comps had never been allowed? I found many of those people running in combined class PCA/bmwcca events instead of the scca. Heck, one bmwcca event I attended had roughly 70% non-bmw's running....

oldsaw wrote:

yamaha wrote: In reply to oldsaw: You're missing the point......in "Modern" vehicles, a set of shocks, one of two sway bars, brake pads, or catback exhaust aren't going to give nearly the gain over your competitors that the r-comp does. Aside from the guys dropping 2 grand plus on a set of penske shocks, everything else listed there would a negligable advantage at best. The whole point of this was to level the playing field, and because the scca is losing memberships, not scare off newbies.

My point is that all the above items are available to everyone - just like tires. Anyone who chooses any/all those options except tires will still have a decided advantage over those who choose otherwise. The playing field is still not level, it's just a bit cheaper. Banning r-comps from "Stock" is like banning Hawaiian vacations because most people can only afford going to the lake.

"Let them eat cake" post.

<sarcasm>Why should we try to regulate with an eye on cost? Racing is expensive; if you can't or won't join the fiscal arms/tires/shocks race, take up birdwatching.</sarcasm>

yamaha wrote: In reply to oldsaw: So, I presume you're a "Take my purple crack from my cold dead hands" group of people......duely noted.

I have no skin in this game. If I did and could afford Hoosiers, I'd buy them. If I couldn't afford them, I wouldn't - with the full realization that I couldn't be as fast without them. And, I wouldn't beotch about it.

yamaha wrote: Obviously you haven't seen the issue unfold where a stock class has 12 entrants and only one is on r-comps. Needless to say, in my years running those classes, I rarely saw people coming back due to not being able to even come close.

You saw a bunch of quitters who would rather do something else to have fun.

yamaha wrote: You CAN come close with a comparable set of street tires to those who have maxed out the rest of the stock class modifications but were still running street tires. Most of those who never returned were already using competitive ST tires(at the time the RS2, azenis, original z1, etc) as their summer DD tires.....so, how many of those would have kept returning if the r-comps had never been allowed? I found many of those people running in combined class PCA/bmwcca events instead of the scca. Heck, one bmwcca event I attended had roughly 70% non-bmw's running....

If "coming close" was the objective, they should have run in a corresponding ST class. They would still have had their butts kicked except that they would have been "closer". And then they would have left, anyway.

ransom wrote: Why should we try to regulate with an eye on cost? Racing is expensive; if you can't or won't join the fiscal arms/tires/shocks race, take up birdwatching.

I have absolutely no problems with regulating to reduce costs.

I have problems with those casual participants who (wrongfully) believe they are just a set of tires away from winning.

In reply to oldsaw:

You've obviously not looked at the massive decline in SCCA AX participation on every level, especially in Stock, and especially amongst newer/younger members, or seen the massive uptick in participation of the new Street "Road Tire" experimental class.

This change was absolutely required for SCCA AX to remain viable at local/regional levels.

Or that ST has been growing or holding steady while Stock declines?

I do find it funny that many of the most vocal people bitching about it are the ones who haven't been in years.

In my experience in talking with some who tried auto-x for awhile and then quit, it had less to do with R-Comps (although it was a common knee-jerk excuse) and more to do with not realizing how hard it would be after the initial novelty wore off. They don't want to admit they can't or won't do what it takes to get better so they blame R-comps.

Re-writing the rules to appeal to these people is a fool's errand.

oldsaw wrote:

yamaha wrote: In reply to oldsaw: You're missing the point......in "Modern" vehicles, a set of shocks, one of two sway bars, brake pads, or catback exhaust aren't going to give nearly the gain over your competitors that the r-comp does. Aside from the guys dropping 2 grand plus on a set of penske shocks, everything else listed there would a negligable advantage at best. The whole point of this was to level the playing field, and because the scca is losing memberships, not scare off newbies.

My point is that all the above items are available to everyone - just like tires. Anyone who chooses any/all those options except tires will still have a decided advantage over those who choose otherwise. The playing field is still not level, it's just a bit cheaper. Banning r-comps from "Stock" is like banning Hawaiian vacations because most people can only afford going to the lake.

I agree with this to a point--between shocks, sways, new wheels (+1 inch diameter), exhaust, what else am I missing from the new street class, it is stil going to cost $1,000 to $4,000 per car to get it to a competitive level. However, it does do something to even the playing field because now this is a one-time purchase rather than a recurring annual $800-$5000 fee for HoHo's. If/when I make a run at nationals, I will have a set of competition tires that go on the car for the first time for the big event. Then they are run for the next 365 days, on the street and track, until a new set goes on for nationals.

I never understood running a stock class anyway. Pick the wrong car and you suck. That's why I liked ST- so much. You could pick the wrong car but still be halfway competitive because you can overcome their faults. This is realyl important to people that want to "run what you have".... like me.