Reliability mod points vs performance mod points.

[Indysupra]

Basic question here, why are things like an oil pan 25 points but a wing and a splitter are 10 each?  I know the price of aero is a whole different story but I’m just strictly looking at the points structure. I never thought about it until I built a car with a garbage oil pan. 

[collinskl1]

eatingpopcornemoji.gif

 

[tommytipover]

from your lips to God's ears...

 

Reliability mods should be 10 points and aero should be 25-100 each.

[Andrew D Johnson]

11 minutes ago, tommytipover said:

from your lips to God's ears...

 

Reliability mods should be 10 points and aero should be 25-100 each.

If you think that should be changed, I would suggest writing a petition outlining why you feel that way and how making that change would benefit the membership etc. 

[turbogrill]

1.

According to some everything except safety should be points, so you add an oil cooler that should be points. Period.

However there are 1000000 exceptions to this rule.

 

2.

According to some reliability and performance is the same thing. Both is needed to win a race and both cost money.

The counter argument is that it's cheaper to buy 1 oil cooler than a new engine for each race, cheaper to buy 1 set of hubs then replace before each race etc etc...

 

3.

According to some it's to give people with building skills some credit. If you can repurpose your dashboard into an oil cooler than that is 0 pts. (In theory you an melt your entire car an build an F1 car from it). But if you don't have endless of time, a shop and great fabbing skills you are stuck paying points.

 

 

Edit:

I am not saying it's good or bad, I have a great time racing with champcar and will continue to do so. Just build something and race

Edited January 22, 2021 by turbogrill

[TiredBirds]

Aren't they the same? I mean in the concept of endurance racing anyway. Before the points structure was changed a "trap door" oil pan was costly, unless you modified it yourself. Now you can go spend hundreds of dollars on one and only get hit with 25 points, no brainer to me, same with Areo, you used to take the points for the materials, now it is straight up 10. You can go spend $300-400 on fancy pre-made wings and get hit for 10 points.  

[tommytipover]

1 hour ago, Andrew D Johnson said:

If you think that should be changed, I would suggest writing a petition outlining why you feel that way and how making that change would benefit the membership etc. 

I actually didn't realize I felt this way until reading the OP. I always dragged Troy for wanting free accusumps after using all the aero, and I've always believed reliability brings some speed but, it's pretty obvious that an oil cooler is cheaper and  slower than a wang.

I do believe reliability over speed would benefit the membership by reducing costs and speed.

What petition do you think would work better?

1, a generic "speed should cost more than reliability" or

2, an itemized "oil cooler should be 10 points, spoiler 10, spliter 15 wang 100"

 

The problem with the second is what I've seen in the past, is if the board doesn't like a single point of the petition, the entire petition is denied, and the first seems a little too vague to get much attention.

 

To be completely honest, I have the utmost faith and respect for the TAC and thought some rationalization of the rules would have happened shortly after it was formed. I realize every part added to a car has to undergo a cost/speed/benefit analysis for both builders and rules makers, it just seems that as parts are added to the FPV they don't relate well to parts that are already there.

[Andrew D Johnson]

19 minutes ago, tommytipover said:

I actually didn't realize I felt this way until reading the OP. I always dragged Troy for wanting free accusumps after using all the aero, and I've always believed reliability brings some speed but, it's pretty obvious that an oil cooler is cheaper and  slower than a wang.

I do believe reliability over speed would benefit the membership by reducing costs and speed.

What petition do you think would work better?

1, a generic "speed should cost more than reliability" or

2, an itemized "oil cooler should be 10 points, spoiler 10, spliter 15 wang 100"

 

The problem with the second is what I've seen in the past, is if the board doesn't like a single point of the petition, the entire petition is denied, and the first seems a little too vague to get much attention.

The issue I see is a large percentage of members have wings or other aero devices on their cars. If the wing value was to double, or triple, etc. there are going to be people that spent lots of time getting their cars to handle well with the rules the way they were. They are going to say that other than maybe a small handful of outlier cars the racing was very tight, but now there will be 200 teams of disenfranchised members who will need to spend money for new springs or sway bars to re-balance their car.  

Do I think a wing should be higher in points than an oil cooler? Sure, or at least I'm sure a very compelling argument can be made that way. 

I'm not so sure that raising the wing value would be an overall benefit right now. If I was starting with a blank slate, I would very likely have a wing be more points than an oil cooler, but do I want 200 (just a guess) cars to have to change their builds? 

Edited January 22, 2021 by Andrew D Johnson

[Snorman]

3 hours ago, Andrew D Johnson said:

If you think that should be changed, I would suggest writing a petition outlining why you feel that way and how making that change would benefit the membership etc. 

I thought the petition process started in January. Yet I have seen nothing from the series about submitting them. These are typically distributed in March for member review. 

[Chris Huggins]

Just now, Snorman said:

I thought the petition process started in January. Yet I have seen nothing from the series about submitting them. These are typically distributed in March for member review. 

 

 

Fire away:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe6a6aMT6_KWLSdK-hSWPHwdR0J5vmz83ObSOvzqWQeHhUGwQ/viewform

 

Last day to submit 28Feb

[Snorman]

1 minute ago, Chris Huggins said:

 

 

Fire away:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe6a6aMT6_KWLSdK-hSWPHwdR0J5vmz83ObSOvzqWQeHhUGwQ/viewform

 

Last day to submit 28Feb

Did I completely miss that email over the last several weeks???

[Chris Huggins]

1 minute ago, Snorman said:

Did I completely miss that email over the last several weeks???

No email that I recall.

 

Its here on the website

https://champcar.org/web/bod.php

 

[Snorman]

2 minutes ago, Chris Huggins said:

No email that I recall.

 

Its here on the website

https://champcar.org/web/bod.php

 

So will the ability to submit a petition now be open year round and after the "cutoff" for that year's review anything submitted will just fall to the next year's cycle? 

[Chris Huggins]

11 minutes ago, Snorman said:

So will the ability to submit a petition now be open year round and after the "cutoff" for that year's review anything submitted will just fall to the next year's cycle? 

It's been like that for a few years as far as I know?

[Snorman]

1 hour ago, Chris Huggins said:

It's been like that for a few years as far as I know?

Interesting. I thought the process was kicked off by the email sent out each year from the series. I didn't know petitions were being accepted all year. 

[Bill Strong]

7 people have submitted 47 petitions.
and it looks like Chris is adding more.

 

My opinion.

Go download the SCCA BCR. If just a handful of members got their way, that's how the BCCR would be. A few other members would have three pages devoted to one term, like "Brake Caliper".

They would want a BCCR made as basically an instruction book on how to build a car, much like NASCAR. They want to take away the fun of playing with some of the grey areas.

I did submit some safety petitions based on my observations of pitlane, and one other based on parts material.
And remember, the TAC does not make rules or policy. They are an advisory committee for operations and the BOD.

Note: I was a bit late with a few things as we had some operational and personal issues, along with health issues (I caught the COVID, but continued to work, though this happened slow as I was like on my death bed.) But no excuses. I'll be more on top of this stuff.

[enginerd]

3 hours ago, Bill Strong said:

They want to take away the fun of playing with some of the grey areas.

Gray areas are bad. You can eliminate gray areas without adding pages devoted to defining and restricting ‘brake caliper’ and the like. It’s not one or the other. 
 

Gray areas and a lack of “balls” by tech are what lead to a manual transmission MR2 claiming an ‘automatic transmission discount’ and other such atrocities. 

Edited January 23, 2021 by enginerd

[gundy]

6 hours ago, TiredBirds said:

 Now you can go spend hundreds of dollars on one and only get hit with 25 points, no brainer to me, same with Areo, you used to take the points for the materials, now it is straight up 10. You can go spend $300-400 on fancy pre-made wings and get hit for 10 points.  

This really helps keep the cost of racing down.  What ever happened to DIY?

[Bandit]

Aero is points cheap and will remain so because management wants Miata's and CRX's to lap as fast as Cobra's and 260hp Altima's at power tracks. The TAC and Board is filled with BMW, Miata and Honda proponents so don't expect this to change.

 

Never did get an answer as to why cars have been removed from the VPI list, including one that is actually running, while cars like 2019 Fiat Abarth's have been added. Troy may want to ask about that as well since he was told it takes months to add a car yet there was plenty of time to add a whole slew of late model cars.

 

And, last I looked, the pre 80 Vette is still 150 points in the swap calc.

[turbogrill]

2 hours ago, gundy said:

This really helps keep the cost of racing down.  What ever happened to DIY?

 

At least you can pick. Either you spend money or time. Either you pay $400 for an oil pan or you spend a weekend in the garage building one. 

 

I think the problem has been when it would have been cheaper long term to just allow certain aftermarket reliability mods since the factory solution is not suitable for racing or has a serious defect.

 

Along with kill switches and buying  fuel  for points this topic has been discussed 1000000 times. I am out

 

[TiredBirds]

15 hours ago, turbogrill said:

 

At least you can pick. Either you spend money or time. Either you pay $400 for an oil pan or you spend a weekend in the garage building one. 

 

I think the problem has been when it would have been cheaper long term to just allow certain aftermarket reliability mods since the factory solution is not suitable for racing or has a serious defect.

 

Along with kill switches and buying  fuel  for points this topic has been discussed 1000000 times. I am out

 

you are missing the point, some people lack the skill set and the tools to fab up an oil pan. This league will continue to see speed creep and get more expensive because the points structure keeps dropping. when we built our car in 2014 it was a 480+ point car. Now same car with more mods is at 400. 

[Andrew D Johnson]

18 hours ago, Bandit said:

Aero is points cheap and will remain so because management wants Miata's and CRX's to lap as fast as Cobra's and 260hp Altima's at power tracks. The TAC and Board is filled with BMW, Miata and Honda proponents so don't expect this to change.

 

Never did get an answer as to why cars have been removed from the VPI list, including one that is actually running, while cars like 2019 Fiat Abarth's have been added. Troy may want to ask about that as well since he was told it takes months to add a car yet there was plenty of time to add a whole slew of late model cars.

 

And, last I looked, the pre 80 Vette is still 150 points in the swap calc.

 

1) Not even worth responding 

2) Some cars were removed, and some had name changes. The ones I am aware of were from Huggin's petitions. Many of the cars petitioned were removed as they didn't even exist as North American models. I don't think any of the cars petitioned and removed were ones running in the series. Cars have typically been added by people requesting a value on the tech desk. From there the value is discussed by tech and the TAC, and a recommended value is passed along to the CEO. The CEO then decides if the car should be added to the list and at what value. 

3) I read a few days ago that there have been some errors found in the swap calc, and that Bill Strong is working to fix these errors. 

[mender]

On 1/22/2021 at 1:59 PM, Bill Strong said:

They would want a BCCR made as basically an instruction book on how to build a car, much like NASCAR. They want to take away the fun of playing with some of the grey areas.

And there are people who are getting tired of the "grey areas" that have been backdoored for years as a way to circumvent the rules and gain an unfair advantage over the rest of the field. It's no fun at all to find out that a competitor is being allowed to cheat and is justifying it by calling it "grey".

 

For instance, there's nothing "grey" about being allowed to use the turbo MR2 swap weight for a non-turbo MR2 swap; that's cheating in my book whether sanctioned or not.

[Bandit]

On 1/23/2021 at 1:29 PM, Andrew D Johnson said:

Many of the cars petitioned were removed as they didn't even exist as North American models.

Buick's and Olds' are certainly North American. Regal's and Cutlass' have certainly run in this series, including a Cutty at the most recent Road America race. All except the Aurora II removed from the list. (Has one of those EVER run?)

 

I'm pretty sure that Cutlass has run previously at RA as well. I recall an Olds Omega running a race out west that is also not graced with a place on the VPI list.

 

On 1/23/2021 at 1:29 PM, Andrew D Johnson said:

I read a few days ago that there have been some errors found in the swap calc, and that Bill Strong is working to fix these errors. 

Is an 1800 pound car being allowed to swap in over 200HP an error as well?

 

Swap calc allowing over 9:1 pwr sure sounds like an error.

 

• reference weights: base curb weight: 825 kg / 1819 lbs

https://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/honda_usa/crx_2gen_usa/crx_2gen_usa/1988.html

 

*The swap calc would have you think a full size 80's Cutlass is only 600 pounds heavier than a 2 door 1988 CRX.... yeah.... ok....

Edited January 24, 2021 by Bandit

[Bandit]

On 1/22/2021 at 4:39 PM, enginerd said:

Gray areas are bad. You can eliminate gray areas without adding pages devoted to defining and restricting ‘brake caliper’ and the like. It’s not one or the other. 

TA2, a much more professional series than Champcar spells out things pretty clearly;

 

Keeping the TA2™ class the high performance, low cost platform it was founded upon is important to Trans Am and its drivers. The following constitute the class’s cost control measures: 

Shock Absorbers - $850 each
Brake Calipers - $550 each
Brake Pads- $250 per axle
Wheels – $175 each
Headers - $1,850 a set
Complete Exhaust System - $2,200

 

Obviously those prices are higher than one would like to see in this series, but it's pretty straightforward.

 

Of course there are cars in this series currently that blow right past TA2's cost control's for some parts.