Runoffs

The Runoffs at SCCA.com are good to watch and on right now. Lots of drama so far. T3 had some good battles but lots of carnage.

 

Yes/maybe and Yes and Yes. But I'm not sure what today's pro ladder is since I have no interest in it. I just like club racing at the highest amateur level. Maybe one day I'll do some trans-am low level pro racing just to say I have done it. For some reason there is appeal for some low level active pro racers like Ave and Francis to come back and race with amateurs. I'm not sure what the appeal would be especially when AVE and Francis race amateur SCCA GT1 in current competitive trans am cars and a 10x National Champion (past low level pro) Mike Lewis who is the #1 GT1 guy in the nation in SCCA is running an old late 90's trans am car and can only qualify after the new cars. Same thing happened at the Indy Runoffs when Lewis in his old car lost to Pintaric also a pro in a new car.

 

No. I'm not into an arms race. I like touring car classes because you cannot change as much stuff. The slower the touring class the more stock the car is. That makes for oem reliability and more driver focus than machine. Everything is a tradeoff. Even with a stockish touring car (T2) I'll go through 3 sets of dry hoosiers at $1700/set and a dry 4th set isn't unreasonable at all. My 4th set are 3 year old rain tires we just don't use much. The winners use stacks of new tires dry and wet. It costs money to win.

 

Rob SRF on now at scca.com.

 

Good race in SRF. Meserindino races with Calclub and runs a bunch of SRF's out of his Buttonwillow shop.. I'm a calcluber too. I have considered renting a ride from Meserindino and giving SRF a try. I just can't bring myself to so SM. I started doing Runoffs because they were moving around the country and I like to race non-regional tracks out of boredom. About every other year I race out of my area for the year. I hope to do that for 2021 covid depending. I'm now racing a paddle shift mustang in T2. No one is doing that except Scotty B...a good racer but his Runoffs was a disaster in 2 classes with the mustang while Mast in his same s550 stang but manual box developed by the most winning team in SCCA took the championship in T3. So does my stang have potential? Maybe... The cost is stupid but you only live once. I do not know about GT2 and left T1 because it became an arms race after class consolidation lead to T1 and STO combo where T1 got bunch of new upgrades AKA increased costs to run T1. I see T1 and GT2 as arms races and money pits. My T2 mustang is not fully developed and I did everything myself including weld the cage and I'm into it for $55k +. T1 is a weird class. They allowed this developed T1 because they needed a place for the very few STO cars. But SCCA really wanted the old T1 class philosophy and hence developed T1-LP or T1 limited prep. That's how the Ferrari 550 and Maserati grand turismo got in there. SCCA's hope is that the class would be taken over by T1-LP cars and the full prep cars and STO cars would go away by attrition. Well when you loose what do you do is add more power and development so you got a mix of T1 full prep and T1-LP racing together where the LP cars are not competitive but many of the LP cars are really T2 cars and can and do race both classes. That's me. I know I'm not winning T1 but if I'm towing all the way to Road America or Daytona from Cali I'm going to race my T2 car in both T2 and T1 just because. The LP sticker is on your door so the scruts know how much mods are done per the GCR. Racing two classes works because 90% of the time T1 and T2 are not run in the same mixed class group. While at runoffs you can say run a 4cylinder ecoobost mustang in T3 and T2. But at any majors or regional race T2 and T3 are in the same race group so you have to pick one or race T2 saturday and T3 sunday to get enough points to race Runoffs in both classes. All that must be clear as mud!