Now let's see if I've got this right: San Francisco has huge events,
therefore it has the best drivers? The average NEDiv event is rather small
(New England Region perhaps being the exception, but still Soooo much
smaller than San Francisco) and therefore does not produce great drivers.
Have I got that right?
Heh, heh, well San Francisco has to suck wind behind its smaller NPDiv
neighbor Northwest Region this year! SF had 24 trophy winners, 3 champions.
Northwest had 25 trophy winners, six champions.
Poor ol' New England only had 13 trophy winners -- but just as many
champions as San Francisco.
Those Southern Pacific folk in Cal Club, where autox is not quite as strong
as San Francisco, only had eight trophy winners -- five of those were
champions.
Hayul, them rural folk down in Texas Region had a dozen trophy winners and,
yep, as many champions as San Francisco.
Now urban hotbeds Deeetroyt and Chick-cago had 14 and 15 trophy winners, but
only one champ each.
And the man who just became the owner of the longest-ever open-class winning
streak -- John Thomas who now owns seven in a row (eight total) -- is the
ONLY champion, in fact the only *trophy winner*, EVER to come out of
Mississippi Region.
And what the hell does all that prove?
Not a damn thing!
Bigger Regions have bigger events and more trophy winners because they are
bigger regions and have more people, not because they are inherently better.
While it is true that strong competition breeds greater excellence, that
does not mean there has to be a couple of dozen in a given class to provide
that strong competition. All it takes is one other driver of near-equal
ability to push you. Two or three is nicer. If you have 2 dozen in the
class, chances are 3/4 of them are spearcarriers (who, like most of us, are
having a good time out there but do not live or die on whether we won today
or whether my drivers are better than your drivers).
Just because a Region has smaller events does not make it inferior, only
smaller. And it means we can show up at 8 in the morning to set up, get
first car off around 11, give everyone 4-5 runs, be doing fun runs by 3, be
picked up and home by 5. What we lose by fewer competitors (assuming we lose
anything) we make up for in more seat time. There are advantages at both
ends of the spectrum. Neither is inherently bad. Neither is inherently
superior. What makes either superior or inferior has more to do with how the
show is run and the individuals involved than with how big the show is.
IMHO, both San Francisco and New England have good Solo II programs (so do
Kentucky and Snake River and Susquehanna and Southwestern Louisiana and St.
Louis and Arizona Border and most of the rest of SCCA's 109 Regions). Any
valid comparison stops there.
--Rocky Entriken
"I hate intolerance"
|