> One point here is to establish that when it reaches a given level,
reaching
> that level merits championship accord.
I agree - but what you're missing here is that "level" is not just a
measure of how many people show up at a single event, but rather, how many
people show up _over a period of time_
Any class, given sufficient organization and motivation, can meet an entry
target once. There has been no shortage of car fads and other "flash in the
pan" scenarios over the years - remember Sport Truck? If you make an entry
target twice (or more) though, then the concept behind your class
_probably_ has enough legs to justify being included as a Championship
class.
We have far and away too many classes. To create new classes in the face of
this means that the new classes MUST MUST MUST fulfill some powerfully
lacking void in our coverage, and MUST MUST MUST have legs to stand on.
> 18 is the number that existed this year. It does not have to be the final
> number. And it can be an Open number only, not Open/Ladies combined. The
> formula could be whatever is deemed to be. 20? 25? That's a detail TBD
> later.
Actually, it is my understanding that the "18" value is not just something
pulled out of the air, but rather a percentage of the total expected
turnout for Nationals. It is supposedly based on the minimum percentage
number that a class is supposed to bring to Nationals before it goes on
probation (although that has never actually happened to my knowledge)
> Hard to blame a class's numbers on "bottom feeders" when it produces
enough
> combatants to make it bigger than a third of the championship classes.
That is because the current system is doing its job and discouraging bottom
feeding. A win in SM2 or STX didn't get you a Championship this year. Nor
will it next year. Assuming that they both meet the entry target next year,
it will be 2004 before you can win an SM2 or STX National Championship, and
by then, the class should be deep enough to make bottomfeeding either class
a low-percentage option.
That is what happened in SM at least. Two years ago, a year ago, a
decently-prepped ESP car could be a top-tier SM car. For the most part,
this is no longer a valid option, especially at Pros. At Nationals this
year... well, the entire class kinda drove off our own pace, and I can't
really say why... but on average, the bar in SM has been raised high enough
that you really need a "real" SM car to be competitive on a regular basis.
> Besides, some people are always looking for "soft" classes and not just
> limiting their search (and success in finding them) to supplementals.
True enough. But the current sup system protects the embryo sup classes by
making them unattractive to all but the people who really "are" members of
the class.
> I can think of one who might fit that pejorative description
> who said he borrowed a ride in an SP car this year to run SM2 because he
> wanted to be sure the class would be here next year because he is
building
> his own car specifically for it.
Then he, by definition, is NOT a "bottom feeder", is he? He's a future
class member working to ensure the system works - and, incidently, EXACTLY
the kind of person we want in the SM family. If you want it, ya gotta EARN
it.
> Yes, you did it as it should be done. But IMHO Kent Rafferty, the 2000
> winner in a supplemental 20-car SM class, is no less a champion than Jeff
> Reitmeir winning a "real" 39-car SM. With one difference. No disrespect
to
> Reitmeir, but Rafferty was there at the beginning and helped build the
> class. Reitmeir had a class to win because of the Raffertys (and, in a
very
> large measure, the Dennis Grants too!).
With no disrespect to Kent....
I gotta be careful how I say this. I was there, right? I know what it took
to win Kent's "National Win" title. And the man worked his ass off and
drove better than all the rest of us. Yeah, it helped that his car perhaps
started off with a little more potential off the showroom floor than some
of the others (you can say the same thing of the BMWs) but that's just
smart car selection on his (their) part.
It's tough, very tough, to build a Street Modified car. Almost everything
you try at first slows the car down, and the stuff that does work often
puts you over your head as a driver for a little bit while you adjust, or
causes reliability problems, or upsets some other part of your apple cart -
ask Daddio :)
So we were all going through this really steep learning and development
curve at the same time, and all struggling, and Kent did the best job of
either getting his ducks in a row or driving around his misaligned ducks,
and took the win. So in that aspect, yeah, it was a "Championship" drive.
There's really not any question of that.
But at the same time, our performance as a class relative to the rest of
the sport and to our own potential was way, way below the curve. The best
approach from an event-winning perspective that first SM season would have
been to get a reasonably well-sorted ESP or BSP car and drive that
unmodified. You woulda cleaned house. Without question. An ESP backmarker
could have owned us.
So there's this duality here: on one hand, his win has all the marks of
every other Championship win in all the other classes (and to my mind, has
a hell of a lot more legitimacy than a jacket issued in a single-car
"National" class) On the other hand, the only reason he was given the
chance to display this Championship-level performance was that everybody
else in the class was on equal footing with him. If we had been buried
under xSP (time to stop picking on ESP) bottomfeeders, would he have still
won?
Perhaps (I'm not going to say "probably" - Kent is quite capable of rising
to an occasion) not. But I can say definitively that I am VERY glad that we
weren't buried in bottomfeeders. Can you say "chilling effect"? Why spend
all this time, effort, and money building a car for the class, when Joe
Yahoo in his Stock or SP whatever can parachute in and steal the win? The
whole Sup class, no-Championship-for-you process ensured that SM was
populated by REAL SM people, not by people looking for an easy jacket.
And now that we seem capable of standing on our own two feet, we are no
longer an "easy jacket" and so are proof against bottomfeeders. I call that
an outstanding success of procedure.
> Right now the whole supplemental thing is engraved in silly putty. There
is
> no standard for establishing a class as a championship class.
That is not at all true. The process may not be _published_ anywhere, but
there most definately IS a standard.
- you run with an established class
- if you meet the entry target, you are broken out into your own Sup class,
with the winner given a "National Winner" jacket but not a Championship
- next year, same deal
- meet the targets two years in a row, and the following year you're
National
- fail to meet the target two years in a row, and you're gone.
Simple. Elegant. PROVEN.
DG
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