At 11:19 PM 6/18/98 EDT, you wrote:
>Somewhere along the line, we started seeing
>things that weren't quite "right"about the way the events were being
>conducted. We asked questions, and got no answers. It's all very "secret"
>and "hush-hush" you know. Like how the various events are going to be
>"weighted" for Lord Rootes points this year, in so-and-so's favor. And who
>"we" are all going to vote for in the Popular Vote.
As you know, I can't speak for CAT or Pacific Tigers, or even Glen, but
all TU events that STOA sponsored (up until Eureka), were scored for Lord
Rootes competition by Bette and I. The methodology for scoring at STOA
sponsored events has remained unchanged for at least 10 years and maybe
considerably longer. All of this has been documented in the TU Handbook and
other clubs have asked for and received copies of same. What they do with
the info is up to the event organizers. I can tell you that Bette and
have been asked by Steve to help score this years event, so I can only
assume that (he) they (?) intend to use the Handbook methodology, otherwise
why would they ask us to assist.
When we developed the current methodology, we studied the results for
previous events and attempted to reduce the opportunity for favoratism and
bias toward any competor or class. As an example, the difference between
the potentially stackable Popular Vote winner and second place is 2.5
points out of a total of 450 points. It doesn't matter how many more votes
the most popular car (person) gets. If the first place car got 100 votes
and the second place car gets 2, the difference is still 2.5 points.
The big event is the Concour at 200 points as we felt, and still feel
that
the preparation of the vechicle is the most imporant overall factor. The
Lord Rootes Scoring system is also "class-less". It doesn't matter what
class you enter (although it must remain the same throughout the event),
your points for absolute overall finish in each event determine your LR
score.
Although most participants never understood the change in concours
scoring
last year, it was done in the interest of overall fairness. Norm's touted
scoring system was an excellent advance for providing objective evaluation
of "Stock" Tigers. The problem was that there were no comparable systems
developed for "Personalized" oe "Modified" Tigers. Using Norm's concour
evaluation sheets, a very tired dead stock street beater, would
tremendously out score a perfect 100 point Modified Tiger. The more
changes from "Stock", the lower your possible score. Since the scoring for
Lord Rootes is class-less, personalized and modified Tigers would simply
not have been competitive. I fully understand that the originality buffs
think that this would have been a great situation, but it clearly doesn't
fit the almost 25 year history of the TU event. I can't comment on the
methods used to actually judge the cars last year at Eureka, as I was not
involved, except as a judge, like every other competitor.
I hope that this has cleared up some of the questions you had about
scoring of previous events. If not I can always try again.
Tom
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