Hi,

My name is Dave Heinig. I am a member of the Philadelphia Region, my membership number is xxxxxx. I drove at my first autocross event in 1997, and sporadically attended events for several years until I bought my Mitsubishi Evo in the summer of 2006. Since then I've competed in most of the Philly and South Jersey region events, and I competed at Nationals in 2007, co-driving a Pontiac Solstice in A-Stock.

Before I give my opinions on the SP classing changes, I will inform you that I am planning to run my Evo in Street Prepared starting in 2009, so this proposal affects me directly. That being said, I believe that I have formed my opinion based on what would be best for the SCCA, not on what would be best for me.

I'd like to give my feedback on the proposed ASP and BSP classing changes in the March Fast Track. First, I fully support moving the BMW Z3 and related cars from ASP to BSP. I believe this is a step in the right direction, as it seems that the modus operandi for classing decisions with BSP for the last several has been to bury any new car with the potential to beat the C4 Corvette in ASP. In this same vein, I would support an additional proposal to move the Pontiac Solstice GXP, Saturn Sky Redline, and E46 M3 from ASP to BSP.

On the flip side of the proposal, I strongly disagree with moving the Evo and STi to ASP. This would decimate an already flagging class, and would move the class in the wrong direction. By my count, 33 of the 67 BSP cars registered for National events last year (Tours and Nationals) were either Evos or STi's. This includes 9 of the 19 competitors at Nationals. I will be adding my Evo to that mix next year, and I know of at least one other competitor in my region who plans to eventually run his '08 STi in BSP at National events. By moving these popular cars to ASP, a significant source of BSP competitors will be removed.

While the Evo in particular seems to be the fastest car at this point in BSP, it isn't so dominant to justify this move to ASP (where it would be at the back of the pack). The top seven spots at Nationals in 2007 were Evo, C4, Evo, Evo, Mazda, S2000, STi. This is on a slippery surface where the advantage of AWD is maximized. Tom Berry, who won the class, is a past national championship winner. While the margin of victory was large, this is a case of a great driver in a well-prepared car that has an advantage on that particular surface. If Nationals moves away from HPT, or they manage to somehow fix the surface, this advantage will disappear.

The way to "fix" BSP, if it needs to be fixed, is to bring the level of competition up to the current class leaders by bringing in newer cars that will ensure the class remains viable in the future, not outlaw the fastest cars to maintain the dominance of a car that hasn't been in production for 11 years.

So to summarize:

Move Z3 etc from ASP to BSP: Support
Move the Evo/STi from BSP to ASP: Do not support

Thank you,

Dave Heinig
Philadelphia Region

 

great response, Dave, thank you. I plan on attempting a letter that clear as well, once I get a chance to clear my head a little more. I just very frustrated that, for sooo long, 1 car WAS allowed to dominate the class, and now that there is a strong competitor the competitor is getting kicked out. Its as if the board is afraid to alienate the "old dogs" because a new hound is around. thats just plain silly in my opinion.

 

I never get confirmation from seb@scca.com. I keep sending the letters and they seem to keep vanishing into the ether.

d

 

CC **** members, and your regions SEB rep directly. If still no log book number try CCing your Regional Director. At least that's what I've been told about how the 'system' operates.

 

Here's a link to the Nasioc thread for the March fastrack:

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/show....php?t=1453444

Joel Fehrman (owner of the infamous Stompy) who is also on the **** has suggested cc'ing your emails to him or sending him a PM on Nasioc to let him know you sent a letter regarding the evo/sti BSP to ASP deal. His S/N on nasioc is AUTOwrXER and his email is apexlater@hotmail.com

Quite honestly I can see where some people are frustrated with the evo/sti in BSP, but I cannot see the cars going to ASP as a good thing. In fact I would wager most of them, myself included, would go to SM. Hell the SM pax is even lower than ASP.

John

 

Damn, I didn't even think of that. Going from ASP to SM, you get to swap the turbo, fit wider tires, lose weight, and stroke the motor and the car gets.... slower?

Although PAX based arguments don't hold a whole lot of water with the SEB.

 

No, but do not forget about the ProSolo Index, which IS an SCCA thing, unlike PAX which is not.

 

I don't even want to delve into the ProSolo end of things. With the launch advantage, that's a completely different discussion. Besides which I've never driven at a pro, so I don't really have any experience to draw from.

 

I saw this one coming after the book of complaints from the old BSP kings(corvette/m3) in the Scca forum.

It all comes down to them not wanting the status quo changed and keeping their supremacy for another eternity instead of bringing fairness to the class.

I don't see how moving the evo to ASP brings any sense of fairness to anything exept allienating AWD and putting them somewhere they are sure not to be competitive, just to keep BMW and corvette owners happy.

If anything, moving the "back of the pack" cars of ASP to BSP would make more sense.

I never had a competitive BSP car because of budget restraints and when I finally got the cash to build a competitve car it seemed that it would be a waste since I would be back to square one in ASP, so in anticipation of the potential unfair move I wisely went with an XP build instead.

I wrote a letter to let SEB know how bias an unfair such a change would be and I feel that there should be more outrage from our camp and more letters should be sent if we want to have any kind of impact.

I no longer have a dog in this fight, but you guys seem to passive about it unless ya ready to take on fully prepped GT3s.

 

Max,

Fact of the matter is that there are NOT that many prepped BSP cars in the country, then whittle it down to evo's and your population is pretty small. I do believe that there are probably 5-6 users on this forum who will actually send a letter and I have spoken to others to gain support for our cause.

Having invested ALOT of time/effort/$$ into my own car I can see where they would be frustrated about the "dominance" of the rally cars. I would be frustrated too. I also see more people wanting info for SP/SM setup not only in threads but in PM's and I think there will be a bunch of people coming into BSP from STU (Sti and Evo) in the coming years.

I've also been trying to look at results from NT's/Pro's and Nats. If I compare Daddio (SM Evo) and Junior (ASP C5Z06) well Junior was still faster alot of the time. At DC Pro and Romulus Pro Mark did not catch Junior. This is a spot where the evo has an "AWD launch advantage" too. Where Mark did catch Junior was on HPT's surface. If you also look at some of the bigger west coast events of 2007 you'll notice the winners in BSP/CSP/DSP might have all well been in one class, seriously.

I don't know if the reason for Mark catching Junior at HPT has to do with available grip or Mark developing the car further. Having not driven on the HPT surface myself and hearing how it is "not so grippy" I spoke with someone (competitive AS STi driver) about it. He told me what the grip level was like and it sounded like a little less grippy than Devens, MA. We both felt that our cars were fastest (in comparison to others) when it was a little cool at Devens (meaning reduced grip) which allowed the cars to rotate more, but is probably detrimental to FWD/RWD.

Someone also pointed to some calclub (I think) SCCA results on the sccaforums thread where Tom Berry (BSP E9) and Jason Uyeda (BSP S2K) were seperated by .011 seconds. Hardly sounds like domination to me, but I don't know the big picture regarding that event (ie was one on fresh tires and the other not, etc).

Another thing which has not been brought up much is the Mazdaspeed Miata (classed in BSP). If you look at the CSP results quite typically the fastest guys will beat BSP. Doesn't it make sense that a built MSM would be a potential class killer given a decent HP advantage over their CSP brethren (it's got a turbo too, allowing itself to take all the advantages the evo/sti get).

Just some thoughts/observations of mine.

John

 

My Letter:


Hello,

Matthew ***** here, from the Northern New Jersey Region, member # ******.

I'd like to add some feedback regarding (3) proposals: to change the classing of the Mitsubishi Evo/Subaru STi from BSP to ASP, Change in classification of the BMW M-Coupe/Roadster/Z3 6Cyl, proposed change in the formula for classifying SM weights. All these proposals are from the most recent Fastrack.

1. Reclassification of Evo/STi to ASP: NOT in favor. While the cars show great speed on surfaces whose grip is endlessly bemoaned (HPT), hundreds of other events throughout the country show that these cars are often not the dominant cars in the class, and often get beaten by cars in other, non-ASP Street Prepared classes. Burying a popular, "of the moment" car, whose entrants composed nearly 50% of all BSP National Tour entries in 2007 seems highly counterproductive.

2. BMW M-Coupe/Roadster/Z3 6Cyl, proposed change to BSP: Highly in favor! Bring some forgotten, popular enthusiast cars back to a place where they could attract some attention is a wonderful idea.

3. Proposed change in the formula for classifying SM weights: Needs more study. Tricky question : I am comfortable with a change in the minimum weights, but this particular proposal/numerical value seems arbitrary and in need of a LOT more documented research.

Thanks for your time,
Matthew *****

(***) ***-****

cc: Joel ******

 

John,

What raises some questions to me is the fact that the "so called" AWD dominance is only from Mr Berry having a comfortable lead over the rest of the field(including other evos and STis) at Topeka.
If anyone objectively look at the entire picture without some bias agenda, it becomes obvious that:

1) Most STIs are mid to back of the pack and show no concrete sign of dominance.

2) The class winning Evo is an outlier as it does not reflect the fact that the rest of the evos are spreaded across the field.

3) How does a single dominant performance, of a single well prepped/driven car becomes a generality in need of attention while the old bsp winners have done so for countless years without raising any questions and class restructuration?

4) Every platform has advantages and drawbacks. AWD just happen to be what works on low grip surfaces and/or colder surfaces. Should the platform be penalized because it has been on the colder side at Nats and the surface is not that grippy? I think not, because weather conditions is not a valuable reason to penalize an entire platform. What's next? SEB will ban AWD when it rains next year at topeka and you guys put a hurting on the rest of ASP.

5) SEB's motive in this whole BSP problem seems to be in favor of the old BSP kings as it is obvious that the class has reached his plateau in terms of attendance of BMW and Corvettes. If SEB was really in the interest of the class they would take into consideration that AWD attendance was rising and would be the spark needed to keep the class healthy.

Now, if they decide to move you guys it'll only result in one thing; more AWD cars in SM/Corvettes and BMW regain their dominance/BSP returns to their strugle to make numbers. Way to go SCCA.
Max

 

I think what really has the vette/bmw people pissed is that they're getting beat by people they feel are inferior drivers, not that they're getting beat by people like Tom. Strano all but flat out said on the sccaforums thread that the evo's need to be reclassed because I got 3rd place at nationals with Aaron Miller posting great raw times, and John Tak won last year. None of us (john, aaron, or myself) have proven 'win ability' in their eyes.

what they don't address is the fact that HPT sucks traction wise and on top of that BSP ran in the cold first group in 06 and 07. Of course the AWD is going to be easier to drive in those conditions. When you expand your scope from just looking at nationals to looking at the results of all the tours and pros you see that the evo's and sti's fit in bsp just fine.

 

I asked the same Mazdaspeed question on NASIOC. The Mazdaspeed has the 6-speed transmission, and can only get some ridiculously low speed (45 mph?) out of second gear. They're constantly shifting 2nd-3rd. Let them have the 5-speed from the CSP cars and they would crush BSP.

The bad news for the Corvette and M3 guys is that there's not enough of them out there to have a class. Sorry, but I wouldn't really expect an SP car to be nationally competitive for more than about 5 years, and those cars are way past their prime. If they do succeed in kicking the rally cars out, BSP will go the way of BP in a couple of years. ...hey, didn't the C4 run in BP too?

 

Regarding my letter to the SEB / **** above, and the other letters posted here and sent in... From my years in corporate America, I would recommend anyone who is writing in to keep it *very* brief and succinct.

In my experience (and those who have been in the corporate world a helluva lot longer than me) people (including the representatives from the SCCA) will NOT read your epic novel of a letter carefully given the flood of impassioned mail they get. Notice most of the letters to the SEB don't get a log number because NOBODY reads or takes the time to document it.

Short, sweet, bold your primary points and keep it focused and your SEB letters IMO will have more impact. Our success in shooting down the silly fastrack proposals will most likely come in the NUMBER of letters they get showing our viewpoint...

My $.03 cents (accounting for inflation!)

-MD

ps. I got a response very quickly on my letter.