Uh oh, Hoppe's got a brand new jacket to wear ...

Wes Eargle · **Joined:** Mon Oct 27, 2003 9:47 am **Posts:** 3683

http://ww2.scca.com/soloresults.php?ID=43

Beat Courtney Cormier by 0.191 sec; also congrats to Shawn for bringing home the snowman trophy! (Reminds me of my golf game

)

Mike Winn · **Joined:** Fri Aug 29, 2003 12:30 am **Posts:** 110

I saw the results earlier. Way to go Tom.

Todd Breakey · **Posted:** Wed Sep 15, 2004 2:51 pm

Congrats Tom!!!!!

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Wed Sep 15, 2004 9:19 pm

Am I not reading the results correctly? I see Tom in 2nd and Shawn in 8th?

George Bright · **Posted:** Wed Sep 15, 2004 9:38 pm

When I looked at them this afternoon they showed Tom in first. :roll:

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Wed Sep 15, 2004 9:51 pm

It was definitely Tom 1st and Shawn 8th. That was only resolved very late in the day, though, as their car got protested and was ruled legal. Had to do with him turning the dust shields around inward so his big brake kit would clear them. Apparently the rules have been revised already for next year and the *intent* was to allow that kind of mod all along (supposedly OEM dust shields won't work on pretty much *any* big brake kit, so if you're going to explicitly allow big brake kits you *should* make the dust shield open), but this year's rules didn't *state* that. So the protest was denied. Some folks thought the actual process would be that the protest would be upheld since protests should only be ruled on based on the letter of the rulebook but that Tom would win it back on appeal since the intent was there. I suppose they decided to just circumvent that part in the interest of simplicity, especially since no clarification was required since the rules are already changed as of just past this one event.

It would have been a shame to have lost on that as he really didn't gain any performance advantage from it (at least not .2 seconds!). He and Shawn both just drove really great.

--Donnie

Jonathan Rodriguez · **Posted:** Thu Sep 16, 2004 10:28 am

Donnie Barnes wrote:

Apparently the rules have been revised already for next year and the *intent* was to allow that kind of mod all along (supposedly OEM dust shields won't work on pretty much *any* big brake kit, so if you're going to explicitly allow big brake kits you *should* make the dust shield open), but this year's rules didn't *state* that. So the protest was denied.

You mean they used good judgement to make a decision based on the intent of the rule instead of the wording of the rule itself? Amazing. Good thing there weren't any THSCC people on the protest committee or Tom may not have been so lucky... :roll:

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Thu Sep 16, 2004 11:25 am

Jonathan Rodriguez wrote:

Donnie Barnes wrote:

Apparently the rules have been revised already for next year and the *intent* was to allow that kind of mod all along (supposedly OEM dust shields won't work on pretty much *any* big brake kit, so if you're going to explicitly allow big brake kits you *should* make the dust shield open), but this year's rules didn't *state* that. So the protest was denied.

You mean they used good judgement to make a decision based on the intent of the rule instead of the wording of the rule itself? Amazing. Good thing there weren't any THSCC people on the protest committee or Tom may not have been so lucky... :roll:

Uh Jonathan,

I have personally served on several National Protest Committees. The action the Committee took in Tom's case might still have happened if I had been there since it is typical of National's PC's and I probably would have been outvoted.

Jonathan Rodriguez · **Posted:** Thu Sep 16, 2004 11:44 am

Thank you for proving my point :wink:

MikeWhitney · **Joined:** Wed Aug 20, 2003 9:15 pm **Posts:** 4724

Jonathan Rodriguez wrote:

You mean they used good judgement to make a decision based on the intent of the rule instead of the wording of the rule itself? Amazing. Good thing there weren't any THSCC people on the protest committee or Tom may not have been so lucky... :roll:

I know you said this tongue-in-cheek, but I would like to point out that it has been years since anyone has actually used our protest procedure. I like to think that weenie protests wouldn't pass muster in our club either - I actually hope that we're a _bit_ more lenient than even a nationals protest committee would be considering the level of our sport.

Fortunately our peer-pressure based rules enforcement works amazingly well. We tend to not have people showing up with missing interiors or bumpers or illegal motor mounts. Right?

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Thu Sep 16, 2004 12:24 pm

Mike makes a good point about our local club approach. Peer pressure can work very well when the participants actually care about what their peers think. Plus in our case most of the actual "violations" are due to lack of knowledge or reasonable differences of opinion. Also we are generally concerned about a season championship not just a one time event involving cars and people we may never have seen before.

Believe me, even with the threat of DSQ there have been plenty of examples of outright blatant cheating, creative rules interpretation, stupid failure to read the rules, etc. at Nationals in the past. There have also been blatant attempts to get a car thrown out for a "minor" error. Problem is that "what is minor". In recent years, with some exceptions, it appears many of the DSQ's are due to much more "honest" attempts to prepare a car to the maximum permitted by the rules. These are the protests that are the hardest to deal with. Tom was fortunate that the PC felt it could rule as it did. I assume the Protestor didn't appeal.

There are a lot of reasons why things have changed, not the least of which is the ease of communication with autocrossers all over the country and with SCCA. Both allow questions to be aired and "newbies" to easily learn the "error of their interpretation/preparation".

Dick (who has seen all sides of the protest situation)

Jonathan Rodriguez · **Posted:** Thu Sep 16, 2004 1:26 pm

MikeWhitney wrote:

I would like to point out that it has been years since anyone has actually used our protest procedure. I like to think that weenie protests wouldn't pass muster in our club either - I actually hope that we're a _bit_ more lenient than even a nationals protest committee would be considering the level of our sport.

Oh yeah, I definitely realize that. It was more directed towards the people in the club that were arguing in previous threads that the rules needed to be followed to the point of absurdity.

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Thu Sep 16, 2004 1:48 pm

Jonathan Rodriguez wrote:

Oh yeah, I definitely realize that. It was more directed towards the people in the club that were arguing in previous threads that the rules needed to be followed to the point of absurdity.

Who defines "absurdity"?

Kevin Allen · **Joined:** Thu Aug 28, 2003 6:42 pm **Posts:** 3479

I do - your 2005 VP OF ABSURDITY.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Thu Sep 16, 2004 1:58 pm

Jonathan Rodriguez wrote:

MikeWhitney wrote:

I would like to point out that it has been years since anyone has actually used our protest procedure. I like to think that weenie protests wouldn't pass muster in our club either - I actually hope that we're a _bit_ more lenient than even a nationals protest committee would be considering the level of our sport.

Oh yeah, I definitely realize that. It was more directed towards the people in the club that were arguing in previous threads that the rules needed to be followed to the point of absurdity.

We probably need to take this elsewhere so that we don't take anything away from Tom's great win but...

Please define "followed to the point of absurdity".

Yes, the rules do exist in a "black and white" form. But you can see that the "spirit of the rule" does live both nationally per Tom's case and locally per Mike's comments about how things really work here in our club.

This is a sport with a lot of rules and talk about how to interpret and follow them. You ARE going to find a bunch of people talking about how best to follow the rules to the letter. Any talk about how to bend the rules is NEVER going to get much support. Slamming people who try to follow the rules is not going to get you much support either.

ok, I am getting off my soapbox now.

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