THSCC Forums

[quote="MikeWhitney"]




Mike, I was replying to Jim's post. He's talking about the TIR class not holding to the intention of its reason for creation. He is talking about fairness of buying ringer tires.

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Jonathan
'86.5 Toyota Supra
'89 Porsche 928 GT

Well, Scott didn't make up that story, it's a less-than-thinly veiled synopsis of my situation, and combines several conversations that we've had regarding new tires that predates this Street Tire debate. But I think that this is something that needs discussion -- what do the people do that have only run a couple of events? Go straight into Open classes, or do a broad PAX class so that you can see how good of a driver you are compared to other quasi-n00bs? My manhood wouldn't allow me to stay in TIR class and trophy every weekend; that's a lot like Kramer in his karate class filled with 6 year old boys with thick glasses -- no real competition.

I think that this conversation has digressed away from what I feel is the crux of the matter -- should there be a "JV" class for people, like myself, that are trying to figure out what level of committment that they want to make for this sport? Sure, it's a no-brainer. Should we be able to pick out what pairs of shoes to put on our cars? Absolutely. There's no reason to break the bank at this stage of the game, especially when I have a set of almost-dead tires sitting in the garage.

It's not like I'm trailering the Contour to events on Azenis, I drive it there on the tires that I have. If you really want to have a "shake-up" in TIR, make that a requirement -- no trailering/trunking in of street tires, you have to drive them there.

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Has no responsibility whatsoever.

Oh boy, here we go again...

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

You want to get out, but they keep pulling you back in Mr. Corleone?

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Has no responsibility whatsoever.

You have a choice, you buy the tire that is on the exclusion list for TIR and move to Open or you pay $220 more and stay in TIR.

What is the issue with moving to Open? It shows no more committment than when you ran in TIR. You saved yourself $220 and have a tire better suited for AX. Would moving to Open class discourage you from running any more AX's? If it would, you might as well spend the extra $220 and get the better, long lasting street tires.

Every one that races is faced with choices. Mr. Allen was faced with that choice a week ago; hello DSP and goodbye STS. You have to decide is that air intake worth the power gain for your everyday driving and the CSP PAX.

Is the $220 savings worth moving to Open class?

See what happens is you will say, yea the savings is worth it. Likewise, 8 others will say the samething. So there are 8 more in Open. Then the people who were getting smacked around not on their ability, but by tires will say this is cool. There is a cheap way to move to Open and another 8 move to open, etc, etc, etc.

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Jim Pastorius
2008 Silverado VortecMax
1992 Camaro CMC#92
2002 BMW R1150R

2009 3rd Place CMC Mid-Atlantic Championship
2009 CMC Hyperfest Winner

Edit: nevermind. I didn't realize people were so argumentative.

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Karl S.
2014 Baby, 2014 House, 2013 Ford Focus ST, 2013 BMW 328i, 1994 Mercedes E320
(Insert passive aggressive signature line here)

We're not talking "disallowing" or "banning" or "excluding" anything Karl. Nor are we making anything less "easy".

I love Azenis. They grip great, wear well, and are cheap. I have 2 sets. I plan to race on them next year. In open class.

If you come to an event in the MR2 on your cheap and "easy" tires, and if we made a TIR exclusion list, you will not be turned away or told to change tires or told that your tires are not welcome in autocrossing. You will just be told that you can't run in TIR.

So I guess I don't get your point.

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

I would have run in A stock after I was kicked out of novice class, but NO one runs in A stock. The tire banning idea seems kind of moot since most of you guys don't run in TIR. Why don't you poll the people that run in TIR and see what they want to do. I personally am not going to purchase another set of tires/rims to autox with if I run in an Open class. I will be running a street tire.

Next year I will probably get some camber bolts and, I think, will mean I have to run in prepared. Anyone know what prepared class the STi will be in next year? I think it is ESP now.

What is your issue with forcing us to open. I guess I don't understand your motivation. For me Tire was a better place to run than open and still will be. HS just isn't competative enough for me. I could run in GS against the Franks and Fishers I guess, but that doesn't make much sense now does it considering they run race tires. Had HS been more competative I may have moved up allready. But racing Stephen Bremers 2900 pound automatic beetle with my 2500 pound Cavalier didn't exaclty click my switch.

The tire situation expressed by Wes and Stephen was also mine and a number of other drivers this years problem. Marc Davis did the same thing and he won most of his events on Conti's. Marc and I both were at the top of the pile all year on either tire we ran. I found my azenis to wear better at autoxes than a normal street tire as well. The azenis is a good choice for us all around. I also didn't want to run events on my "normal" street tires so i could keep a nice full tread set to drive around on daily. I found out quickly that 'naturally shaved tires' and rain don't mix. I think a better option would be to allow novices more events in novice class. Say a seasons worth of events. This way they can be more prepared for the Step up to JV as some have called it. I doubt alot of poeple running tire who are competative minded plan on staying there forever. I sure don't, it's just a good fit for inexperienced people to run for awhile. It takes a little while for a novice to build up the equipment nessacary to be competative, think about all the little stuff you have that helps you out and you need to autox.

I understand your point of wanting fairness. It is unfair for the other drivers to have hotrod tires. But they are so cheap. If they were 130 bucks a pop or more for the ringers I could understand it.

Wes, as far as your suggestion to disallow changing wheels at events. If this is done, I have a feeling you might see me at the gas station up the street from the event with a spinner wrench in my hand. Also, I run on stock steel wheels, not exactly like I was looking for an advantage there.

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2006 Civic Si - #24 HS for 2015

2005 GMC Sierra
1991 318is Garage Ornament

Hi, my name's Dave and I run in TIR.

I picked up a new set of mad bling wheels for the street so my OEM are now dedicated auto-x wheels. Did I do this because I have ringer tires?

No. I got tired of driving on flat spotted tires the other 94% of the time I drive the car. (For the record, I didn't do the flat spotting. . . ahem. . . )

My point: There's other reasons than Machiavellian tactics to dominate TIR behind having a second set of rims.

Scott's making a lot of sense of all this. As a TIR participant, I don't see it as being broken. As long as membership is growing, TIR is going to remain the largest class. It's the entry level class. It's where you make your mistakes, learn, figure out where you want to go from there.

Some people wash out/loose interest or decide to only do a couple of events a year the rest move to Open eventually.

I guess after all 6 pages of this I still don't see how TIR is broken. (All though I've gotten a good list about what this topic isn't about. )

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Not spectacular just decent.
I'm not sure what I'm driving.
Maybe an ITR in DS.
Or half-assed STX prepped 330.

As far as those saying, 'why move to open, there are no cars there', well that's the reason why TIR is broken. There would be a lot more cars in a lot of different classes if it weren't for TIR. Why does there need to be a JV class from Novice? I've always believed that you should run novice for a complete year and then go straight to open, with no in between class to get 'experience'.

Rob, if you really want some competition in HS, just say so. I have an '88 Civic LX 4 door that I'm confident could give you a lot more than you can handle... on it's 150k shocks and 185/70/13 rubber.

We can talk about this all day, but in the end, it will come down to those in TIR and or those sympathetic to TIR will vote one way, and those against will vote the other. I say we bring a proposal to the table and vote. Then, be done with it. - AB

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'14 Toyota Sequoia Platinum 4WD
Super Westerfield Bros - '93 Integra - LeChump Du Jour
STX 93 - Scion FR-S

Aaron, I agree. But I will go one step further and say that - if TIR ever gets to be 50% of our entries, then it's got to be changed. It's got too many flaws, and the open classes are where we need to go.

_Maybe_ we eliminate TIR class, ban race tires from OPEN, and PRO is the only place you can run TW <140. That would fix the problem too.

Oh, and I have to say it again - the PROBLEM: TIR isn't broken - Open is. Sorry, but some people who have been running TIR aren't going to like the change (if it happens), but it will be good for the club and in the long run.

Re-read Aaron's post. He makes some great observations.

This is a good time to remind everyone that we're not setting policy or rules on a forum - we're just talking, BSing about "what if" scenarios. If and when something is decided on, you'll know it

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

I was going to wait until next week to and throw some numbers into a proposal for the auto-x VPs, because I'm still doing the analysis. But let me give you a preview. Scott earlier gave us some statistics about number of TIR competitors vs. overall competitors. That's one view of the statistics. The other way to look at this is to specifically focus on the IMPACTED open classes, because many classes don't have a TIR counterpart at events.

If you look at the classes for which there were both OPEN and TIR event-by-event in 2003 (I excluded VMP because of the weather situation), 39% of the competitors were in TIR! Thats heavy dilution of open classes.

Now, throw in PRO and NOVICE (havn't done the analysis yet) and I will bet it's close to some classes being 50% diluted by PAX-based classes.

So, if the problem is that OPEN classes are being diluted, then there is probably a multi-part answer which includes PRO, NOVICE and TIR.

There are some interesting numbers coming out the TIR data, too, but I won't have until next week. In any event, we ultimately need to decide if we want to compete in classes defined by car and preparation level or whether we want to Tier our club by driver experience level. Thats what it is coming down to, even in TIR which was originally meant to help out folks who were running on true street rubber that they normally drive on. Think about it - we have a 4-tier DRIVER competition system at the moment.
NOVICE
TIR
OPEN
PRO

Is this needed? Is this the best way to promote competition? Are the fastest drivers getting their trophies?

Are we over-specializing? I believe so.

Formal proposal next week.

Rob, didn't I see you on r-compound tires at an event? Or was that your evil twin

Karl, why not run Open class in your mom's CS Sypder?

The two AS people prove Mike's point. Both run in TIR class on street tires. We have no open AS class. Who knows, Miles might have moved back to AS from PRO. Now you have an AS class of 3 competitors! Even with two, there is one trophy. So you have a lot better chance of a piece of wood than TIR. What is the downside? There isn't any.

You will make the same mistakes in TIR as you will in Open. With few exceptions, most of the competitors I have run against ran Open on street tires when they got their start.

Our PRO class is populated by drivers who did not want to dominate Open and moved to PRO to make it more attractive for people to run Open.

Take a look at VMSC, who eliminated TIR. Most of their Open classes are 4,5,6 cars deep. They actually had an increase in participation. I do not want the TIR class eliminated. The proposal is a nice compromise.

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Jim Pastorius
2008 Silverado VortecMax
1992 Camaro CMC#92
2002 BMW R1150R

2009 3rd Place CMC Mid-Atlantic Championship
2009 CMC Hyperfest Winner

Phil,

I think you need to factor in classes that exist in TIR and do not exist in Open. AS is a good example. If there were two AS in TIR and no AS Open class, that should be factored in. IMO

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Jim Pastorius
2008 Silverado VortecMax
1992 Camaro CMC#92
2002 BMW R1150R

2009 3rd Place CMC Mid-Atlantic Championship
2009 CMC Hyperfest Winner