STR Call out!!!

Carlton Whitehead · **Posted:** Fri May 20, 2011 4:34 pm

I for one would run open class if there were was a correction factor for street tires. I might even show up to a meeting just to "Yay" a motion to adopt it if I know in advance it's on the agenda!

Zach Hill · **Posted:** Fri May 20, 2011 4:44 pm

Carlton Whitehead wrote:

I for one would run open class if there were was a correction factor for street tires. I might even show up to a meeting just to "Yay" a motion to adopt it if I know in advance it's on the agenda!

Just get an intake and some springs and run STR! :-P

MarcusMcRae · **Posted:** Fri May 20, 2011 4:47 pm

Carlton Whitehead wrote:

I for one would run open class if there were was a correction factor for street tires. I might even show up to a meeting just to "Yay" a motion to adopt it if I know in advance it's on the agenda!

You could run in STR and not need a pax correction knuckle head. I don't think anyone that runs STR actually has their car prepped to the max of the rules. Only thing I did to my car is a frontn sway bar.

JasonWatts · **Posted:** Fri May 20, 2011 4:52 pm

MarcusMcRae wrote:

Carlton Whitehead wrote:

I for one would run open class if there were was a correction factor for street tires. I might even show up to a meeting just to "Yay" a motion to adopt it if I know in advance it's on the agenda!

You could run in STR and not need a pax correction knuckle head. I don't think anyone that runs STR actually has their car prepped to the max of the rules. Only thing I did to my car is a frontn sway bar.

this is basically more then I have done :stick:

JamesShort · **Posted:** Fri May 20, 2011 5:04 pm

Can someone start going through past results and get some reasonably competent drivers in decently prepared cars and get us some data for street tire correction?

Ie Carlton vs Karl/Eric for BS.
Me/Steve/Maria vs Keith Q when he was in the 330 for DS.
Noah vs Mike Miller and crew for Cs

JenniferBedell · **Posted:** Fri May 20, 2011 8:21 pm

JamesShort wrote:

Can someone start going through past results and get some reasonably competent drivers in decently prepared cars and get us some data for street tire correction?

Ie Carlton vs Karl/Eric for BS.
Me/Steve/Maria vs Keith Q when he was in the 330 for DS.
Noah vs Mike Miller and crew for Cs

I haven't done any exhaustive research here, but... if you take points autocross #4 from last year, Carlton ran a 40.294, Karl ran a 38.680 (Karl was in between Chris and Eric, so let's call him average for the car on that event). That's a 4% margin. I think you are going to find similarly dodgy results overall, because even with decently prepped cars and reasonably competent drivers, there's a lot of wiggle room. Plus, TIR and Stock generally run in different run groups, where there can be dramatically different track conditions. (At this year's March event, my car was MUCH faster in the afternoon fun runs than it was in the morning, even though both run groups were rain-free.)

It would probably be more accurate to do same driver, same car, different tires. There are probably plenty of us who could volunteer rides for this, across different prep levels and classes. If we could find one of those reasonably competent drivers to drive the car consistently :wink:

, we would get directly comparable results.

That said, data-mining might yield more consistent results than I expect.

Either way, I do like the idea of getting folks back into Open class. :thumbsup:

JamesShort · **Posted:** Fri May 20, 2011 8:43 pm

JenniferBedell wrote:

JamesShort wrote:

Can someone start going through past results and get some reasonably competent drivers in decently prepared cars and get us some data for street tire correction?

Ie Carlton vs Karl/Eric for BS.
Me/Steve/Maria vs Keith Q when he was in the 330 for DS.
Noah vs Mike Miller and crew for Cs

I haven't done any exhaustive research here, but... if you take points autocross #4 from last year, Carlton ran a 40.294, Karl ran a 38.680 (Karl was in between Chris and Eric, so let's call him average for the car on that event). That's a 4% margin. I think you are going to find similarly dodgy results overall, because even with decently prepped cars and reasonably competent drivers, there's a lot of wiggle room. Plus, TIR and Stock generally run in different run groups, where there can be dramatically different track conditions. (At this year's March event, my car was MUCH faster in the afternoon fun runs than it was in the morning, even though both run groups were rain-free.)

It would probably be more accurate to do same driver, same car, different tires. There are probably plenty of us who could volunteer rides for this, across different prep levels and classes. If we could find one of those reasonably competent drivers to drive the car consistently :wink:

, we would get directly comparable results.

That said, data-mining might yield more consistent results than I expect.

Either way, I do like the idea of getting folks back into Open class. :thumbsup:

Yep, we need a *lot* of data to average. I'd like to throw in day 2 NCAC where I was like 1.2s from Feinberg

.

noahfleming · **Posted:** Fri May 20, 2011 10:31 pm

Part of me likes the idea of having some sort of adjustment for street tires and going to an all open class model - I hate to see classes like CS and STX being so poorly represented when there are terrific drivers in them with no competition. We could set aside some time during an event setup to run a mock course with r comps and street tires and get data that way. I know several of us have both competitive street tires and r compounds (mike miller and myself, for example). Just throwing it out there. A test n' tune would be perfect.

One thing that's nice about PAX classes like TIR and X are that you get a real sense of competitiveness with others in that PAX class (at least I do), even though they may be in a completely different car class. This wouldn't be the case if everyone ran open class. We have PAX results, yes - but I don't think that's the same.

michaelsmiller · **Posted:** Sat May 21, 2011 12:13 am

I’m not a big fan of PAX, that’s why I run in open class. C stock Pax is based on about 7 cars that run nationally. As can be seen in the national results from last year, those cars are MX 5 MSR’s. I have been told by people who have driven both, that my real stock Miata isn’t in the same league. Likewise, figuring out a PAX adjustment for tires by comparing the same drivers and cars using street tires and R comps doesn’t work. The problem is that my car drives totally different on street tires than Hoosiers. With Hoosiers the car is pushy and the road feel is a little dull. Star Specs feel like they have very quick turn in, have good road feel, and the car over steers a lot easier. The Star specs are 235/40 17, Hoosiers are 225/45 17. The end result is that I drive the car differently on R comps than with street tires. R comps, I drive as accurately as possible. Star Specs, I turn earlier, and count on the rear tire slipping out of the way before it gets to the cone. The timing is very different. Going back to back would require me to adjust instantly. I’m too old for that. I started in open class with street tires because I wanted to learn how to drive. I didn’t care very much about winning. If I had gone to tire, I would have been a top 3 finisher for most of the year even with a sucky PAZ. I looked at C stock and saw, Eric Petersen, Mike Whitney, and Dustin Frederickson battling it out. They encouraged me, rode with me, and gave me advice about my driving and my car setup. I still get good advice from folks. The key is that if you run with fast people, you get fast, there are no excuses. The few times that you win, it really means something. Last year in C stock we had Charlie M, Jennifer B. , Ms M. J. , Eric M. and myself, all fast drivers. Until Jennifer’s Toy blew up, 1st place was up for grabs. If Jennifer would have won the next autoX, there would have been a 3 way tie going into the final autox. That would have been a fun shootout. As it was, nobody ran C stock at the final autox. One shouldn’t be autox’ing for the ego boost. STR is a great class for S2K’s, all they really need is tires to be competitive. Miata’s need about $3K in parts and rolled fenders. I wish that more people would run in open classes. Noah, if you ever feel like running C stock, it will be a fun time. I don’t have a clue who would win.

Maria Winslow · **Posted:** Sat May 21, 2011 10:21 am

I would love to run open class with an adjustment for the tires, especially if that means a nice little group in DS. You don't even need a lot of people to make for fun competition, just a few consistently there (me, Steve, and Pitch would be enough for a nice little battle).

I'm thinking about the logistics of joining DS for real next year, which might involve swapping my totally awesome toy truck for a real truck because I'm too lazy to change my wheels at the event... hmmm...

MarcusMcRae · **Posted:** Sat May 21, 2011 1:20 pm

Here is the official tarheel pax class. http://thscc.com/autocross/events/2011/ ... sults.html

I seriously don't understand why you would want to run a street tire car in an R-comp class when there is a perfectly good street tire open class you can run in. Please explain why you guys want to do that?

JamesShort · **Posted:** Sat May 21, 2011 1:46 pm

MarcusMcRae wrote:

Here is the official tarheel pax class. http://thscc.com/autocross/events/2011/ ... sults.html

I seriously don't understand why you would want to run a street tire car in an R-comp class when there is a perfectly good street tire open class you can run in. Please explain why you guys want to do that?

Many CS/DS/HS/GS cars are better to run HS* or GS*.... (where * is a street tire adjustment) than to run ST, STX, STU, STR.

CS Miata < STR Miata
BS S2000 > STR S2000
ES NA miata > STS Miata
DS WRX < STU WRX
DS Mini < STX Mini
HS Mini < ST Mini
GS Civic Si < STX Civic Si

Only BS, ES Miatas and AS cars (few AS cars even have an ST* class). So actually it makes A LOT of sense to run a r comp stock class rather than the respective ST* class if you are eligible.

Matt McGrain · **Posted:** Sat May 21, 2011 1:53 pm

Maria Winslow wrote:

I would love to run open class with an adjustment for the tires, especially if that means a nice little group in DS. You don't even need a lot of people to make for fun competition, just a few consistently there (me, Steve, and Pitch would be enough for a nice little battle).

Running with this..

As someone who's spent most of my autocrosses in either TIR or X class, I'll be the first to say that if they both dissapeared and made the traditional classes healthier, it's a win-win.

The only questions is not whether or not this is going to gain stream (it seems most would be in favor), but how would we incorporate the new "double pax" system? i.e. .975 * Pax = street tire index.

I see two possibilities *if* it's doable from a logistical standpoint for T&S and registration:

1. The better option. Eliminate X Class and TIR and let everyone go to their respective classes to run with others that may be on race tires.

2. The second option that may be feasible would be to wipe out TIR and just replace it with STI (street tire index - or any other acronym). This may seem a little pointless, but it eliminates the "my pax stinks because I'm not on race rubber" factor at the end of the day

JamesShort · **Posted:** Sat May 21, 2011 2:04 pm

AXWARE can do it.

JamesShort · **Posted:** Sat May 21, 2011 2:13 pm

Ok, so I just looked at some past results, and if 97.5% was used as the street tire adjustment, quite a few of us TIR folks would have been top 10 PAX every single event (couple top 3 finishes too). The R comp people would get pissed

.

Like Jennifer alluded to, trying to find a good adjustment factor would be tough using past results. Using 10 pairs of people, I'm getting anywhere from 96.3% to 98.6%. Then there are temps, run groups, dust, hangover status, etc etc etc that can factor into the equation so it's tough.

This would also allow people to run open class and make the decision to either run their r comps or their EPSTs so that would be unfair to those that can only have either good EPSTs that they daily drive and autox on or those who have AS tires for DD and r comps for autox.

*IF* we were to adopt a new system, I think we should enforce that you have to run either pure open DS for instance OR DS*....no flip flopping depending on which set of tires would be better so the r comps people can just run their all seasons on wet days and say they want DS* and vice versa.

The more I think about it, I think there will be MORE bitching and complaining if we change things up than there is now

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