Donnie Barnes wrote:
I've only ever heard of *one* good reason for ladies classes at all, and that's to help husbands/wives (or sub boyfriend/girlfriend) race together such that they can more easily help each other, PARTICULARLY when one of them already has a codriver (like the case where I owned the Miata, Eric and Chris both want to codrive).
Having that capability makes it easier to get women involved in the first place. My personal opinion is that it should generally only be a stepping stone to women running in open. Why? Because this is racing, dammit. And because I don't believe there is any reason why a man should be better at this sport than a woman (other than the POSSIBILITY that men have some stupid genetic thing that generally makes us fear death a little less than women, but even that can be worked around, I think...as much as men have to work around it to keep it in check enough to be good, women can work around it to extend past their "normal" comfort zone).
And because it's RACING, it should be about being THE BEST DRIVER. That's why we have *classes* at all....because people drive different stuff and it's the best way to help take the car OUT of the equation. Why add in something arbitrarily stupid like *sex* just to increase the amount of trophies we give out? Again, if it helps get women STARTED, I say fine. But women running in the NORTH CAROLINA AUTOCROSS CHAMPIONSHIPS ought to be willing to suck it up and COMPETE for something like, oh, A CHAMPIONSHIP. To me, a championship is worthless if it means you were in a "stock" car and indexed better than ill-prepared mod cars. It's meaningless if you didn't beat but one other person to get it. It's meaningless if the only reason you want it is to show your Mom why you missed her birthday (that said, if your local club wants to do that at a local event, fine...I just don't think a championship event is the place for it).
It's nice we have some classes at local events that help people get started. Nov, Lad, and even Tir. My opinion, though, is that those should be stepping stones, period.
Also, I don't care for the "stock has an advantage" in indexed classes thing. If you don't have enough folks participating in your classes to do anything else, THEN TOO FRIGGIN BAD. IMHO, less than three people in a class for an event like NCAC should be bumped somewhere (and that goes for open classes, too). Beating less than two other people hasn't proven you as much of a champion, IMHO.
And no, I'm not a lady, obviously (though I do have cute legs...*cough*). I don't think *only* female opinions are relevant, though, since this issue is somewhat generic (as many issues can be applied to "I" stock discussions, TIR discussions, etc). I agree they do have a certain *extra* relevance, particularly if the issue were somewhat borderline (like every L class had two or three entrants). But I don't think we're even *close* to having "enough" entrants in but a tiny amount of L classes to seriously consider much else.
Personally, my recommendation is let there be an L class for any class where three or more L's register for it. After registration closes if there aren't enough L's in a class, bump them to the indexed class. I just don't see why the NCAC should give trophies to people for being the only one (or even two) in their class. All my crabby opinion, of course.
--Donnie
Well said Donnie. Well said.
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