Technical Analysis for September 17, 2017 event at YYC

[PedalFaster]

Cam's Corvette [...] is capable of winning BS at the SCCA Nationals. 

I should hope so since Cam's car runs in AS. 

[Terry Johns]

My suggestion is after the event is over, we get the top 2 guys in PAX, (probably Ryan or Cam) and let them do their thing in my car. If they equal their PAX time in my car I will retract my statements and admit defeat. I will choose the event just in case the top 2 PAX winners are sand bagging.

The issue for me is about course design, HP & PAX not creating a level playing field.

That experiment's doomed to fail, because if PAX works correctly, Ryan and Cam won't be able to match their PAX times in your car.

Why? Because Ryan and Cam are each driving fully prepped, class-leading cars. Conversely, you're in the wrong car (you're in an NC Miata, but the class-leading car in CS is the ND Miata, so the PAX is based on it), the wrong model car (you've got a PRHT Miata, and the PRHT mechanism adds about 75 lbs. to the car, all up high), and your car's not fully prepped (a full prep NC would have fancy shocks, lightweight wheels, a lightweight exhaust). I'd expect these factors to result in times very roughly 0.5-1.0 seconds slower than those of a fully prepped CS ND Miata.

Furthermore, no one, not even Ryan and Cam, can jump into a strange car and immediately drive it to its full potential.

*Furthermore*, no one's saying that we don't sometimes have power-intensive courses. We're just disagreeing with your contention that *all* courses are power-intensive courses. If you cherry-pick a power-intensive course, that will defeat the purpose.

You've basically designed a "test" that's impossible for you to fail. I don't know what that would prove.

Your quite correct about my car not being fully prepped. So maybe Murray would be kind enough to lend his (fully prepped car)

[Reijo]

I'm beginning to think that this is starting to get complicated, more involved and, hence, more time consuming.

Hmmmm.....

Maybe we need to set up a separate practice day and then run during the practice event.  I'll come up with what I think is a fair course (in fact, believe it or not, I always do try to design a "fair" course such that there is no advantage to any particular car.  However the last couple of events at FM I did not set up as fair courses to be sure but they actually turned out to be quite "fair" anyway ... go figure.).

I have been getting inquiries about more test/practice days/evenings at YYC (even a few on Sunday) and have been thinking about setting one up anyway.

Maybe that's what we should do.

[Reijo]

Cam's Corvette [...] is capable of winning BS at the SCCA Nationals. 

I should hope so since Cam's car runs in AS. 

haha....right you are!  I stand corrected ... AS car!   

Reijo

[Sprockett]

The issue for me is about course design, HP & PAX not creating a level playing field.

I agree with you.

Furthermore, we should add in car width, car weight, altitude, tires, time of day, temperature, racing surface...PAX has an impossible job and cannot create a perfectly level playing field. We should all just ignore it.

[Reijo]

My suggestion is after the event is over, we get the top 2 guys in PAX, (probably Ryan or Cam) and let them do their thing in my car. If they equal their PAX time in my car I will retract my statements and admit defeat. I will choose the event just in case the top 2 PAX winners are sand bagging.

The issue for me is about course design, HP & PAX not creating a level playing field.

That experiment's doomed to fail, because if PAX works correctly, Ryan and Cam won't be able to match their PAX times in your car.

Why? Because Ryan and Cam are each driving fully prepped, class-leading cars. Conversely, you're in the wrong car (you're in an NC Miata, but the class-leading car in CS is the ND Miata, so the PAX is based on it), the wrong model car (you've got a PRHT Miata, and the PRHT mechanism adds about 75 lbs. to the car, all up high), and your car's not fully prepped (a full prep NC would have fancy shocks, lightweight wheels, a lightweight exhaust). I'd expect these factors to result in times very roughly 0.5-1.0 seconds slower than those of a fully prepped CS ND Miata.

Furthermore, no one, not even Ryan and Cam, can jump into a strange car and immediately drive it to its full potential.

*Furthermore*, no one's saying that we don't sometimes have power-intensive courses. We're just disagreeing with your contention that *all* courses are power-intensive courses. If you cherry-pick a power-intensive course, that will defeat the purpose.

You've basically designed a "test" that's impossible for you to fail. I don't know what that would prove.

You have a good point there Stephen about the courses.  I think we all agree that course design can affect results.  Absolutely.

In fact, I remember looking at Karen Babb's east course in 2010 (I was running in ASP - now SSP -  with Jay in his Exige) and there was one section that told me that there was no way we were going to compete with Junior Johnson in his Corvette.  In my words from back then,  all I could see was "Corvette tailights". 

The section was a low speed 180 deg. turn followed by a long (by autox stds) curved straight toward the finish.  There is no way I could keep up with a SP Corvette that was fully prepared in that section.  Torque would rule the day:  We were stuck somewhere between 1st and 2nd gear and his 'vette in 2nd was not a problem ... torque!

As Junior said, his 'vette was about 3.0 sec. 0-60 mph when we were talking about that corner later at the award dinners I think it was.  He killed us on that course.

However 2nd and 3rd were a pair of Exiges - David Smart of Texas in his Exige got me by 0.2 sec. over two days (think he beat me one day and I got him the 2nd day but not by enough). 

So you could say the one turn and straight determined the outcome of ASP that year.

Note however, that we beat all the other Corvettes in-class including the owner of the car Junior was driving.  So driving is a big factor.  You can have the prepared car but you still have to drive it.  Junior, of course, and kudos to him, drove a good event and walked away with the jacket.

[JamesTCallaghan]

I'd like to have one of these test days, but mostly because I think one of the most beneficial things for my driving has been seat time in a wide variety of different cars with very different drive trains, power and suspension design.

[JCS]

James I'll co drive the WRX at next event?

[MurrayPeterson]

Your quite correct about my car not being fully prepped. So maybe Murray would be kind enough to lend his (fully prepped car)

My car isn't fully prepped.

Currently, it has shocks that aren't up to snuff, leaving the car with some fairly severe mid/late corner understeer.
And it still has the heavy OEM exhaust.  Shocks will probably get replaced this winter, but exhaust will probably stay OEM forever.

[Myz]

PAX has an impossible job and cannot create a perfectly level playing field. We should all just ignore it.

Best comment All Day

[Rubicon]

Back in the old days, we never had pax...just classed cars and went at it. So, I still just ignore pax.

[MurrayPeterson]

But all systems are flawed.  An AP1 S2000 is in the same class (BS) as an AP2 and a C5 Corvette.  Who needs PAX for screwy results when you can get the same thing without PAX?

[Reijo]

But all systems are flawed.  An AP1 S2000 is in the same class (BS) as an AP2 and a C5 Corvette.  Who needs PAX for screwy results when you can get the same thing without PAX?

Good point Murray.

HS:  There are sure a lot of very uncompetitive cars in there - all kinds of econo-boxes etc.  However, only 2 or 3 of them are truly competitive such as Minis and FiSTs.  FS too!  Why buy an old police car with 500,000 on it and race against Mustang GT's, Camaro SS's etc.? 

So if you want to be competitive on any scale, you do need a competitive car in-class ... never mind RTP.  This is especially so if you get a ringer driver in a good, class-winning car that is prepared (of course, this is what RTP is based on).

So, basically the RTP (I think I'm going to start using this euphemism from now on!  ) system is meant to compared fully-prepared, competitive cars with good national-level drivers against each other on a national-level course.  For anyone else RTP is not really applicable.

So in the end, what use is it?

Well, OK, I guess it could also compare cars that equally unprepared, uncompetitive and driven equally poorly from other classes! 

But I digress! 

Therefore, some of you are entirely correct as per the reasoning above that RTP isn't really applicable except among a very narrow and very defined band! 

Therefore, the same as you, I tend to ignore it more or less except to glance at the results every now and then to see "relative" times. Instead of a winner per se, I look at who are in the top ten or so (maybe even 15) locally to see who drove well.  And then among those I look to see if someone was above their usual ranking and then in-class to see who was ahead of whom.  Even further down the ranks I look at relative times among those people in that "band" range of times.

So, generally, I do not treat the RTP system as necessarily being the be-all end result, or truly indicative of anything per se etc. 

Some others choose certain people to compare themselves to among the classes to see if they drove well:  "Sam" in his SSP Corvette might say that he is usually about 1 second off "Fred's" XP time.  Today, say, he is off Fred's time by 0.5 seconds and he figures he had a good day or maybe it suited his car more.

Sometimes I have driven other people's cars and it is interesting to see where in the RTP ladder of results I end up in that car.  From there I can estimate where the car could end up with any mods that are still allowable in-class etc.  Or maybe I can use the results to estimate how close/competitive that car might be in the bigger picture. 

In fact, on a personal level, we have been comparing our FP car's results (which is not fully prepared by any stretch of the imagination and is on 5 year old hockey puck tires but it is coming along and has some of the major items in place with others to come shortly - look for us to get much, much faster ...   )  with others through RTP and raw times to figure out how competitive it is likely to be before and after modifications.  We can then estimate what, say, new wheels/slicks would do (also after discussing with others outside of our area etc. etc. etc.).

Therefore, we are using it as a tool to estimate where we might be on the international level by comparing our times to some of our local, internationally-competitive drivers such as Cam, Stephen and Ryan and others at the top of our local RTP ladder.  This can be useful information to have ... or maybe it is just a sick form of curiousity?  I dunno!  hahaha 

As another example, the Andersons were kind enough to let me drive their FS BMW 135i a few times last summer (thanks again!) and I was surprised it was at the top of RTP or within, I believe, the top 5 each time I drove it! It did not feel like an overly powerful car or anything but it was quite competent in pretty much everything and was quite a narrow car so it slalomed really well.  I remember the Strelnicks (National level drivers from Texas) tried one out when they first came out and even showed up at Packwood with it and I think mainly because of the diff they decided it wasn't really competitive at the pointy end of the results (I could be remembering wrong).  I'm not sure if Beth ran it at Nationals or not.  Erik had their SSM RX7 that he was dominating in at the time so he drove that.  Thinking back on the Anderson's 135, I was surprised how competitive it was (locally anyway).  Actually I still ponder those results.  It is a surprisingly capable car.

By the way, the Anderson's have a new M2 so the 135 is for sale somewhere on the forum here and I know they are away picking up the new car from the east coast as we speak.  Looking for a competitive car locally?  This is one.

http://forums.sascsolo.com/index.php?topic=847.msg7013#msg7013

Anyhow, maybe this is a different kind of use for RTP/PAX than what some people are using it for, I don't know.  However this is sort of how I use it ... and with a grain (maybe a shovel-full?) of salt?    

Hopefully my rambling makes sense ... at 3 in the morning!  With a coffee.   

[JCS]

STS seems to be horrendously PAXd this year.....all local STS cars have struggled in the Street Touring Category and I've noticed similar results in the USA events even for the CRX and Civics.

But How do they calculate it and how do they balance it.  Once you are out of the street category the car basically has to be modified to the maximum extent that the class allows to make it competitive, and then once those modifications are made they need to be leveraged to the maximum extent.  That is the flaw in my opinion, outside of street class your car needs to be setup for only the purpose of Auto X which isn't a "street" class in my opinion.

That said, once I accepted that I was never going to be hugely competitive, I've really enjoyed pushing my car and myself to be better and smoother at every event and with a couple of exceptions I think I've achieved that.  Also there's something ridiculously fun about pushing a crap car to the very edge of its limits. 

[Sprockett]

That is the flaw in my opinion, outside of street class your car needs to be setup for only the purpose of Auto X which isn't a "street" class in my opinion.

I know trying to explain to anyone who is still missing the concept is likely futile but...

Your comment suggests you are confusing what this index is. This index does not determine how you must setup a car in a class. The index is determined by how people have setup their car in a class. This index does not exist (even in theory) to normalize everyone at the event. It exists in an attempt to normalize classes and as flawed as it is, no one has anything better.

I think one of the biggest hurdles is that this index is (allegedly) developed from the results of major events but is used for the local events. At the major events, no one cares about where they place on index. It's a challenge enough to win your class and the class is all that matters. The index is 'needed' at the local level because class sizes don't offer any competition and the sport is still based on competition.