A_Revs

Can you expand your thoughts on this point? I’m curious how mod is an issue. We shouldn’t be putting onus on people to go into higher classes for competition sake when they aren’t maxed out of a class already.

It has been brought up time and time again certain modifications don’t make sense for how many points are brought up against you in the pax system. Pax in my opinion is not true to time attack but focuses more on a time trial event trying to make a driver the focus without taking their car into account. However, the factors against each car can be unique and the challenge is that you will never get a level playing field when the cars are constantly changing with technology, different trims and new vehicles. I like the idea of getting rid of this overall championship and going to a classing system where the focus is on track records vs one overall winner. This would actually allow more “winners” per say with a few concise classes and the ability to focus more on machine and driver vs just driver. Cars grouped together in a fashion that you know where they stand in their own category. Pax was getting to a very stiff pointy end of not being fun for those who wanted to showcase the ability to drive and build a car that they 1. Enjoyed driving and 2. Looked cool. It penalized each modification wether it was cosmetic or not because it had to account for modifications which would either be an advantage in one case vs a disadvantage in another. I think the overall competitiveness and one overall winner takes away from people feeling like they would have a shot at even competing when they also need to show up to quite a few events to even be considered in the points. It’s been a few hard years for people to make it out to the track as things get more expensive. We need to consider a bit of this in the equation when someone can make 4 track weekends and another person can make maybe 2 days but want to see where they and their car fall into the standings. I am also all for a rookie league. There is so much you learn the first year or two and coming out with a car you didn’t think you would be racing has its clear disadvantages and often times immediately bodes that either you sacrifice track time to modify your car in a more helpful way or deal with being in a spot where you turn laps for fun but want the aspect of a competition to see where you stand.

I would like to point out Time Attack is NOT about the fastest driver. The North American/United States TIME TRIALS are. There is a difference. Whole point of Time attack is to take a street car or what once was a street car and make it go as fast as you can, modified or not, generally based off a short rule book and tire limit. So by the SCCA rules that caters to people with expensive factory cars. The purpose built time attack cars will be bumped to unlimited for little things like aero modifications (not specifically wing size but things like splitter tunnels/diffusers)…meanwhile the ACR and GT3RS will be in the max class below. While this is better than pax it’s still broken up into too many different classes/categories (17 compared to Pax’s 21+) and we will end up in the same boat of people being very nit picky and a participation trophy system. I like the 4 main classes before they’re narrowed down into a huge filter aside from the whole allowing electric and tube chassis cars in that don’t have vins. Good drivers in the lower classes still have great competition in a more affordable environment and people who want to modify their cars in whatever way are bumped up, making it 50/50 car and driver for competition which closer aligns to the original spirit of time attack. Biggest thing to point out is there’s no limit on tire size and everyone running a 200tw tire will pick the class based on car mods which we’ve repeatedly seen fail in these systems (225 vs 265 is a big difference in lap time and grip and normally hp depending on the car). The tire tread wear is half the equation and size being the other. The size being the limiting factor and most important part of classing a car for comparison to another. If you look at classing rules Gridlife and Global Time Attack have the tires as the biggest thing they base their classes off of. It’s why global time attack went to a spec tire but I don’t think that’s the right way to go especially to keep things affordable. I’ve talked a lot with organizers in Alberta who have started a time attack series with Speed Freaks YEG (on IG) and they’ve based their time attack off Gridlife with 4 main classes and tire limits and had a hugely successful first year at stratotech. We have been at castrol for open lapping but not time attack but generally everyone out there talking about it said it’s a fun way to just have a time behind your driving and car. So I won’t speak much more on their behalf. This is a step in the right direction either way you go. It’s an attempt to make it better and bring something new to the table. People come out to time attack to see the exciting looking cars and production cars breaking track records. It’s not just seeing the best driver in a slow car. We have hpde and open lapping weekends for people who want to do laps. Those people look at the modified time attack cars or crazy expensive cars that come out doing time attack and they can be moved into that environment down the road. We’ve got good bones and we’ve got enough people to keep the ball rolling.

What I ran into last year was I had to re-class my car for every event. Most of your younger car enthusiasts who come out to the track modify their vehicles as they get the funds to, myself included. My car went up a couple classes and then down once weighed causing a bit of a nightmare for Ian and Brooke to keep track of my score based off pax times. This is why I was in favor of going to new rules that went by tire size and weight. Pax is utterly confusing to new people getting into it and makes a lot of work when you're trying to be fair to yourself and other competitors by being in the right class and trying to modify your vehicle to be more reliable at the track once you've started coming out regularly. That has been my experience with pax. Regardless of what classing system is used I'm just doing what I think is best with the next project car.

New rules look good guys! The pax system really hurt my evo when it came to mods that just made the car safer to be on the track. Glad to see we are getting closer aligned to what time attack is all about