I just read the GridLife rules. First read only of the classification portion, so I could be making some mistakes. I generally like the easy to fit classes and the goal of making things inclusive. I looked at a handful of group A T/A cars that regularly run (sorry in advance, if I didn’t look at yours). After doing this I quickly realized that certain cars will clearly rank highest without there even being a close 2nd. For this reason, I might be more inclined to choose a system that more strongly considers power to weight amongst other things.
NA Mustangs, NA Camaros, NA Corvettes - Street GT
Turbo 6s like BMW and Supra, etc - Street GT
Kaycee’s yellow Corvette - Street Mod because I believe it has a cam upgrade (other mods may also put him in Street Mod) - My point here is that I suspect a car similar, but that still qualifies for Street GT, would likely be setting the time to beat.
ZL1-1LE - Street Mod
GT3-RS because MSRP is greater than $115k - Street Mod
ViperACR - same as GT3-RS - Street Mod (Russ will likely be setting the time to beat in this class)
Darin and I run engines swaps (mine 4cyl swapped to 8 and Darin rotary swapped to 8). So, we are both thrown into Track Modern.
944-LS Swap because it jumped from 4cyl to 8 (greater than 2) - Track Modern
RX8-LS Swap because it jumped from rotary to 8 - Track Modern
*I, myself, am not concerned by this - we are only 2 cars and they are highly modified and therefore hard to fit them fairly in any system.
Lotus Super 7 - Sorry, I do not know enough about it to know for sure. 4cyl turbo but I don’t know what it weighs or if it is even considered to be closed wheel. It maybe classed as Super Unlimited.
Although I did not look at the other classes, the Street class will be very large - I would not be surprised that certain cars will consistently run up front in each class. Driving skill can make up for a lot but it might not be enough in some instances. For relatively novice drivers (myself included), GridLife would generally be fine. I don’t think it is the best system for experienced competitive drivers. But we all know that spec classes (or even carts) are great for that and perhaps anyone looking for this might find it in with the right group of cars in any one of the GridLife classes (maybe Club TR or even Sundae Cup). You may just need a different car than you have today.
After all this - the “spirit of competition“ could drop cars down or move cars up depending on their competitiveness. Perhaps if someone is running away with a class could be graduated into a faster group and those at the bottom could be moved down.
Someone else asked - what is the goal of our organization and for T/A. Best that I understand, it would be very hard to win AutoX without being one of the top drivers. We have OpenLapping/HPDE for people to experience driving fast in a safe environment. Is T/A the next progressive step towards competition and Road Race is the final step if you want to enter more of a driver’s competition?
Are we big enough and is there interest in having both GridLife as well as a 2nd system for closer head-to-head driver competitions in dissimilar street cars?
