A couple weeks ago Robert Patton mentioned an idea along the lines of a race with a mandatory driver-change…And your teammate had to be a non-SpecE30 type. The purpose of this thread is to bounce ideas off each other and see how much appeal there might be for the idea of a race where drivers spent time in cars that were not their home class.
Roebling would be the right place for this because it has only 1 wall. We’d make it really clear to everyone that they are to avoid contact at all costs. We can’t have folks hurting cars they don’t own. We’ve been so successful at avoiding contact lately, that I’m tempted to call this “SE SpecE30 business as usual”, but I don’t want to jinx us.
This would be a 3rd race for the weekend, not one of the 2 primary races.
Another way we could do this is a car swap. For example, we go to the other classes and encourage them to participate. So maybe instead of an enduro with a driver change we just do a 30min race but you and a Spec944 driver have coordinated to do the race in each other’s cars. Or a SpecE46 guy and I swap cars. We could do something with staggered starts to try to keep the classes even such that they all have the same theoretical start time.
One charm of the idea is that we could give non-SpecE30 types some up-close-and-personal experience with just how fabulous SpecE30 racing is. A second charm, depending on how we do it, is that we all get seat time racing in a car that we otherwise would not have.
The Thunder Roadsters might be a bad car swap because of their sequential transmission.
IMO we should restrict this to folks that have not raced SpecE30’s before. For example, I might think that it’s cool to race Damien’s SpecE46, but since he’s raced SpecE30s for years, we’ve pissed away a chance to introduce SpecE30 to someone w/o that experience.
I think that in order for this to really work well, we’d need a lot of interest. One of the things that makes SpecE30 fabulous is our large fields. But if there’s only a dozen SpecE30 participants, then we’ve really not shown the invitee-racers, what makes us so much fun.
Personally, I think Robert’s idea is pretty cool. We could certainly grab some folks from other classes if they new how much more fun we had, then their class has. Also, I’d be very curious what it’s like to race in a different class, and I don’t mean Lemons/Chump. I don’t want something with an assload of power where I’d get myself in trouble, but I think it would be damned cool to try a Spec944, GTS2/3, or CMC.
So here’s what we would need to do:
- There has to be a bunch of folks enthusiastic about doing it.
- We brainstorm and work out a consensus behind the couple favorite ideas for the details of the race.
- We talk to Jim and get his approval.
- Get the word out to other classes. Encourage them think out of the box and have a great time with us.
So, is this a cool idea and you’re in? Or is it a dumb idea?