Arca_ex

iTrader: (2)

Yeah I don't know how I feel about the tire change either to be honest. I like racing on R7's. But I'm also in the biased camp where I was winning a lot of them too.

I guess the thing that kind of bothers me is that I thought Gridlife would have much more success in securing contingency winnings for consumables than they did. They just had the plain Hoosier one and maybe a couple others but it's the same as one NASA class with 7 cars and almost no event coverage or advertising value. Given the unparalleled media presence and live race coverage I just thought they would have more leverage I guess, coupled with 50+ car fields etc.

I'm not saying that going to street tires can't lower costs but having so many options and adding in shaving is going to be expensive for some to figure out the setup.


The 1 percent per 1000 RPM thing penalizes people running tall gears and rewards people who can operate in a small RPM window with close ratios. Swensen ran with transmission that had faceplated gears as well which is also a dog box unless he gave up on that and went back to a normal T56. The dog box one is a good penalty and one I'm surprised didn't exist before.

Also I still don't like the champ points system, that may be their point of view but the way I proposed with just plain drops actually gives you more incentive to show up for more races.

jpreston

iTrader: (4)

The best explanation I've heard of the new points system is that it's now more of a "best overall / most consistent racer" award than a season points champion. With the old system you could show up to 20 races, have 3 DQs for pass under yellow, 2 blown dynos, and one crash, and still win the points championship. I guess that's still possible with the new system, but there's a lot less incentive for risky decisions when you know you can't drop any races.

doward

They have always designed their rules and class structures around the people/cars that were actually showing up. They have never penalized anything based on it's potential, only actual results. On one hand, this requires spending from top runners to prove things are OP before they get penalized. On the other, they bring cool cars out of the woodwork for an event or two.

Theoretically, one or two events shouldn't break the Championship, but this year, one event did. I've been meaning to dive into this, because the GLTC circle jerk is strong with all the retaliatory meme-ing about v8s, corvettes and street tires.
Jeremy went to PPIR and collected 77 points in the Championship by beating a field of traditionally mid-packers. Nobody at PPIR won a non-invert race the whole year, nobody at PPIR who finished top 8 for the season won anything at all, and only a few non-PPIR podiums from the entire PPIR field.
Heitkotter collected 92 of his 257 points at PPIR, is a current Pro, finished p9 on the season with only 5 events and was Jeremy's only real competition at PPIR.
The flipside being NOLA, where Kutil would have maybe swept if he didnt DQ himself on P:W. At least McGrew(p6 Champ and multi-podium at other events) was there to keep him honest.
I feel like Jeremy's car will be credited for banning the AO52 midseason and CR1 post season, as well as adding or strengthening the penalties for dogboxes and engine detuning. I think everybody and their mother has theorycrafted a detuned C5 vette to break lots of club racing rules, but GLTC left the most doors open for opportunity.

P1 Jeremy (9 wins)and P2 Eric(6 wins) both attended all but one weekend. Their 77 vs 25 takeaways at those events wildly differs from their end of season points spread of 6 with the last race(an invert in bad weather) being a 15 point swing towards Jeremy
P3 Aaron and P4 Tom both missed 3 events, but won 5 and 7 races, respectively. Tom had the highest win percentage, and probably gets the Champ title in 2022 rules(I'm not doing that math).

Edit: theres no way to lay this out without throwing shade at the competition, so please know I am also a midpacker who finished 51st in the season. I didn't even land on the I-Made-It-Up podium of people who only contested one event, I think im 4th on that list. lol

cabowabo

Should also be noted that while the main discussion around streets seems to focus on cost, the primary driver is actually better racing. At the end of the day if you were the kinda person that stickered up every weekend then you probably won't save any money. If you're the kind person that didn't sticker up and ran your same R7s for 2-3 weekends then you stand to be just as competitive while potentially saving money. If you were the kinda person using streets anyways, then you stand to spend the same/similar money and be more competitive...especially miatas that were allowed 275s, but 275s don't exist for 15s and probably wouldn't be faster anyways.

Also A052 wasn't banned, it was placed in the hoosier category. For 2022 it's banned

Midtenn

iTrader: (15)

I thinking making street tires more attractive to the entry level driver. I know Adam has said many times that the goal of GLTC was to be good racing and to bring club racing to a group who really didn't know about it. If someone has a budget and aspires to be at the front of the pack, seeing the top drivers on affordable tires (without regards to how many they are bringing with them as weekend) makes it look more attractive. The drivers are the pointy end of the field will always find a way to spend more money and time to keep their competitive advantages. Be it on the best tires, more of the best tires, shaving the best tires, testing days, or constant development of their car, ect. As a mid-pack hopeful as my car develops, I'll be the one happy to just carry cheaper set of tires that I'll probably run a weekend or two.

flier129

iTrader: (7)

I think overall street tires will be a less expensive option. There will certainly be drivers and teams that go all out like y'all have mentioned. I do like they limited it to 2 sets of tires per event as well.

I'm going with 1 set of RT660s and another set of 200tw soon enough, not sure which one though. Maybe another set of RT660s and keep em for rains and deep tread depth. Maybe I'll wait to see the new offerings of 200tw for 2022, rumors of new Toyo compound and the RE71RS coming state-side. I think Hankook is overdue for a new 200tw as well!

Also, am I the only one that uses R7s more than 2-3 weekends?! lol

jpreston

iTrader: (4)

I ran 255 RT660 on my NC in heavy rain at Putnam 2 weeks ago. They were decent during light rain with no standing water, but they got super sketchy once the rain picked up and there was standing water on most of the track. They were surprisingly not bad with light standing water in the corners, but at 90-100+ on the main straight they were darting all over the place. Literally did a full car width lane change on me one time with zero steering input.

That set of RT660 had about 4 days on them and still had a lot of tread depth remaining. I love them in the dry but I'll definitely be buying a set of ECS or something else as my rain tires.

flier129

iTrader: (7)

Yeah I should stop using Dan the Man as my "this is ok" gauge

He's on 205 R660s here:

cabowabo

Conti ECS is no brainer for rain tire imo since we're allowed two compounds per weekend. I already have some lightly used 205 on 8s so just gonna leave those be. Then just rip through RT660, Rival S or whatever on 9s.

doward

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. LOL That lap was super fun though connecting the drift from T9 to 10A.

I ran RT660 at both Mid O and NCM in the wet, and i'll for sure be using something else, probably 205/50/15 ECS unless Michelin or Conti decides to grace us with a UHP Summer in 205/40/17.

apexanimal

-leichty would've won this year based on next year's season champrules
-cost is not the primary reason for the tire change.
-while a lot of people credit the a052 reclassification on swenson, many forget that houghton did that first, and continued to collect and share data on them while he's been confined to the great white north...
-cr1 wasn't placed on the approved list in part to it's performance, but also to its limited sizes, and the uncertainty in the supply chain (to put it mildly)

the new bridgestone potenza sport has potential to be good in the wet as well...

cabowabo

That was just a very high level generic baseline provided to work from. What the actual rule will be and what you will actually be assessed after sending in comp forms/dyno could differ a good bit. I think they've made it pretty clear the goal is parity, not creating a ruleset that can be "gamed".

cabowabo

The rules being a living document, there were some changes to season championship. Think they've struck the right balance at this point. It's now your 4 best weekends + finale. No individual drop races, it's all or nothing per weekend. Still promotes people showing up as much as possible to min/max points, but places importance on consistency over the weekend vs going for broke.

Midtenn

iTrader: (15)

Looks like the WF were testing at Putnam Park this weekend and they were only ~1-2 sec slower than their R7 times on RT660's.

flier129

iTrader: (7)

Worth noting Putnam is ~1:12-1:14 lap times. I've driven on track a few times with the RT660s on my car and they were more fun than I thought they would be. I ain't mad about the change!