The new rules and how its killing Lemons... (Page 1 of 7)

alright SILENCE DOGOOD, if it makes you unhappy, dont participate. Just because the car is $500, doesn't mean that it is not still real racing. Hell, it may mean MORE danger due to the POS cars.

BTW, the dumby-o's that boiled their fuel aren't the ones to blame. The blame goes on the lack of responsibility in our society, and the need to have rules, regulations, and insurance for the idiots who cannot think for themselves or accept the responsibility for their own actions.

spec racing is exactly what i was getting at. Lemons at one point (we are far and beyond it now) was cheaper then say a hobby stock car or spec car. Now the costs are sky rocketing to the point that its going to be a 10k investment to build a Lemons car and go to a race that was supposed to be for a 500 dollar car. I choked on my beer when i read about the roll cages last night. It made me ill to think that the cost is going so high that im going to have a real hard time pitching racing again next year to the team. I love safety, i think is awesome that Lemons mandated roll cages in the first place. But now that we are making wholesale changes to the rulebook on a monthly basis, its too much. you might as well call it a spec e30 race and be done with it. i mean 50% of the participants are rocking the BMW's any way so what does it matter. i can buy a rolling shell hobby stock for 1500 bucks, explain to me where the value is in prepping a 500 dollar disposable car for 6 grand that is probably gonna blow up 50 laps in. Jay Lamm used to preach about the money wrench and how he was against guys paying disgusting amounts of money for premade race cars, He even said that he wanted the gear heads and the race junkies at the track because that what the series was meant for. But now your driving the cost into the stratosphere and pulling the plug on the small timers with little money. If you wanted rich snobs racing and bitching at you with every last breath, with the latest rule changes you got your wish. the little guy just got stomped on and you betcha im pissed about it grandfather clause or not.

VoR

Until you guys have started a series... or owned a track... or have had to deal with all the insurance, regulatory and other business matters associated with a sanctioning body -- STFU.

Lemons is STILL the best racing for the $$... and its the only series where Newbies like you could ever walk up and buy a license to go road course racing.  Don't like it?  Go to your local county fair and sign up for the Bombers.  Don't trash what you don't have the balls to start.  This was a risky endeavor form the start... Jay's a great entrepreneur and deserves a lot of credit for making Lemons successful.

John

I suspect that all of this is driven by one thing: insurance. And rightly so. The minute that somebody gets seriously injured in this series (and given that it's racing, that's eventually bound to happen), there's gonna be a lawsuit filed and Jay and the corporate shell are going to be fighting for the life of the series in a courtroom (or, really, in a series of pitched legal battles mainly outside of the courtroom). It's important for that future legal fight (and don't kid yourself, it's coming one of these days) that Jay be able to show that Lemons took every reasonable safety precaution. If he doesn't do that, this series is just living on borrowed time.  I'm sure that the last thing that Jay wants to happen is to become the chief rule-niggler enforcer; these rules changes are necessitated to keep the series (and all of us) alive.

The idea that "you signed a waiver" is the barest of evidence in a court when someone suffers a catastrophic injury or death. There are many judges and juries who are loathe to tell a widow and her orphans to pound sand because Dad signed a waiver just prior to his fiery and painful death.

I'm not saying that even the recent rules changes won't need to be tweaked some more (like the cage issue on continuous 1-piece front hoops). But calling this the end of Lemons or the end of cheap amateur racing is just plainly overdramatizing the situation. If we want to be able to keep racing these crapcan cars -- which I most assuredly do, and not in a Spec e30 or SpecMiata series -- then the rules must evolve over time or else the series will be ended with one unfortunate accident.

I agree with you there, but I'm sure lots of the more well-prepared and well funded teams would disagree.

And of course we know all the rules are dictated by insurance, and some are in reaction to things that have already occurred (the fuel tank fire for example). I wonder if this latest round is directly related to the increase in speeds?

Remember, one person HAS died in Lemons racing already, and it didn't automatically turn into a legal nightmare. But of course this may not be the case next time.

That's a fair point, but wasn't it determined that he'd died from a heart attack prior to crashing? It's probably not a heart attack that's going to likely be the cause of a filed claim -- Lemons has no rules or jurisdiction over the causes of coronary events. Unless the Judges haze somebody so badly that they croak.

and right or wrong - I did hear several teams grumbling about the increased failure of cars for issues relating to welding being a little suspicious when one of those doing the inspections could be profiting from repairs made to meet tech...

I know there were definitely some hack jobs presented to the tech shed and those definitely shouldn't fly.

don't shoot the messenger - just relaying what I heard - multiple times.

The total product you're getting for the same entry fee is increasing in quality.  Rather than racing around ratty ovals and through chicanes with a top speed around 60mph, you're racing on real road courses with no chicanes at 70, 80, or 90mph.  I'm going to guess that insuring a race on a course like Thunderhill or CMP is more expensive than insuring one at Stafford Springs or Toledo Speedway, unless you have substantially increased safety standards.

That said, if we're going to start needing extreme safety measures (fuel cells, fire suppression, etc) to continue racing at road courses, then I'd be happy to return to lamer racing.  Make it more about who can keep their car running, rather than who can go the fastest.

being as our car didn't have a speedometer (much less any gauges at all) and didnt last very long we have only guesses but anyone know for sure what top speed the faster cars were hitting at Reno?

I'd be suprised if they weren't hitting at least 80 on that long front stretch...

I disagree that you have to have an E30 or Miata for Lemons. Sure that's the quick and easy way but there are many, many very capable cars out there besides those. All of the Alfas were fast and even our Peugeot managed to beat 5 of 9 E30s despite spending lots of time in the pits fixing shifter problems and driving the last 4 hours stuck in 3rd gear. So I highly encourage folks to go out and find the weirdest car out there (400 ci Gremlin anyone?) and not worry that you're going to loose because you don't have a BMW. Besides the fun in Lemons is in competing, not in whether you win or loose. We finished 37th but because of the heroic efforts of my teammates we did finish and we're as proud of that as if we'd have won the race. Not to mention I think we had as much fun as anyone out there and after all isn't that the point, to have fun?

Yeah, those front chicanes at T-Hill weren't doing anything at all really - yet some would brake for them...

GAAAH!!!!