We are winning the BS game! (Page 1 of 3)

If you get laps in C or B class, it's not a punishment. It's what we do with a car that would get stomped in the higher class but is a bit too good for the lower class.

If you can figure out how to make a Miata look just like a Daewoo Nubira or Hyundai Tiburon I bet you get A0.

I have theming ideas, Ian, but non-ratty Miatas seem to attract BS laps like flies on a rib roast.

Who did your classing at each race? Most of the time I end up with Phil, or we never even make it to BS because Jay does our tech and tells us that it's going to be C0 like it always is. But once at NJ we got a judge that was called in just for the race (I really can't remember who), and he tried to assign laps to the car because "these were super fast back in their day." I just laughed and said "have you seen our record?" We got C0.

BS is just what it's name implies, it's BS. They make it up on the spot. Granted Phil and the gang have gotten really really good at it, but sometimes things get missed. Have you tried bribing?

eh, we've gotten to the point of not giving half a shit about BS laps. We've even talked about doing a coyote and IRS swap in the 'Mont, since we're in texas, Sajeev thinks that every fox body on the planet is sure to run away with the race and win by 500 laps over any other car, and historically, we've had something fail that keeps us off the track for a few hours every race.  We built it to be fun and fast, but it has to stop for fuel every hour and a half, so between the fuel consumption and reliability history, it's a pretty solid class b car.

If we dont have a chance, we might as well go REALLY fast, right?

I've been dumped in Class B before with 53hp naturally aspirated 3-bearing main british motors before. At the end of the weekend, it really doesn't matter but it does sting a little.

I bring a variety of drivers, some completely green (and some who have never even driven a stick before) and to see them all giddy when they are in the top 5 in Class C (of 7 cars) is kinda fun to watch.  Of course, our 28-min fueling stops and driver changes every 30-45 min pretty much secure the car's placing if the typical British Engineering doesn't do us in sooner.

I'm a BIG proponent of Class C plus laps, but this year it seems I've read a lot of recaps for Class C where they seem to get 1 ringer in it with no laps as a sympathetic, "They've been doing this a while with a slew of poor performances / breakdowns. Sure they are a Class A or Class B car, but-- let's throw them in C as a reward." This is sorta the opposite of what's been happening to the OP.

All-in-all, I love the way the classing goes and it often makes for some exciting Race-monitor watching. I'd even be willing to entertain some re-classing after the end of Saturday if there's a run-away in any of the classes. Retroactive penalty laps for accidental mis-classing sorta thing.

Class B is sorta a wasteland which is why I probably grumble a bit when I'm stuck in it.  It's like being a sophomore in high school. There are a few standouts but the majority are just kinda anonymous and there to fill up the hallways and just keep the school in business.

Themes, bribes, etc. have no effect on classing. We are trying to keep each of the three classes as competitive for as many racers as possible. This means that we tend to err on the side of the higher class, because we don't want a team running away with Class C or Class C by 25 laps (which happens sometimes, because classing is an inexact art). So, if your team runs what we call a "B+" car (too good for B, not good enough for A), it will most likely get Class A with zero laps or Class B with some handicap laps.

We take a lot of things into account when classing cars. If we've seen the same car with the same drivers a bunch of times and we're pretty confident we know how well that team does, we will sometimes put a Class B car in Class A (because the team organization is very good, car is reliable, drivers don't get black flags, etc), or we might put a car you'd expect to be in Class A into Class B if we know the team is a bunch of clowns who will lock their tools in their trailer and lose the key, get four black flags in the first hour of racing, etc. Raw lap times don't mean a whole lot when classing a car, but where the team finishes in the standings in previous races does mean something.

I'd say that if you want to make a case that your car deserves to be in a lower class than you keep getting, the worst way to go about convincing the judges is to whine about how other teams get treated better than you, it's all unfair, etc. (this is what teams in California and Texas do, and it doesn't work so well). Instead, print out the standings for the races you've done in the past, so we can see where the car has finished in those races. If you have a stock early Integra (a classic example of a car that can be either Class B or Class A, depending on team skills and equipment) and you can show us that you've just barely managed to squeeze into the top third of the standings at all your previous races, you can make a decent case for getting into Class B (if you have an E30, however, the only way to get into Class B is going to involve having a squishy stock suspension, automatic transmission, and verifiably skill-deprived drivers).

As I keep telling people, the point of the classing is to maximize the number of teams who feel they have a hope in hell of competing for a class win. There's a lot of subjective judgment made by the Lemons Supreme Court in this process, but this judgment is based on many races of real-world Lemons experience.

So important Phil had to post it twice.

I only mentioned bribing as a supplement to trying to sway your classing very slightly.

You mean like we would have been in 16th place for class B at the last race, 6th in class C, or 56th overall?

BTW, I am not complaining about Lemons classing.  I think it's brilliant.  Classing and rules will always come down to some subjective decision no matter how big a rule book you write.  I was just sharing the things that seemed to influenced our classing.  We have embraced class A.  In fact, I am adding more cheaty parts this winter so we can go for Class A dominance or more likely blow up trying.

Maybe one day...if my wife leaves me, I will build a second car for class A, cause yes, I do have occassional wet dreams about being behind the wheel of the Jew-WOP-E weaving baskets as opposed to being blown by like a corner worker at COTA during an F1 race when in the Cortina.  However, our first race was a disaster with melting the engine. Phil then laughed at me for the aluminum radiator and pep-boys "build your own" CAI as attempts to manage overheating (Long yellow on Saturday afternoon proved that a FAIL), and then sunday to have the only thing we haven't had to rebuild eject itself from the car (that would be my rear wheel complete with half-shaft bouncing around the bowl at NHMS, thank you).

But we did get more track time this second race and at one point, with the Daytona in the pits, even had third place in C for a brief bit. So despite not taking the checker either day, we felt some sense of accomplishment... "We're polishing up that fine POS" really nice.. and just one day it will end up wedged in that candy a$$. 

Point to this post?  Ditch the Mazdas and get a 60's car you know absolutely nothing about... You'll love it even more...

I'm not so sure about that.  You keep putting our two-stroke 96 in Class C even though we don't stand a chance there.

or bring a much crappier car