Sean, as you know I didn’t send a letter either. At this time we are not active participants in HST and only our loaner cars are active in the class. As such I still feel justified to comment publicly and be involved in the conversation, but not to the extent of a formal request to the CRB on this particular matter.
As for the rest, I’m surprised there weren’t more letters but I don’t buy the default excuse for SMAC to ignore something they don’t favor. Seriously, the interest in this is abundantly clear no matter the vehicle. Shall we enumerate the times over the years that SMAC has taken it upon themselves to recommend something with little or no public debate or input? As for “thousands” of cars, not in any one season and certainly not in HST, barely into hundreds. How about asking them? How about my suggestion to seek input with a form at registration, or at an impound-all? Too simple and old-school?
Sure, the caveman has been on this forum MORE than long enough to know the procedure and that SMAC is free to ignore anything they want without a flood of letters. Surely his handlers have read that to him more than once, but, he’s a caveman. A lot of people haven’t been around long but may be aware that when something is proposed it eventually goes out for member input. Seeing here that there is overwhelming support from those on the forum it isn’t unreasonable to assume that will eventually come, or at least that it won’t be killed without something more than an evening phone discussion amongst five guys. Again, plenty has been done without a letter campaign.
Thanks for stepping up to discuss it though, that is definitely appreciated.
Thanks Steve.... Let me see if I can respond to some of your points:
I understand your position. The process however does not require you to be at a specific level of "active" other than an active membership, and I for one appreciate more feedback and thoughts/opinions than less, so please submit a letter on this and any other topic that can help improve SM.
As to my reference of 1000's of cars it was relative to all of SM not just HST. Basically the general process of how rules are written, discussed and approved.
The way the SCCA works is via the letter system. Right or wrong, that is the process that the SMAC has to work within. We as SMAC members rarely submit letters unless it is a clarification type of issue and we would submit just to follow the process. We can not just arbitrarily start making SM what we 5 think it should be, we have to respond to the community via the letter system. Even if we agree or dis-agree with the letters and topic the decision is still up the the CRB, not us. We have had a few things denied in recent months/years by the CRB for various reasons, so we are not the end all be all of the rules making process.
The interest being abundantly clear on an Internet forum is not how the SCCA process works. If we had to start monitoring multiple forums and FB and responding to issues via those channels there really wouldn't be any time to get anything else done other than monitoring forums. Which forums should we monitor? How does a new forum get approved to be monitored? Does FB count? The letter system is the easiest way to get a request across in a timely manner to the appropriate people and teams.
I don't know what specific items in the past you are referring to relative to no public debate or input, but I can tell you that when we do the WDYT asking for public input we get ridiculously low (single digit) response percentages compared to the number of active racers. When some in the community scream "everyone wants this" and we get 45 people in the whole country to respond the lack of response does not back up the statement that "everyone wants this."
We are in the process of trying to get additional information from HST entrants. WG is the last HST this year so we shall see what comes of that and proceed accordingly and potentially go backwards to all HST entrants from the 19 season for their opinions. It's not that it's too simple, its that you have a club of mostly volunteers trying to find the time to get all the volunteering done and often don't have the bandwidth to add admiral requirements to a given weekend event and we don't have the budget to send someone specifically to obtain the information.
Nothing to my knowledge has been killed. We meet once a month for a couple hours and will spend additional time and calls when necessary.
I think the biggest thing for me right now is that we need to be dealing with facts and not emotions. I'm not pointing any fingers at anyone (especially you) I am just saying that your reference to something being killed is simply not true. So now it's on an Internet forum and pitch forks are starting to come out regarding a decision that has not even been made or is even close to being made. All I can tell you is that we are doing our due diligence to try and figure out how something like this proposal would work if it were to be adopted.
BTW, SMAC is the group that came up with this idea a while ago specifically as it relates to a potential new tire from Hoosier. We discussed how to limit spending and how other series do it and how it might look in SCCA land. SCCA was very willing to listen and offer suggestions on how they might be able to help. Jim brought an interesting twist to the tire sticker idea not long ago so I asked him to submit the letter for formal consideration and he did.
I am going to answer a few more posts tonight and then probably not respond to much more. Unfortunately I have a couple real jobs to pay the bills that I need to pay attention to, so I can't go back and forth on an Internet forum.
If you want to call me to discuss, I am happy to discuss it with you or anyone else who has questions or concerns.
Thank you.... Sean