have you ever known a Pax to be the same or not change in a year? My guess with Tony Raw timing AS at most his event this year BS Pax will get harder. Besides its PAX, who cares.

The really sad part about this is getting the new blood into the sport. The SCCA fails miserably at this. Every local event I try to get 10-15 new faces into the lot. Most have a ton of fun as you can imagine. Then a few will want to venture a little deeper until they look at the rules lol. Try to explain PAX to a novice. Or try to explain why a 3200lb C6 Z06 is classed the same as a 3800lb Z/28. Orwhy a 300hp Civic Type R is classed alongside a 2005 BMW 325 with under 200hp.

They just get confused and never show up again.

Yet you're still here. Maybe rather than try and explain these kinda things just let them have fun.

Everyone I meet someone new in my class, I make sure i talk to them, "hey welcome" ""are you having fun?" Things like that. Also explain to them that i have been doing this for years and when i was new I wasn't as fast as i am now. Just go out and have fun with your car and enjoy the company of others who enjoy this goofy sport. 9/10 I see them back, and some go so deep as to get into a better classed car.

Rather than complain, be an ambassador for the sport.

To be fair, the SCCA has begun to embrace the more "catch all classes" with CAM and now extreme street. In my area, CAM is probably the most popular class or right there with the Miata classes. At the Charlotte Pro-Solo this year, there were 30 some CAM cars. The worst part about the sport are the confusing classes. CAM and XS are combating that.

Well, I'm thinking more about the 1st timers.

A 1st timer with an LS or LT1 Camaro is in the same class as an SLE? Base Mustang vs GT350R? And the rules prohibit using wider wheels?

This doesn't seem like a good idea.

I agree, I think CAM works because you CAN mod your base Mustang to compete with a GT350R, actually right now there's a 2010 GT that's very competitive with a 350R. Most folks in CAM are car guys with more experience than average.

But that's not how FS is going to work...

Ambassador huh? Did you see the part where I try to get 10-15 new faces to the sport at every event.

I've also noticed how "cliquey" some of you guys are.

To and extent I don’t disagree. We can’t have classes for everyone and the people that are showing up to national events but 1LEs and such. It’s not perfect but it’s the world we have. The day guns are no longer needed I’ll start building bottles and hospitals. Lol.

Cam is awesome and it’s bad. Cause it’s great to have that catch all yet at the same time it’s kinda the reason Fs is in this situation. I know if I were building a cam car I’d get a base SS or turbo 1le.

If you're going to have street classes that don't allow mods the only thing that makes sense is to group them by times and not types.

If you allow mods then types make sense. CAM-C is both popular and very competitive.

Seems easier to just get rid of FS as a type class and move FS cars into whatever classes make sense for their times. Just a steady progression from SS to HS, seems simple, easy and fair...

Exactly. Make each step a little tougher. One car starts dominating in say CS, and next year it's bumped to BS. It will work itself out, and you'd have a fantastic mix of cars in every class instead of each class having that "ringer" car that has the advantage.

But that's literally what this proposed rule change is intended to do. The "track ponies" are not competitive with the best cars in BS. They just aren't. And the "regular ponies" (SS and GT) aren't competitive with the E90 M3 in FS, either. And as Mike wrote, those cars aren't showing up anymore. Moving the track ponies to FS makes a class where several cars are equally competitive, and leaves BS to the twice-as-expensive M2 Comp, new Supra, Evora (arguably), and C6 Z51 (if it gets moved also). It means you no longer need a decade-old, limited-production, as-expensive-as-new-1LE German car to win FS nationally.

Street (formerly Stock) classes never allowed mods. That's the whole point. And there are always plenty of cars that aren't competitive, because we can't have 100 different Street classes. Typically, cars that aren't competitive or that become obsolete go to Street Prepared, Street Touring, or now CAM. I don't see a problem with that.

However, right now I do see a problem where there is no truly competitive class for any version of any pony car. That is not a situation SCCA wants to continue, because they need a place for relatively affordable and fast cars to compete. There was a time not that long ago when F Stock was the biggest class at national events. I'm not saying we can or need to get back to that, but there needs to be a place where pony cars compete well.

That is literally how it is now and always has been. This current proposal is a move to bump some cars that aren't competitive in BS down to where they will be competitive. FS as a "type" is not quite about all speed capabilities and more about a class for slightly heavy, larger, RW, powerful cars. They do well on some course and not well on others, compared to something like ES and DS cars. So they don't exactly fit the "steps" you mention, but they are trying to keep cars of similar capabilities together. Pony cars have never fit very well in BS when you compare the rest of the cars in that class. They are much bigger and less sophisticated.

I think you're missing the tweak. Let's have a JCW mini cooper in FS with a stock 6th gen SS. Put the Civic Type R in with the Mustang PP in CS or whatever. Right now they don't mix any FWD into RWD as far as I know. Also the PAX numbers don't get progressively tougher. F E and D have a valley.

That wouldn't make sense, because on some courses a JCW Mini might be a lot faster than the SS, and on other course it would be slower. For example, if the course was mostly slaloms and offsets with little acceleration, the Mini would have a massive advantage due to its narrow track and tiny length. But on courses where the gates were wide and there were big speed differentials, the SS would have a big advantage. That's why they sort of try to group similar(ish) cars together.

Short of each car having its own class, there's always going to be a "ringer" especially in street classes. There are always more cars and options coming out that can make a car faster, but not warrant a class change.