What would a USCA pro-touring class look like??

[ArisESQ]

Originally Posted by preston

The real question to start with is does Optima want an ultimate street car contest or a "cool looking cars compete on track" contest ?
I believe the first few years were the latter, and now it is turning into the former. I remember the first few years, it was mostly show cars that could run vs what's going on now. But as people have said, that's what made it cool, that was the real draw.

I dunno... I personally like seeing how fast a street car can really be, and get particularly interested when a classic car can run against late model performance cars.

The former version of USCA you describe, which seemed to have been judged mostly subjectively based on what car looked the coolest, isn't really all that interesting to me. Just feels like an opportunity for people to pretend to race their cars.

If I can go out to a track day and run time trials in an open competition against everything from pumped up EVO and Z06, to Porsche GT2, and come within a margin of cars that are proven to be really fast out the box in my 47 year old Camaro, then I'll be stoked.

I don't need to win to have a blast - I just want to see what my car can do when judged objectively against newer cars.

[SSLance]

My first objective when running in Optima or with the SCCA is just to have a place to drive my car like I built it to be driven in the first place.

Optima's format with the 5 events crammed into one weekend is a fantastic formula for this. The seat time one gets at these events is worth SO much more than screwing something up just to try to figure out a way to get your car closer to the top of the standings at the end of the day.

I didn't care or dream about being anywhere near the top of the running order on the big sheet. Did I look to see how I was doing against those guys...sure. I also watched them closely when I could to see if I as a driver could pick anything up from them. Heck, I lined up on the warm up laps behind Danny Popp and learned the line around the track at 60 mph.

Mainly though I looked around at the cars similarly built to mine and looked to see where I stacked up against them at each event. Everyone knows who everyone is, and what their cars are built like. Pick those that you think you can beat and go do it.

Being able to see myself running my car on TV...well that was just gravy on top of an already excellent weekend.

[Panteracer]

Lance I agree Have a place to run the car
My esp firebird is no longer legal for that class
with all changes made and instead of moving to
Cp I can do osp or Cam now.

This whole discussion is great
Reminds me of a favorite movie line
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid

Getting ready to fight for running the hole in
the wall gang so Butch chooses knives
The other guy is ready to start and Butch says no no
we need to go over the rules

The other guy says Rules in a knife fight?

[Vince@Meanstreets]

Originally Posted by ArisESQ

I dunno... I personally like seeing how fast a street car can really be
I don't need to win to have a blast - I just want to see what my car can do when judged objectively against newer cars.

Seeing what you can do against a new factory built is fun but at the end of the day its for racing.

The most fun I have had at a track was with a group of friends racing for the weekend. Chasin with no times or who beat who. We did have race groups just to keep it safe. But it was just us n trhe track.

Just a bunch of guys who built their cars in carports to guys that had shops do the work for them. All in fun.