Re: We have a problem !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dick Roberts (Web admin)]

Posted by Derek Harnett on May 26, 2004 at 17:41:00:

In Reply to: We have a problem !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! posted by Martin H on May 25, 2004 at 22:14:59:

If the rules allow for a car to finish on a standard Cam, then I think allowing a car to start on a standard Cam is not too much of a stretch. Obviously the same rules in terms of championship points would apply.

I'd also be of the opinion that in the longer term the 24 hour race deserves a different status to the rest of the championship and it would suffer less from allowing two classes. If it encourages people into racing 2CVs then it's all to the good. I myself got into racing the championship as a direct result of first entering the 24 hour. That's not an unusual story. I could see a benefit from allowing 24 hour entrants run standard engines but require 04 spec engines if they want to graduate to regular championship rounds.

As 03 cars would form a non-championship class in effect, it in fact may be possible to cover them in the supplementary tech regs for the 24 hour which are published separate to the club regs every year and could maybe be updated on this occasion? That would get my vote.

As Martin suggests, it may be too late to persuade folks who otherwise would have entered, but I don't think it would hurt to try.

On the wider issues of low entries and Cams I have a couple of points:

- As I understood it, the idea of a club Cam was to standarise everyones Cam settings and eliminate any tuning in that area, either by batch testing Cams (looking for the best of the batch) or by moving the timing wheel, etc, etc. Unfortunately it looks to me that by having a vernier to best tune the timing/performance of a club Cam, that we're adding time and expense to building and tuning an engine. Once again the folks with the time and money to do lots of testing will perfect their set up and will be blasting past the folks that don't. This means for me the club Cam doesn't quite do what it says on the tin.

- Secondly, I don't know how it works for anyone in the UK, but the costs of the 24 hour event have soared for us Irish teams in the last couple of years. We've had higher entry fees, the Sterling/Euro exchange rate not in our favour and ferry and travel costs. I wonder if the higher entry fees are cancelled out for UK teams by not having ferry costs (when comparing the event to when it was in Mondello) or if you too are also facing higher costs? In any case, I think you'll find the Irish teams becoming even more of a rarity as the years go by. If everyone else is seeing costs go up a lot too, then that will be a factor in the decline of UK teams as well. (I'm not trivialising the commercial realities here, just pointing out a possible cause of declining entries).