Re: Club BBQ and Informal Discussion

[Dick Roberts (Web admin)]

Posted by Francis on July 28, 2004 at 10:32:40:

In Reply to: Club BBQ and Informal Discussion posted by Trevor on July 27, 2004 at 08:05:52:

Prompted by Paul's note in Snails Pace and because I am on holiday over the Cadwell weekend I thought I would add my penny worth to the on going debate about the club and its future life.

I hope that the Snetterton debacle has not killed the club: assuming each of the engines cost between £500 and £1000 to build and we blew between 12 and 20 engines, the cost to the club members was at least £10k, probably more. That is not supportable in my opinion.

With the best will in the world, people do not go (or not many) to race meetings that have us on the bill to watch 2cv racing. Therefore the only people interested in the class are the people running the cars. We do it for fun. With the odd infamous exception, fun is interpreted as close racing with most of the class able to run in mid field and have a dice.

Much as I personally like long distance races and in particular the 24 hour bash, races of units of 30 minutes or more do not in my experience lead to what I have defined as fun. They end up with a couple of dices and others spread out in a procession.

To ensure that the club survives we need technical stability, reliability and performance parity (and the certainty that this exists). I think another technical change at this moment would kill the club stone dead, whatever the rights or wrongs of what has gone before.

In addition to the current rules therefore my suggestion would be to choose a particular cam timing and publish it as a rule and also to fix what can be done to carburettors with permitted jetting rules. Both measures are easy to police however I concede that my knowledge of 2cv engines may not be what is required to make a judgement on this. Over a period of time (say three years) we should introduce rules on which shock absorbers have to be used and perhaps even tyre width etc. The more we fix and publish, the less space we give to development opportunities and this means low cost racing with equal opportunity.

If the engines essentially produce the same amount of power then the difference is going to be chassis set up and driving skill. The former is reasonably well known and the latter the last major variable. I rest my case mi'lud!