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How many classes are too many?
By Jay Mitchell
jemitchell@compuserve.com
The subject of the number of classes in Solo II has once again been raised in an online discussion group. In my view, this is an issue worthy of serious consideration. Even though the Solo 2 Nationals has grown to more than 1100 competitors of late, most Regional events are still well below 200. If you have 200 entrants and 72 classes, you have an average class size of less than three. Is this a desirable situation? In my opinion, it is not. At some point, the notion of "competition" necessarily involves "winning" and "losing." If you have enough classes, you can just give everyone a trophy and go home. That's not my idea of a challenging competitive sport.
In preface to my comments, I would like to make one thing clear: I am not against the existence of STS, STX, ST2, SM, SM2, etc. However, if the Solo II class structure is ultimately going to be a logical, orderly one, the fallacies and red herrings that appear from time to time in this discussion must be exposed for what they are, in order for a rational, unbiased dialogue to take place.
It is claimed by many that the underlying justifications for the newer classes are to accommodate street-driven vehicles and to attract new competitors. It is my position that both ideas are illusions.
With respect to streetability and accessibility, there is one vocal faction that says it costs too much to develop a competitive Street Prepared car, that SP allows too much in the way of modification, and that "SP cars are trailer queens." This faction generally advocates Street Touring as SP's eventual replacement. Another faction says that the SP rules don't allow enough modifications, and that "SP cars are trailer queens." This faction has advocated Street Modified as a proposed replacement for SP. Based only on the assertions made by those two groups, it appears to me that the Street Prepared allowances constitute an excellent middle ground for a substantial number of Solo II competitors. Category participation, particularly at the higher levels of competition, bears this out.
I agree that the gap between Stock and SP preparation allowances is substantial. I pointed this out in a letter I wrote to the Solo Events Board in 1990. At that time, I suggested the consideration of a middle ground very much like the current Street Touring. As a complete Category&emdash;i.e., with a place for every car currently classed in Stock&emdash;it makes sense to me as a longterm proposition. By the time the Category has matured, however, any notion that top ST cars will be streetable daily drivers will have long since vanished.
It takes only a little experience with Solo 2 vehicle preparation to realize that, regardless of what modifications the rules allow, fully exploiting those allowances to optimize a car for Solo II will result in a completely different setup than a "typical" enthusiast would intentionally create in a street car. To verify this, all one needs do is to look at Stock, which allows changes to shocks, front swaybars, and alignment, but not springs. The damping rates that will enable a softly-sprung car (almost any car in stock form) to produce the best results in an autocross environment are pretty far-removed from those provided in common enthusiast aftermarket shocks. Alignments that yield the best autocross performance&emdash;if your car has the adjustment range needed to get there&emdash;are usually very street-unfriendly, both for driveability and tire life. The front swaybar needed to get the desired balance and/or overall roll rate will often be stiff enough to cause damage to a car's stock mounting brackets. Take a good look at a Nationally-competitive Stock autocross car, and ask yourself if an "autocross virgin" would have ever set up a car that way. Of course not: autocross is a lot different from driving on the street.
What's worse, the more items you allow competitors to modify, the greater will be the difference between a car with a competitive autocross setup and a "normal" street car at a similar level of modification This is arguably the most discouraging (car-prep related) realization a newcomer in any class will make, but it is inescapable. If you allow changes to spring/damping rates, ride height, swaybars, and suspension bushings&emdash;as ST, SP, and SM all do&emdash;then serious competitors in those classes will, over time, identify and implement autocross-optimized values for all those parameters. For most cars, the result of this development process will be well beyond any sane definition of streetability. By contrast, if you show up for the first time with an aftermarket suspension kit in a car that is placed in ST or SM, you will be nowhere close to a competitive setup for Solo 2. If you then decide you want to make your car into a competitive autocrosser, you'll almost certainly have to change springs and shocks again, possibly multiple times. Given that fact, neither ST nor SM can credibly be defended as classes where a "typical" street racer can be competitive the first time out. If you want to compete in Solo 2, you'll have to accept the fact that you need a completely different setup than what you got in the kit you ordered from an ad in a "Sport Compact" magazine.
Furthermore, if you do build a competitive ST or SM car and drive it on a daily basis, the wear and tear you will put on your car in that use will place it at a competitive disadvantage as compared to a car that is only used for competition and is therefore "fresher." This is also inescapable, and it is one of many reasons that a number of competitors in Stock and SP trailer their cars to events. ST/SM will be no different. I don't see this as a Bad Thing, but there are some very vocal advocates of the newer classes who apparently do.
The existence of a class at the National level (i.e., there is a jacket to be won in Topeka) will not help in the recruitment of new competitors. If there is a National Championship at stake, there will be serious, experienced, well-financed competitors contending for it, and this effort will make itself evident all the way down to the local level. Newcomers to ST and SM will fare no better than they would have if their cars had been placed in Street Prepared or Modified. In fact, newcomers in any class will usually have great difficulty coming close to the times put down by an experienced competitor in an HS car, and this has nothing to do with car preparation.
The fact that an immature National class appears to be novice-friendly at one point in time is nothing more than evidence of that immaturity. The converse to this this is the primary reason that Street Prepared may seem relatively inaccessible to some newcomers to our sport. The SP rules have been stable for a long enough period of time that experienced competitors in the Category have learned how to fully exploit them to their competitive advantage. Yes, it's expensive to compete in SP. Most SP competitors don't spend all the money in one lump sum, however. Instead, they develop their cars incrementally over a multi-year time span, which makes rules' stability all the more important. If you think Street Touring and Street Modified won't eventually go through the same process and reach an end result very similar to the current situation in SP, I claim you're just not paying attention.
Based on the above, it appears to me that most of the objections to SP&emdash;which appear to me to fall about equally on either side of the fence separating "too much" from not enough"&emdash;are a direct and inevitable result of its maturity. Given that, and given the ultimate and inevitable maturation of the Street Touring and Street Modified classes, it is all too easy for me to foresee a Solo 2 future in which endless "brave new" preparation levels are created just because one must truly be committed and competent in order to build a competitive car for the existing, mature ones. I would suggest that this is one component of the reasoning that led to the introductions of ST and SM, and that we can ill afford to allow this kind of thinking to go unchecked. The same rationale could very easily lead to yet another explosion of new classes a few years hence.
If classes for the recruitment and retention of newcomers are desired, I claim there is only one viable option: put them in the Supplemental section of the rule book, and never allow them to become National classes.
In the end, I predict that ST will be nothing more&emdash;or less&emdash;than an intermediate prep level between Stock and Street Prepared, possibly with an anomalous tire rule (if that part survives). In my opinion, that's a Very Good Thing. SM is another animal altogether. I'm not yet convinced that very many competitors will be willing (or able) to build the kind of car that will ultimately come to dominate this class. Because of the huge range of allowances and the extreme cost of fully exploiting them, I believe SM will take much longer to mature than ST. In the interim, it will continue to be true that partially-prepped cars can win, but that is only a temporary condition. Whether SM will survive its maturing process is an open question to me at this point. If it is still around 10 years from now, I am certain we'll see some very interesting, entertaining, and expensive cars contending for top honors.
We now have six preparation levels where once there were four, and, by my count, eight open classes that did not exist five years ago. Furthermore, it appears that the trend continues. Hopefully, we will see this process reach its limit in the very near future.
Jay Mitchell lives in the Dallas, TX, area, where he owns and operates a company that manufactures professional loudspeakers. He acquired his first experience with autocrossing during a brief period in 1974. He returned to the sport in 1988 and has participated steadily since that time. For his six seasons after returning, he competed in Stock class VWs. In 1994, he began campaigning a Street Prepared Lotus Europa, his current competition car. He has competed in Regional, Divisional, National, and Pro Solo events. He served on two Region Boards of Directors, first in Arkansas, and later in Alabama, where he was Solo 2 Chair in 1991. He was editor of the Solo Scene the Texas Region Solo 2 newsletter, in 2000 and Timing and Scoring chief for Texas Region in 2001 and 2002. Jay is married and has three children, ages 13, 10, and 9.