Another two suggestions, in the spirit of "equal" racing.
As was suggested before, and rejected out of hand I might add, the 87-88 suspension REQUIRES the use of the late offset phone dial wheels. As has been documented, they are much heavier than cookie cutters. This gives a substantial penalty to these late cars.
One argument made was that the suspension of these cars is better than the early cars. Yes, that is true but the difference is very small, enough so as not to notice it? The difference is in the longer arm leading to slightly less camber loss during suspension movement. Remember, the track width is the same for both suspensions.
The dismissive answer, before, was something like - those cars have better suspension and (for the 88's anyway) HC engines so it all equals out. Another was - change out the suspension. Changing out the suspension is an expensive proposition for those that have the late one. Remember, the same argument could be made about the HC engine but we are removing that as an unequal component with the dyno cap and I see a similar issue here.
I would submit that the better suspension is much less than the affect of the heavy wheels that are part of the rotating mass. I have seen estimates that it equates to as much as 80 pounds of ballast in a car. If there is any openness to actually considering this inequality in the rules, I can get some engineering opinions on what advantage the longer suspension gives versus the disadvantage the heavy wheels impose to come up with a proposal for a rules change to remove this unequal area.
There is certainly precedent for making such an adjustment. 88's are required to remove ABS braking to make the cars "more equal" and now we are eliminating any advantage a HC engine might have given. This area, and the aero advantage of the 924, seem to be the biggest areas left to try to equalize.
As for the aero advantage of the 924, perhaps the rules should require that they maintain the track width that was stock on those cars. I believe they can widen their cars from their stock width to the 944 width if they want/can. Why should they have the aero advantage AND get a track width improvement too?
There has certainly been discussion on the combination of car, suspension, wheels, engine that might be the "best" combination in this class. We should diminish any differences, as much as practical if we are going to be consistent with our philosophy of "equal racing".
Those are my thoughts on how to make our class more "equal" going forward. There might be others that can suggest additional "equalizing" rules and, in my opinion, they should be considered for the betterment of the class going forward and not simply dismissed out of hand.
Big Dog
