CCC Changes and Official Rule Change Proposals for 2009

[Slowpoke]

I'd like to extend a big thank you to James Mewett for all of the time, effort, and patience that he has put into Chairing the Ontario CCC these last few years. James has decided to step down from the Chairman's role on the CCC, but will continue on the committee to help us classify cars and develop new rules.

I accepted the CCC Chairman position from James last week, and at the OSO (Ontario SoloSprint Organizers committee) meeting on October 9th, we drafted some new blood onto the committee. For those of you new to SoloSprint, the OSO has one representative from each of the SoloSprint member clubs (HADA, MCO, OMSC, SPDA and TAC) who were involved in the decision.

Chair: Stephen Deneka [SPDA]

Continuing Members:
Chris Paczynski [HADA]
Adam Hutchinson [HADA]
James Mewett [OMSC]
Dave Barker [OMSC]
Ron Pasdernick [OMSC]

New Members:
William Chan [HADA]
Ivano DiPietro [SPDA]
Andy Presswood [TAC]
Sergei Guschin [TAC]

CCDB Guru: Arek Wojciechowski [MCO]
Consultant: David Pratte [HADA]

The CCC, in short, is responsible for Car Classification in the SoloSprint series, and reports to the series director, Chuck Atkins, who has final say. The CCC also shares a hand in the development of new rules where it applies to classing and in some cases safety and competition. The CCC strives for ruleset stability from year to year to keep costs low for series regulars. However, we realize that our competitors are pushing their cars and the rule system to newer areas and levels of performance than we had in the past and we have to adapt to keep competition fair. The CCC makes decisions first and foremost upon performance data generated in the series and stays away from non-empirical decisions. At the end of every season, the CCC spends days entering data into spreadsheets, analyzing different modifications for performance benefits beyond what the PIP's are accounting for, and looking for a balanced and fair way of equalizing the system. You see some of these results from James Mewett's PAX reports in PDF format.

We welcome your input in the ruleset for 2009 through official proposals, and at the Competitor's Meeting which will be held at the Toronto Congress Centre before the Solosprint / Race banquet on November 22nd 2008. Our meeting will run from 1:30pm to 4:00pm. Forum banter is wonderful stuff and it has it's place, but we won't be considering any of it at the meeting without a formal proposal submitted to the CCC. You can do so by emailing your proposal to "ccc" @ "soloontario" and then "dot com" without the quotes and spaces. (Please forgive the anti-spam phrasing. PM me if you can't figure the Email address out.)

Please keep in mind that to be a successful series, we are striving for rule stability to keep costs low for returning competitors by not revolutionizing our rulesets each year. We have to have an overwhelmingly good motivation for changing car classifications or rules, because what we decide to do affects EVERYONE in the series. In fact, the National rules have largely followed the Ontario classification system, so we take into account as well the effect upon all of the series in the country. Our first responsibility is to a fair series in Ontario, but we always have compatibility with a National Ruleset in mind.

If you are going to submit a proposal for a change, I suggest that you include data wherever possible from the series to support your proposal. Remember, this is YOUR proposal, not ours. We are not going to do all of the research for you. e.g.: When a competitor wanted the rules changed to use PAX for scoring, he re-scored the whole 2007 competition year manually in Excel based on his proposed method for the CCC and the Director to review.

You should also consider possible arguments to your proposal and include any data or alternatively, logic, to refute the arguments.

e.g. (A sample only... you can submit in the format that you choose):

Proposal: We should PIP All Wheel Drive
Data-based findings: I have compared the performance of three different manufacturers with 2WD and AWD variants of the same car model and assess that the AWD variants are on average X.XX seconds faster around the tracks we visit. The file I used to perform these calculations is annotated and attached. I therefore feel that all AWD cars should receive XX PIP's based on the performance difference and an assumed 1.0 second difference per class on a 60 second lap.
Reasons NOT to implement this Change: Our ruleset does not PIP stock configurations. All Wheel Drive is a factory installed option on these models, not dealer-installed. We use the Handling Index of those models to reflect the benefits / detriments of factory installed features. We could only adjust the Handling Index based on this data.
Reasons to implement this change: (Your brilliant response to why PIP's are the better decision here....)


Here is the agenda that we are committed to:

November 8th 2008: Have all official competitor proposals clarified and in for discussion with the CCC
November 13th 2008: Present competitor and CCC proposals for changes to the OSO for discussion
November 16th 2008: Post proposed rule changes in the SoloSprint forum so that competitors can decide to present rebuttal data at the November 22nd meeting
November 22nd 2008: Host competitor meeting before the banquet for discussion of proposed changes. Decisions on the proposals may be made at this meeting, or deferred for further research and discussion
December 11th 2008: Present FINAL rule change proposals to the OSO and the Director for decisions on implementation.
January 1st, 2009: 2009 rules published on soloontario.com website


We welcome your participation in making the series better for 2009! Each OSO member club has CCC reps, so feel free to use and abuse them in helping to present your ideas. I hope this clarifies for new competitors how the CCC operates to serve the series.

Thank you!


Stephen Deneka
CCC Chair

[JoeT]

Huge thanks to James for all the hard work performed within the CCC. To SteveD, congrats in your new position as CCC chair, you're a glutton for punishment.

[Cap'n Pete]

Agreed, Joe. I think we all owe James a big thanks for all of his time, effort and brain power that has clearly gone into working on the CCC, and analyzing data like he has with the recent spreadsheets he posted ... that must have been a very tedious task, and I hope that the changes can be agreed upon and implemented, so that his efforts have not gone to waste .

And congrat's to Stephen for accepting his new role .

[RRRex]

You guys are awesome! Great work.

[RRRex]

I say we implement the KCS - Krispy Classing System. Basically we have a classification day before the season starts and Krispy takes everyone's car out and beats the crap out of it on the track. He then decides where the car should be classed. Then, the rightful owner has all season to get as close to Krispy's time as they can. The winner of the overall series is the guy who gets a time that's closest to Krispy's. New cars to the series have to let Krispy class their cars during morning lapping.

[Cap'n Pete]

As time consuming and tedious that would be, and tiring for the driver, that's actually about the most accurate/reliable method to eliminate the variables and have every car classed on a truly linear scale .

[nrg3k_civic]

I'd love to see the tire budget for such a loony activity

DJM:>