From my perspective as a NASA TX 'official' i'm going to add a few comments to Matt's points.
#8 - i remember a weekend when a bunch of Mustangs showed up at one of our events, invited by Todd Who, who by the way did not show up. I came to Thunder and asked for volunteers to ride with these guys. You would have thought I asked you to cut off one of your nuts. In the end, a few guys agreed to help - I clearly remember David Francis stepping up, which was greatly appreciated. Not a way to win friends.
#9 - I made a point of asking the Thunder group to come to one of the Saturday night BBQs that Will sponsors. 'not enough food, small portions, blah blah blah.' but did anyone go talk to Will and explain this? I don't know.

These are just two examples of what Matt calls "harsh truth."

And now, as as former member of the CMC Rules Committee, my two cents about tires. Leave the Toyo stickers on your cars, but run whatever tire you can all agree on. As Matt says, you won't get contingency $$, but if you hate the tire, why do you want the contingency bucks? Besides, the whole tire contingency essentially goes against the CMC vibe, which is low cost, evenly built cars, put it on the driver. During one of my years in RM, I was 1st or 2nd in every race. At the end of the season, I had collected something like 80% of all the Toyo bucks. this was back in the days of the RA-1, which means I only needed two sets of tires for the entire season. I gave away most of the bucks to other drivers. My point is that the Toyo contingency does almost nothing for the vast majority of CMC drivers, so why not dump it?

-chris