Hope everyone had a good holiday. Now that it’s mostly over, it’s time to get serious about the new season. We will be rolling into MSRH a month from today for the first race of the new season.

I read over the rules when they first came out and was generally in favor of the new directions but I did have some concerns. Now that Dan is taking the car to the body shop next week and Al has spoken a bit about the rules on the national site, I have some more significant questions/concerns.

(For reference I’m going off of version 1.2 of the CMC rules for my questions.)

The first question would be concerning section “6.3 Track Width” and it’s interaction with section 7.5.1. This is of course different from section “6.3 Minimum Weight” which I don’t have any questions about. Section 6.3 (the second one) sets maximum track width based on a set of platform dependent fixed dimensions. This is clear and measurable and I’m glad it was added. If you read section 7.5.1, it appears to cloud the track width rule. Section 7.5.1.3 from last year’s rule had strong wording on fender/track width interaction but it has been removed for this year’s rule. Section 7.5.1.2 from this year implies a fender/track width interaction but it’s not clear.

So does the rule effectively look like this:
Maximum track width is determined by a measurement based on the table in section 6.3 (the second one).

Or this:
Maximum track width is determined by the width of the stock fenders up to a dimension not to exceed the table in section 6.3 (the second one).


It seemed obvious to me when I went over this the first time that the intent was just a measurement and the rule was poorly worded. Based on Al’s comments on the national CMC board, he’s interpreting it by the second statement (and the rule is still poorly worded). I really hope that’s not the direction we are (still) going in.

As a bit of reference, I added spacers to Dan’s CMC car within the fender rules at the time. It was clearly legal on the driver’s side and pretty close to the limit on the passenger side front (my opinion and Dan has never been penalized for it). He had light contact in the passenger front bumper cover in one race during last year that made the car not legal (my opinion). With a lot of work/massaging we were able to make the car legal again (Al’s opinion at National’s - carries much more weight than my opinion but not as much as whoever is working tech when it gets checked). When Dan tapped the wall at Mid Ohio it made the driver’s front not legal (my opinion) and no massaging at the track was able to get it legal again. The fender looks fine/not bashed in and the only visible damage was a black mark that we have since rubbed out. We crossed our fingers since Al had declared it legal when we arrived and we had visible signs of damage elsewhere. It was never checked in tech on Dan’s car to my knowledge and he was certainly not penalized for it.

So, now Dan has a track width that is legal per the new section 6.3 (the second one) but isn’t legal per last year’s interpretation of the rules and maybe not this year’s??? Since the car is going to the body shop for rework and paint, we would like some direction on this. I don’t want to argue numbers or performance. I just want to verify that Dan’s car is 100% verifiably legal without it being subject to someone’s judgment call.

Thanks,
Richard P.