Originally Posted by
RichardP
The point of the new Spec Iron class is "racing", not really going fast. Everything but springs, shocks, and alignment is spelled out. It will cost some money but you can very quickly build a car for this class to the very limit of the rules and not worry that someone will spend three times as much as you to have a car that is 1 second faster. I won’t argue that they could have chosen cheaper parts for the build but then it wouldn’t have the contingency support from Ford. The other glorious part about a spec class is there are no parity discussions. I’m pretty tired of that in both AI and CMC.
I have an AI regional championship and the car that Chris and I won with is still sitting in my garage. It was on the track last weekend and it will be on the track next weekend. I want to go racing but I have absolutely no desire to get it ready to race it in AI again. The class is open ended. There is no limit to how much you could spend on an AI car. It is not possible to "finish" an AI car to the limit of the rules. There will always be projects to do and things to try to find a bit more speed. If you gave me this year’s national championship winning AI Mustang and a bucket of money I would modify the crap out of that car within the legal limits of the rules. To a creative engineer with available resources, it’s just a starting place for modifications. I think it’s naive to believe that over the next several years people won’t start making these cars even faster. The key is, there aren’t really any bolt on parts opportunities that will jump people to the next level. You are going to have to start cutting up the car, moving pickup points around, and going to different types of suspension layouts to do it. The AI rules allow all that. The cost potentials in AI absolutely dwarf any concerns about spending the extra cash on inflated Ford Motorsports parts in SI.
To most people, the AI and SI classes will look basically identical on track and will probably even have roughly similar lap times. Conceptually, though, the two classes are 180 degrees apart. Hopefully there are people who want to play in both arenas. I’ve played the AI game and did some really cool things to my car. It did drive me and everyone around me completely nuts while I was doing it, though. At this point, I’d much rather be in a spec class. As an engineer it’s a snoozer but as a racer I believe it would be much better.
Richard P.