Holding 3rd in P1 in my Norma as the top two streak away in Elan DP02s…ultimately we finished 5th.
Even though we put in a great effort and finished 5th in P1, the SCCA National Championship Runoffs were a big disappointment this year. We knew we were facing a tall order with the Norma after the spring Super Tour event at Virginia International Raceway where we finished on the podium in 3rd but well behind the fastest cars in lap time…around 2 seconds slower. We tried a lot of things over the summer to try and go faster including adding a new rear low drag wing and changing to Goodyear racing tires after a successful head-to-head tire test against our beloved Avons. And yes we did drop our lap time at VIR by 4 seconds since the spring race, but so did the top competitors so no real gain on them…instead just holding station. For the first time ever, the field was dominated by the Elan DP02 sports racer. This car in spec form ran in the IMSA lites series from about 2006-2018 and many of them have now been upgraded, modernized, and recycled into very good P1 race cars.
In fact, my main competitor over the past few years and this year’s Runoffs winner, Todd Slusher, originally ran his Elan in the IMSA series and then switched over to SCCA P1 class in 2016. He soon started a program of continually improving the car by commissioning engine, chassis, and aero upgrades. Todd’s teammate, Chip Romer, and others were also bringing their Elans to the class so demand was developing for even more upgrades. SCCA’s rules making committee, the Club Racing Board or CRB, gets to be the king maker and as they cut performance from our Norma, they encouraged development of the Elans with a very favorable rules package that was successful in attracting several new top flight competitors to the P1 class. I was also encouraging of this effort by SCCA to give the Elans some development freedom and it has, in fact, helped rejuvenate the class.
I’ll always contend that the CRB clipping our wings immediately after our first Runoffs victory 3 years ago ultimately discouraged others wanting to race CN style cars from joining P1. When the rules are changed that quickly a discouraging signal is sent. So this leads to the most recent signal sent by CRB in regards to the Elan—at the end of each race season after the Runoffs the CRB rules on whether anyone gets penalized, or alternatively, gets a rare performance increase. We lobbied extensively for a give-back to our Norma of some of the performance the CRB had taken away in 2017-18. The CRB ruled against us and all others who requested performance improvements and, more importantly, it did not take away any performance from the class leading Elan DP02s. So for now, the message looks clear that given the strong number of Elans competing at the front of the class, this chassis is the one to have…and ongoing development of it appears to be encouraged.
The effort, time, and cost that it would take to try and make my Norma a front runner again using a whole new approach would be daunting. It would all be focused around aero development, carbon brakes, and going to 4-way adjustable shocks. Plus since we are the only one running a Norma M20FC, it would be very easy for CRB to dial us back again if we succeeded and that would infuriate me to no end. So, at this point it looks much safer to just switch and run an Elan DP02 for now as there is safety in numbers. Until we get the kinks worked out with our Elan program, we will use the Norma as a backup. Ultimately, we have a whole new plan for running the Norma in the ASR class in future events with it in its fastest trim ever.
Amazingly, just as we’d made the decision to switch to the Elan DP02 a freshly rebuilt and modernized one became available from Jim Downing, the co-inventor of the Hans device, and long time racer who after just building it and racing it at the Runoffs decided it was time to semi-retire and drive something a little less demanding now that he was 78 years old. So what a stroke of good luck for us. We hope to get up to speed quickly in it.
