This series was inspired by two things. The first are the reread blog series relating to various extended works of fiction that appear places such as
www.tor.com, and the second is the realization that it has been far too long since i really went through the rule book.
My career as a tech official and mediocre club racer started in the early 90s. I've served as Chief of Tech for New York Region (since 1996) and Mohawk Hudson Region (since 1997). Neither region is running an active racing program now, so I've been intermittantly chiefing races for New England Region in recent years. Also, I spent 3 years in the barrel as NEDiv Divisional Administrator of Scrutineering in the late 90s.
So how is this going to work? I'm going to front to back with the 2021 GCR, starting with the January version that I just downloaded from the site. But this first post going to be more of a background/history thing. So let's get started!
The GCR is long. It is complicated. It is at times pretty hard to follow.
It's this way for a reason. It's what you get when committees (fthe Competition Board, now renamed the Club Racing Board) rewrite each other every year. A lot of the rules are common sense. But sometimes you read something and you have to ask yourself "What actually happened?".
When I first encountered the GCR, it came in the form of a big lump of paper. Once a month, when I received my Sports Car magazine, I learned to go to the Fastrack section, which contained two very valuable things - the Court of Appeals rulings which were both entertaining and also provided useful insights into how rules would be approached at the top level, and the rules changes which came along every month.
Fastrack was designed to be pulled out of Sports Car, and came with holes for a 3 ring binder. You would collect them and bring them to the track with you. Anytime, as Chief of Tech, when you had to write up a report to the Chief Steward, you had to go through Fastrack for that year and find any relevant updates to the rules you were supposed to be enforcing.
With the move to electronic distribution, things have changed a bit. Now the Club Racing office at National creates an updated GCR pdf every month with Fastrack integrated. This turns out to be both good and bad. The good is that before heading to the track to Chief a race, I just have to go download the latest version and I'm ready, the extra binder of Fastracks is no longer necessary.
The bad is that I'm no longer really reading Fastrack each month. I need to go back to that. There's a genuine need to review Fastrack each month, and also a genuine need to look at the annual changeover. I have certainly been guilty of missing major rule changes through my own inattention.
Drivers and Car Owners need to pay attention too. Fastrack regularly tweaks weights and other specs for various classified cars. Drivers still may not be aware that the required SCCA patch for the suit is changing. Some will only find out in gear check. Bring some singles to gear check this year as you may need to buy your new patch there.
Major rules changes are usually signaled well in advance. The helmet changeover every 5 years is well known. But in thinking back, I remember an episode in the tech line back in 95-96. For several years, the GCR had been warning that grandfather clauses allowing older Production cars to run with roll bars only and without fuel cells were going away. The driver of a (really pretty nice) Porsche 356 was utterly surprised when I pointed out the problem in the tech line at Lime Rock. When I told him it'd been in the GCR for several years, his response was pretty much "you mean I'm supposed to read it?"
So we have this book. Is it a perfect book? no. Will it ever be a perfect book? of course not. But it's the book we have, and it can be changed and improved on. The mechanism is well described on the SCCA website. And venting at the tech guy who is pointing out the rule to you isn't part of the mechanism. Many tech guys are not very diplomatic, I know, but the rule book is what it is - until we improve on it. Which can be done.
Future postings will go front to back from the Forward onwards (But skipping the advertisments. Hopefully no one is bothered by that.)
