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!

some quick thoughts on things that may be important if you decide to go to Whiskey Hill Raceway aka Palmer Motorsports Park

1) gas is way cheaper in Palmer than it is in Springfield, by 10 cents/gallon or more.

2) looks like there may be some decent places to eat on US 20 between Palmer and Springfield, don't know because the worker party food was more than adequate

3) the "Howard Johnson's Express" on US 20 in Springfield was cheap, a little tired but clean, and not as noisy as i feared (the pricing suggests it might serve as a residential facility as well as for transients, which is often a recipe for noise late at night). the Applebee's across the road only rates about 1.5 stars in Yelp!. Oh, and the HoJo express does have mini fridges in the rooms if you need to cool some beer.

4) the Donut Shop at the foot of the hill in West Warren (near the track) is a Dippin Donuts, not a Dunkin Donuts. Eerily similar, but not the same. The breakfast sandwich was ok, but apparently the track caterer is going to be doing breakfast while they work out the long term concession situation.

5) US 20 between Springfield and Palmer is a pretty reasonable alternative to the Mass Pike.

6) the current impound situation is challenging due to the lack of an exit, and T turns in a GT-1 car aren't the most fun thing you can do while driving one. in a couple of weeks, they may well be trying a different layout.

7) this is a fun facility, with the rough edges that are to be expected from something this new. i imagine it will continue to improve. the racers are still working out what the racing line is. this may take a while.

I've been working just a little on how to integrate OpenStreetMap and OpenHistoricalMap depictions of historic race tracks; here is a test case of the second Watkins Glen circuit overlaid on the current (fourth) Watkins Glen International. Use the sliders to change the emphasis. Need to do something about the colors; I want better contrast between historic and current.

http://www.na-motorsports.com/test/test.html

This one was about 20 years ago. I was chief of tech for a 1 day racing school at Lime Rock Park (Why am I always chief of tech? Must be too stupid to turn down the job. I really should do something about that.)

So there is a driver in an ITA RX-7 who is fast and aggressive - and she spins her IT car in a fast part of the track. Her car doesn't have clips or straps on the windows, so when she spins it the windshield pops out, lands on the track and develops the expect spiderweb of cracks while staying on "one piece" - sort of.

She returns to the false grid for the next session sans windshield (it's not a spare you normally stick in the back of the pickup.) Grid quite correctly sends her away, the configuration is not permitted. A little bit later I get a radio call, "tech please send someone to grid". I walk on over. Her crew (which i as i recall was her father) has duct taped the cracked windshield back into the car and thinks she should be allowed to go back out that way, despite the fact that there is no way that she can see through it. I support the grid workers who have made the correct decision and direct them to take the car back to the paddock. Her father was an experienced driver who should have known better; I never figured that one out. I guess even crew chiefs can get the red mist.

I need to point out that although the issue was in a car belonging to the Bownes unit, it wasn't actually his bit of "fabrication".

Bob had acquired an old Spitfire production race car that had been sitting in a barn for a Very Long Time. He called me up to come over and inspect it. When I popped open the trunk to check out the fuel cell, I immediately called bob over and pointed out that while the fuel cell was fastened to the trunk floor with sheet metal screws, they weren't necessarily what was going to fail first because the trunk floor was fastened to the rest of the car with sheet metal screws.

I have recently posted a number of entries on this subject on Facebook and am now copying them over here for posterity. I may even fix various typos and grammar errors, but no guarantees. Here is a longer one about events at a National race years ago. This is not so much about one person being stupid or doing something stupid, as opposed to a situation where a straightforward but dumb solution was the best way out...

It was a National race at Lime Rock Park some years back. The Honda S2000 was newly classified (in the old SSB class, I think) and there was a mistake in the weights; the rulebook called for the car to weigh about 200 lbs more than it actually did. Ballast was not permissible in the class so coming up with an extra 200 lbs was trickly.
So i suddenly find Ken Payson and a friend of his visiting tech. The name of Ken's friend escapes me, but he was a prominent and fast Solo driver who had switched to Club Racing, where he was also very, very fast. He was certainly going to win his class in the S2000 the next day, which is where the problem came in. The car was underweight per the GCR, and Ken & friend suspected as much.
However, the question that they asked suggested that, for as many many years of experience that Ken has in club racing, he didn't understand one of the finer points of the official scales at the race track. He asked what would happen if they wanted to weigh the S2000 on my scales and turned out to be underweight. They were afraid i would spontaneously DQ the car. The answer (obvious to tech inspectors and stewards if not to anyone else) is that a random weight during the day is a non issue; no impound is in progress and and competition is not at stake. I only take action if a car comes in underweight during an impound session.
So they brought the S2000 over and put it on the scales, and it was indeed 200 lbs light. So they asked me what to do.
I told them that I of course couldn't advise them to do anything that violated the rules. but I also advised them that I had no plan to open trunks during post race impound - I would do so if directed to by the chief steward, but as far as I knew he wasn't going to make that request.
The next day, the car ran, it won, and it made weight. We never discussed how much crap (floor jack, two spare wheels & tires, etc.) was in the trunk.
The alternative path here, the official path, is to let them run underweight, DQ them, and depend on the appeals process to overturn the DQ based on errors and omissions. This would have worked; I know this because I traded email with the club tech office and they admitted the weight in the book was probably wrong. but that would have taken years and cost millions of lives...

(boy, i seem to be blogging a lot today)
the relationship between drivers and tech can be a touchy one. lots of drivers really don't like interacting with tech inspectors, they just kind of assume that it means trouble. and i have, at times over the years, seen incidents that would seem to justify this sort of reaction. but there's another type of driver and tech interaction that i'm blogging about today.

giving tech a heads up

from time to time, drivers will tell a tech inspector what they think is going on in their class. this can be pretty interesting, and usually happens at the beer party after the day's activities. i kind of like hearing this stuff - but drivers need to understand certain things about how i might (or might not) respond to their information. and it's rarely personal, unless something comes up that spins it that way. and the spin usually comes when the driver is being disingenuous about something.

first example

years ago, an ITS driver who is no longer active came up to me at the beer party and told me about all the stuff that he was sure the RX-7 ITS drivers were doing. i listened carefully, but didn't commit to a response (i generally don't). the funny part was that when i did impound ITS to check for the (mandatory) window glass and ride height later that season, this very driver had substituted plastic windows for glass windows in his doors - which is not permitted. this driver was clearly trying to use tech to go after other drivers in his class, and this is the sort of situation where if that is discovered, i might just take it personally - because i feel like someone is trying to play me for a fool.

second example

more recently i recall a National race where two drivers in showroom stock kept showing up in tech to describe bad things the other driver was doing that we should check. Really Guys? if you think he's cheating, file the protest and post the bond. or maybe get a room - either way, just leave tech out of it. we are not going to respond to this.

what may happen

If you do come up to me and suggest something that might be going on, I will probably not do anything right away. I may want to research, and may want to talk to other drivers in the class to get their take on things. I may need to take steps to get certain tools to the track. Even bringing something up a couple of days before a race is likely to not get anything done promptly. Tools may not be easily accessible. Two weeks is way more time than 3 or 4 days if you need something shipped or have to buy something. And I need to be careful about appearances; tech should not be perceived as responding to any particular driver's agenda, unless the agenda is clean racing. If you do contact me 2 weeks before a race to arrange equipment, you should be planning to file the mechanical protest, and not be trying to get me to impound someone you don't like.

tools

Also, if you do decide to actually file a mechanical protest, a couple of suggestions:
1) file it early in the race weekend. that gives us time to decide how we're going to approach it. once the protest is filed, we can take steps to secure the vehicle and prepare for whatever is needed. for intrusive things, we might seal the engine and plan for disassembly after the race. and by the way, be aware that mechanical protests filed in the last hour before the race are not timely and won't go anywhere.
2) don't offer us tools. the protested party will use their own tools for any disassembly, under supervision of a tech inspector. after disassembly, tech can't use measurement tools supplied by a party to the protest. on one occasion, a bunch of drivers got together to file a protest of one of their competitors, and since they'd planned well in advance, they brought some very nice tools to the track for the needed measurements. they were very offended when we told them we couldn't use them - but if we had, there would have been nothing but trouble down the line. i seriously doubt we would have made it past the committee at the track if we'd used the protestor's tools to measure the protested engine.

what's in the toolbox

There are some useful things in NEDiv that can be at the track, but they won't necessarily spontaneously appear.
1) bore and stroke gauges for center plug engines. yes, we can bore and stroke some cars without pulling heads, but not all of them. but we won't necessarily have these tools at every race.
2) there is a whistler which can be used to measure compression without pulling a head
3) some regions have puff testers, which can be used to measure displacement in some motors - in particular, american pushrod v-8s are candidates for this measurement.
If I knew in advance I might need this stuff, it can certainly be at the track.

To the guys still running the old tires

Guys, the old Spec Racer Ford rain tires haven't been permitted for a year now. The numbers are right on the side, and they're faster than the new tires, so if you think you can get away with it, you're fooling yourselves. If a competitor files a protest, you will lose.

To the guys running the new tires

Let's try that self policing thing. The numbers are on the side of the tires, out where you can see them, and if you protest someone running the old tires, you will win. There's no tear down bond involved, just a protest fee, which, if memory serves, you get back.

here's a photo of a suspicious looking but perfectly valid certification label:



Note that the lettering is filled in. If this label had been tampered with, the silver "fill" for the letters would be missing.

Last November at the NEDiv SCCA mini convention, a friend of mine came to me with an issue. he'd acquired a Hutchins Device (one of the modern head & neck restraint systems) on ebay, and was concerned because the word "void" showed up on the certification stickers.
Stickers of this type have been around for around 12 years. they're designed so that when you peel them off, the word void appears. having the word void show up on a legitimate item which has not been tampered with would be a bit of a problem. discussion at the time suggested the problem was because the device was clear coated carbon fiber, and light was getting behind the stickers.
on Saturday, i went to Long Island to do annual inspections for a bunch of SCCA race cars, and of course got to inspect driver gear. since the restraint systems are mandatory this year, i saw a bunch of those too. what was interested was that all the new HANS devices were matte finish, no clear coat. they did not have problems with the FIA & SFI certification stickers. there was one older HANS, clear coated, and sure enough, the word VOID showed up.
we're going to have to do some training of tech inspectors on this. it's possible to tell if a sticker has been tampered with or not, you just need to think through it. when we peel off a helmet sticker, the material that fills the word void physically pulls away from the sticker. when the word void shows up on a clear coated HANS device, the shiny fill is not missing, you just see a thin outline around the word void. these latter stickers are fine.

This update from the March Fastrack was just brought to my attention (thanks to Greg Amy/Scott Dowd of NER).
Adjustable seat rails for driver's seats have always been an issue. the CRB has just issued an update to 9.3.41 (page 99, the 2011 GCR) clarifying one key detail. There is now only one tiny exception to the seat back brace requirement. The number of cars which will qualify for this exception is vanishingly small. If you have sliders under your driver's seat, even if they're FIA sliders, chances are you need a seat back brace, and since it's in March Fastrack, you need the brace before your next event.
(The only exception is for FIA homologated seat assemblies in FIA homologated cars. There are very few cars running SCCA that meet that restriction.)
UPDATE if you race in a part of the country that doesn't do safety waivers (like NEDiv), and if you have sliders and are missing the seat back brace, we will have no choice but to send you home.

see more That Will Buff Out

SCCA Memo Here.
SFI labeled gear manufactured in 2008 and prior years from Impact Racing products are not eligible for use in SCCA competition. And remember: current SCCA policy is no Safety Waivers. No one is going to give you a "fix by next event note" and let you race. No one.

By the way, here is the Official SCCA Club Racing memo on the situation. Note that the SCCA regards the 2008 and earlier Impact gear as decertified, but is delaying enforcement for an as yet unspecified period of time.

I'll say up front that I find it very hard to believe that Bill Simpson would knowingly participate in anything of this sort. He has a very long association with race safety and was directly involved in many crucial innovations such as Nomex(tm) suits.
This sounds more like the work of a mediocre business school graduate applying standard logic about leveraging the reputation while cheapening the product to improve margins. The fact that this stopped happening with the 2009 production year suggests that this imagined business school graduate either smartened up or got fired. The real problem is that the old stuff is still out there, in race cars and hanging in driver's closets. And the reason why I say mediocre is that you can sort of get away with this kind of logic if you're selling fast food, but race safety is no place to fool around.