Crate Motor Class

[Mike Carr]

Originally Posted by Brandon Peterson

thanks mike that helped alot...sounds like it would be fun and a challenge but man hurting your index that really stinks i guess you would never really know how fast a guy in your class could really go....and if it hits your index perm...does that include carrying over to this season...do they run the spot on the tree by indexes with no dial in.....

5 doors f/cm is a good class in d 9 its not as heavy as c,d,and i....so i think -.7 under isn't bad i always tell my buddies running in other classes that are slower if you average 1 or less heads up a year it doesn't matter how fast your car rund the index...

Yep, you have to be careful to not hit the Index. Many times a racer has gone to the early Divisional races down south, then the air was good, and hit the whole class before many others in the class were even out of the garage yet. Plus, you run fast in the spring, then you get to summer, with much slower air AND a much tougher Index. Many racers have become unpopular due to a seemingly high disgegard to the Indexes and other drivers in their class. They just go fast and hit it, and switch classes. So for 2007, a rule was implemented saying that if you permanently hit two different classes in one year, you are stuck in one of those two classes for the remainder of that year, which was a good thing. The Index is always the handicap used. There is never a dial-in, just the Class Index. And yes, like S/SS racing, sometimes you never know just how much the other driver is, or may be, holding back.

Yes, Indexes carry over from year to year. For example, A/Nostalgia Dragster was introduced about ten years ago It started at 8.00 or 8.10. The A/ND Index is now 7.46, and still a competitive class for some.

You'll notice that many of the good Comp racers (and many World Champs in the past 10-15 years) came from a Class, bracket, or .90 class background. Fletcher (Hayek still hates you), Rampy, Biondo (Sal and Peter both), Bertozzi, Saye, Stratton, Jeff Taylor, Butner, Lambeck, just to name a few Knowing the importance of getting their first by the slimmest of margins to protect the Index. It's not even uncommon for a racer, knowing they will not get to the stripe first, to lift and lose, just to protect the Index. Losing the battle to win the war later on that year.