We need a new "instant" trigger!

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Billy Nees

Mark, believe it or not, I'm not concerned about U/SA. Go reread my comments from the beginning. I have used Bobs combo as an example as it is the most graphic and the most current. I also have never had a heads up run in eliminations and that's a lot of rounds.
Alan, I agree with cwigle about the more obscure combos in the more popular classes getting hit first. The more of a given combo, the more likely that combo is to have more proportionately slow and fast cars. The Hemis and 6 packs seem to have proven this.
How about this, instant hit the cars off of the 1/8th mile indexes. It's simple and it won't affect any of the other triggers. For that matter, let's look at putting all of the triggers at the 1/8 mile. Also, I like Beardies idea about weight in the cars. If for example, a car enters a race classified as a AA/SA car and on it's first qualifying pass goes across the scales at A/SA weight (8.00-8.50) then give the driver the option of running A or taking the weight out of the car to make AA. On his second qualifying pass if he stays in AA and the
car weighs more that 8.00 lbs then the driver is DQed for the race.
Ron, as much as I like the CIC thing it won't work in Stock and SS.

Billy, recent history proves my point for me. Here's an example: How many times in the past 5 years have the 396/375 cars been hit compared to the several cars in the classes that there are fewer of? Those 396/375 cars were hit because they triggered an evaluation by going more than 1.15 under. So, what will happen when you lower the trigger to 1.2 under?

If you have 2-3 cars running a combination that is capable of easily running 1.4 under, and and 25-30 cars running a combination that will run 1.2 under, the 25-30 cars will get hit first, and more often, because one slow car out of 2-3 is a bigger percentage and affects the average more than 5-6 slow cars in the 25-30 car group.

If you move to the 1/8 mile index, you'll hit automatic cars harder because the stick cars ET better further down track than the automatic cars. You'd also have to look at the fact that quite possibly the cars running more than 1.4 under gain more in the second half than the cars running 1.2 under or less, so the difference at the 1/8 mile may not be great enough to hit the faster cars first and/or harder. I'd have to look harder at a lot more data to see if trying the trigger at the 1/8 mile mark could work.

If you take away weight as a way to kill off ET, a smart racer will just kill timing and/or short shift to kill off ET, or do something else. We used to do it all the time running Super Comp instead of adding weight or using a throttle stop, because weight hurt the reaction time. Shift 1000RPM (or more) sooner for one or two shifts and you slow down. How are you going to stop that? Kill 20 degrees of timing and you slow down (all you have to do is leave the start timing retard on). How do you stop that? There are a bunch of ways to kill ET, too many for them to police. We can run the car 30 degrees hotter and kill ET. We can put thick oil in it, and add an extra quart and kill ET. Weight is just easy.