Time to Revisit the Super Times?

[Chris Williams]

This is a retread of a old topic, but as I sit here trying to decide between SC and TD it's been bugging me. And something Jeff Beckman said the other day made me think of it again.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the idea behind TD and TS was to a) give people who wanted to go faster, but didn't have the coin for alky or complicated eliminator a place to go below SC and SG, b) give a more fan-friendly race without several seconds on a throttle stop. And it worked, guys who wanted to go faster started to move into those classes, and it's clear that people like to run them and watch them.

This was all pretty cool when TD was in the mid-low 7s. Most guys in SC could simply turn off the stop and get into a field, if only at the bottom of the ladder. Then the arms race began. Now, in several divisions, you need to be in the 6s to even make a field. Without a monster car that's blown or squirting a ton, and well north of 1500hp, you're on the trailer.

So here we are today, that my choice is to run SC, at 8.90 with the car on the stop for a long time, or spend $50k and build an engine to make a TD field at 6.90. Even with a car that'll pull a 7.60 flat out, I've got nowhere to go. Sure I can go race in my local Super Pro and run 7.60 against full-body pickups doing 10.40. But that's really my only other option.

My question, then, is: does it really make sense to have a two-second difference (8.90 to 6.90) in the range of classes? And does it still make sense to have the Super classes at the same index they were when they were created ever so long ago?

I know this is a tired question, and there was this poll done (with terrible questions), and this is supposedly settled. But I think it's worth a revisit.

Here's my proposal:

Turn the Supers (at least SC and SG, I don't know much about Super Street) into much simpler classes. Basic rules are .400 pro tree, electronics and stops allowed, dragsters/door cars/altereds/roadsters/whatever are fine in any of them. Make the indexes really simple and easy to understand: 8.00, 9.00, 10.00? (maybe even an 11.00?). How many times have you had to explain that an 8.989 is way slow, but an 8.899 is too fast? This is simple: if the time starts with a 7 (or 8, or 9...) it's too fast. Virtually anyone today can run one of these classes. You can't get your dragster down to an 8.00? Fine run the 9.00 class.

Not only will it give the faster SC guys a place to race without having to spend a fortune on a motor (or a 6.00 chassis, or get a 3A license and or a -15 suit) but it has the wonderful side effect of cutting the time people are on the stop dramatically. That, along with the easy-to-understand indexes, will make the racing much more fan-friendly.

I know I'm tilting at windmills and this will fall on deaf ears, but what do you all think of this?