MikePeters95

Nick, if anyone shows up putting a ton of engineering into a car like this, It is my goal to make sure that they are both ridiculed beyond an acceptable level of shame, and just bumped out of the class. Tech director has final say and I'm pretty confident in Karl at HMP as is most everyone there, and he has the ability to discern "spirit of the rules". Yes, some sad pathetic person who couldn't hack it in a real class could totally overengineer a car for this class, and they'll get kicked out in two seconds. The rule book is clear on the purpose of the class. I agree with your concerns, you've met that guy, I've met that guy, and when that guy decides he wants to ''show the world what he can do'' after he didn't do anything in a real class, and builds some cheater car for this class, tech will show him where the front gate is and he can show everyone how he can exit the front gate while everyone else is having fun racing, or they can run in bootleggers and get lapped in the single-digit laps of the race. I agree with what you are saying 100000000%. Trust me, I do. But this is where the promoter, and tech, and other members of the class also have their say in what isn't going to be put up with in what is built, billed, and advertised as a beginner, low-cost, entry level class. It is obvious when something is done to prevent tire wear as opposed to someone going completely off the rails overcomplicating a build and getting outside the scope of the class. Same with spending money on stuff. I think I put it in there quite a few times but maybe just need to on any line item, but tech and race director / promotor have the right to reject anything as seen as a modification or performance enhancement on any vehicle, at any time. Stock means stock. The purpose of this class is to get people racing who aren't racing and don't have the means for other classes. This is a participation trophy type class, where just getting out there is half the victory. Could also just lower the claim price where any car can be claimed for $3500, any car deemed by tech to be outside spirit of the rules can be claimed by the track and tech for $1000 with a list of fix-its and be sold off to the highest bidder starting at $1500. I think that will eliminate a lot of the knuckleheads who'd want to club baby seals in this class knowing their stuff will just get impounded for $1000. Sure someone will get mad when it potentially happens but it gets the point across. ___________________________________________________________ Seperate conversation: You have a good point about transmission coolers and radiators. No performance advantage and little to no cost making the cars more durable. I am just one person which is why I've asked for feedback and as always I appreciate yours greatly. While folks can totally beat the brakes off the car, I think one of the cost controls and speed controls on this class will be stock calipers with fluid/pads. Will keep the cars slow and won't be a huge secret to not blow the brakes off the car. The spring rate thing was just a random number for a draft version of a rule book, again this is just a draft and will need a lot of specific stuff for platforms once it gets going. I'm still working on getting some details from Owen on some the safety stuff then building a big spreadsheet with every car I can conceive with power/weight/OEM rates, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.

This is one of those things where I am waiting on direction from the promoter on what's required. I know he's juggling a lot but I should align those even in a draft. A couple things like that I just let sit as there is no final direction yet. You don't want to skimp on safety but you can cut costs in a low-risk low-cost class. Just depends on insurance.

Street SedanBeta (1).pdf Feel free to proofread and poke any holes of concern. Thanks!

The new guys killed it. We were in the pits done loading and I thought my watch had broken because it was only 945pm. These guys are going to make HMP great again.

I agree 100%, but the track being on life support you need to look at the resources you have. Rules can be strictly enforced without hiring Ricky Brooks for this class. I think it would almost be fun to have the class self-police where they can do their own tech but that's getting a bit far down the road for a class that hasn't ran or even been fully proposed. I'll bang away at the keyboard tomorrow and upload a PDF we can further critique. I appreciate all the constructive criticism on here and also as someone who doesn't go down south much, someone explain the 50 different modified classes going on because I can't even figure that out.

As a Houston person it's exciting to hear him talk a little. Very refreshing to hear someone wanting to DO big things and talking about everything big to small.

If you'd actually promise to go race it, I bought a street stock camaro with little to no body on it, but you can have the roof, and you can order some $450 sheetmetal sides and then run it in bootlegger class if it's really just the body keeping you from racing. For like the 100th time, if you show up with it race-ready in a class that struggles to fill out a podium at this time, and take the spoiler off, I would be absolutely bamboozled if they didn't let you run with some sort of time frame on putting a class legal body on it.

Some of them have tried this, and lost a lot of customers. The customers still do offer some level of control.

There are already solutions in place for most air spring cars that have a coil spring counterpart. I've learned this a lot at my day job being a warranty inspector. For example, the Huyndai Genesis after a second claim of air spring failure gets a Kia K900 coil spring because it's the same platform. Most the air spring cars have a coil spring OEM counterpart. This goes back to racer intake and they'll ask these questions. I'll try to update the rulebook with some these points over the weekend and drop it again here and see what holes you guys can poke in it. This has been far more productive than the several places I've dropped it on Facebook. Also the idea is this class is adopted on pavement and dirt, and folks are encouraged to run both if they can, hopefully the tracks will use this as a filler class for nights and in 1-2 years it grows where you can race them almost any time a track is open. I feel like there are enough people who'd like to get involved where most tracks could pull 10-15 of these if ran properly, folks would be okay running mid-back of pack as long as they have someone to race with and their learning, or they're just turning laps for fun, and a handful of competitive folks or people that find the itch of competition, move up, and sell these cars on the internet for 2-3k to the next person who wants to try it out.

That's why the "stock means stock" deal will need to be very strictly enforced for this to work, and the first person who deviates from this, will set precedent when they're involuntarily bumped to bootleggers or the appropriate lowest rung dirt class and gets lapped. If they want to innovate and be a techxpert, go get a real race car, not a class aimed at casual fun / new folks / 18-25'ers. This ethos has to be enforced, hard. I've screwed up the quote tags above sorry lol. . There is no budget for this, fiscally or chronologically, and expecting the track to keep in stock 5 different platforms of shocks/struts/springs is essentially spending more on parts inventory than the cost of an entire car. Just make sure you control any intake and messaging, control anyone who is interested in the class and do not be opaque in describing the class, purpose of the class, and that stock means stock. If someone wants to be creative, fantastic, kick them out without hesitation and they can be creative in another class because they wanted to go against the clearly written spirit of the rules for this entry-level bone stock class. You won't get friend request on facebook, but the class will go on. The type of people who'd cheat in this class and never come back to the track wouldn't grow with the class/track anyways in my opinion. If billed right this would attract interested people knowing this is a 'get your feet wet' class with an emphasis on moving up. The big question is where do they move up, is Bootlegger the real answer? Or is there something else. Hobby Stock on dirt obviously.

Exactly. Some cars will be better than others but you can now open up to a plethora of automotive enthusiats to platforms that are at the bottom of their value curve but platforms that people are already familiar with and comfortable with bringing in a whole new group of racers to the track. Hopefully they find a bigger class they latch onto and move up, but we also don't know what things look like in 2028 and 2033 which gives folks time to build and classes to build. Also plenty of time to fine tune rules and weight on it.

What are these you speak of? Link to rules and pics? I've always wondered why there isn't a cheap platform that can start off with a cheap engine, and just have bolt on parts upgraded.

Haha, dude they are EVERYWHERE and they are CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAP. I think if this class gets green lit we will see a lot of them and more importantly, a lot of new racers and their friends now that racing is accessible to them in a way that they think is cool. I think we'd see a lot of cheap old German stuff as well. There are just so many cheap cars that will run for forever but the interiors and other things on them are absolute garbage, and they'd be perfect stripped down on a race track with some numbers on the side, and someone very excited to have a race car. I feel like the 24 Hours of Lemons / Chump car crossover between this class back and fourth would be a real thing as well. Cheap cars people can run on asphalt, dirt, and do cheap endurance road racing would be really popular in my opinion.

Great points TBone. First I want to thank you for a really valuable post and some really good input. This is probably some of the best input I've gotten over the last two days and I truly do appreciate that you seem to have read this but also have targeted and understood what this potential class is really trying to accomplish. Thank you for chiming in on this. To keep it simple, I'd envision tech being going across the scale, and checking the min tire pressure post race, and that's it, keep it simple with a visual check on top of that where the unit is stock. Arrival tech to get on track is safety and just a visual verify its stock, etc. Post race would literally be weight and tire pressure. This is a good point, without opening pandoras box of "keep it stock...but you can do this" I think it would be best to let this develop if it even happens and go from there. Maybe allowing slotted holes on struts and shims on A-Arm cars would keep it cost effective, and the vehicles stock, but allow this to happen somewhat. Great point, and that's exactly the type of oversight I was looking to address when I threw this a couple places online. After putting 5 min of thought into this, maybe some wording such as "The suspension arms, links, spindles, shocks, springs, and struts must be OEM or OEM equivalent parts, no aftermarket performance parts. However, to assist with tire wear, components above the spindle may have the mounting location slotted for alignment purposes only. The arms, links, and components must remain stock, but the holes on the chassis can be slotted, or have shims added if there is not enough range in the alignment abilities from the factory. Any bolt on parts found to be modified will be deemed illegal, only slotting of holes and shims may be added on the chassis side for the strut mount, or upper control arm, for alignment purposes only." Maybe something like that keeps it simple, solves that issues, and gets ahead of any loopholes. Street tires have come a LONG way, and thankfully now we have the 24 Hours of Lemons and Chump car to pull data from for this exact same type of ruleset. Most modern street radials slammed up to 35psi should be okay, and with the tire rule literally rewarding people for visiting their local used tire shop (hopefully some enterprising individuals will try to ask for a sponsorship and get tire shops interested in coming to watch their car they're throwing some used tires to for fun and get more butts in the seats). Even if folks are replacing a tire or two every event or so, the cost control of running used street tires which can readily be had for 0-40 still keeps that in check, or at least that's the idea. Placard size doesn't necessarily imply eligibility and I considered that loophole, as well as different trim levels having different sizes and the hassle of keeping tabs on all that. The wheels where where I was trying to keep costs down by encouraging stock or junkyard OEM wheels, and trying to stay away from everyone running Aero wheels that stick out way beyond the factory bodies on these, if we run high offset OE type wheels and two guys hit each other or scuff the wall, the whole car can take that little hit and not actually damage anything functional or tires hopefully, but here is the current wording, I could massage it a little to "OEM Style" and make a provision for staggered cars, I was trying to make the rulebook as short sweet and easy to read as possible knowing the audience for this, hopefully, it's the first rule book they ever read so I tried to make it as simple as possible and easy to read for anyone who knew how to change oil, and change a spare tire, as that's who this class is trying to get into the track in my opinion. I can easily and should add some wording here to clarify, that the OEM is a guideline but delete the part about must be OEM, and just paint the box as 205-245 / 50-65 @ 35psi unless it's 2 year or order tire @ 25psi, 360 treadwear minimum, all four tires must match in size, OEM or OEM style wheels, tire and wheel must not protrude or stick out beyond the OEM fender line and must be within 1/2 inch of OEM offset / backspacing. Very open to input if anyone has any, but that's a really great point you've made on some ambiguity and contradiction in wording as written at this time for potential vehicles this class is aimed at. "2. Wheels and tires must be OEM. No aftermarket aluminum that are not OEM style. Steel police style or race style wheels are permitted, no low offset wheels that stick out beyond the fender. OEM size and offset or similar required. Tire size must be 205-245 width, a min sidewall of 50 and max of 65, and all four tires matching, with 340 or higher treadwear DOT radial.. All four tires must be same size and no stagger is allowed in any way. Tires are to be 340 treadwear minimum, with a minimum tire pressure of 35psi to be checked pre race and randomly post race. Used tires are strongly encouraged, and tires that fir the criteria directly above and have date codes older than 2 years with more than 4/32 of tread and less than 9/32nds of tread can run 25psi if all four meet this criteria. DOT radials above 340 treadwear only!!!!"

Trust me, I get it, but even the rural areas are starting to get up to speed, no pun intended, and with some the other tech coming on soon, Elon Musk's Starlink, soon almost everywhere will have super fast internet. If all my friends who work oilfield and on rigs can stream Race on Texas, Amazon and Netflix all day, you probably can too.

So it seems a small minority of the posts are actually related to this topic in any way. Rodney, I agree, way way way way way way too many classes. This is the year 2023, and we need to look at classes that can be successful in 2023. We need to stay away from racing vintage cars that can't be accessed by 90% of society. We've tried the "go pull the cars out of the weeds!" approach, and we see how that went, it didn't. We need to accept that the Metric Chassis hasn't been made in nearly 4 decades, same with the Fbody stuff. If the same thing wants to be attempted, again, and again, and again, and a different result is expected, that's literal insanity. We need classes the average person can tell apart, with names and simple understandings that can be discerned by an average person, and something accessible to the average person. There are 16 million people in the Houston metro area, and so far the take rate on the current classes including the popular ones is less than one in a million. It's my opinion that more than one in a million people in Houston are interested in circle track asphalt racing, and I think it's insane that we keep trying the same thing with a take rate of literally, less than one in a million. This was designed for dirt and asphalt with input from a lot of people before I posted it publicly, this is meant to also give the crown vics a home at the dirt and asphalt tracks, it's designed for anyone ages 16-100 with a goal of a build being an honest $3000 or less to the average person, and cost of operation being less than $150 a weekend and 10 hours of work between events so the average person can access it. The type of racer/customer I imagine would run this would be okay borrowing or renting a uhaul/penske trailer and would hopefully progress into bigger classes over time as their experience and financial abilities grow over time. You don't need a shop for this, you don't need scales, you can park this in the driveway with a car cover on it between events and any damage is literally fixed with a trip to car-part.com, LKQ, Craiglist/Marketplace, or a trip to the auto parts store. Zero specialty stuff. And with little to no mechanical grip with the tires, even if one platform is better than another, it really won't matter much. The move up rule is something I think would be on a case by case basis, you don't want career Street Sedan racers like some the guys in EcoStock, but you don't to fiscally shame someone who can run this class, but can't afford to move them up because they're winning. Over years if this class happens, and then develops, it would funnel into what Florida is doing where they then allow people to do springs and some things and run with the faster classes using all the vintage metric/fbody stuff. If you truly study the cars, costs, and talk to some of the drivers, there really isn't a true entry funnel for new blood at the track. Even the eco stock guys I talk to have gotten out of control with spending and buying tires and stuff, and a lot of people just don't get excited about owning a front wheel drive racecar that I've talked to that do other motorsports that ask me about my truck stuff, but they are also not willing to drop 15-20k on a truck that could get totaled every weekend by the crash truck racers that seem to keep showing up at HMP, which I'm glad appears to be addressed finally with the new team running the track, who also took a gander at this and told me to post it around some. Despite all the criticism about literally everything except this rule set from people who I'm pretty sure didn't actually read it, a lot of repair shop owners, and younger people I've talked to said something like this is what they've been looking for for a while, or it's in their fiscal ability. I was hoping someone would find some exploit I didn't think of so the rule set could get ahead of it but so far nobody has found much other than someone stating one car will have better ackerman than another, and they would find and buy that car and win, which really just tells me they overlook the point of the class entirely and probably wouldn't run anyways. Anyways, good discussion either way.

I am not sure if you are up to speed on accessible fan base, but a quick Google search yielded some pretty clear numbers. 56% of American households have cable. 78% of American households have streaming instead of cable. If anything, this is servicing more fans. That's a 22% increase in accessibility for American households. With a nation of 360 million, that's an increase of nearly 80 million Americans. I do not understand how modernizing the platform to the times increasing viewership access by nearly 80 million is screwing over anyone based off of these facts. I am personally excited at the idea that 80Million Americans that aren't currently able to scroll and see NASCAR and either tune in because they want to, or they might be curious, and may end up watching more races than they are now, as everyone wins when more people watch tier 1 oval track racing, and hopefully they get interested enough and their local racers, venue and promoter are doing a good enough job to take some of that interest and bring them to their local track as a fan or potentially turning them into a participant in some way. Source: https://www.zippia.com/advice/cord-cutting-statistics/#:~:text=popular than cable.-,56% of Americans say they watch cable or satellite TV,%2C Amazon Prime%2C or Disney%2B.

I don't understand how what platform it is on really effects people choosing to go to the track or not. Those are two completely different experiences that don't really compete with one another in my opinion. You go to the track so you can be AT the event. You watch it so you can keep tabs on it. Two totally different experiences. .02 I think in the chord-cut society we live in streaming platforms will get more viewers.

Man I liked the race. Like Larson said, "Old fashioned ass-whoopin". I thought it was awesome to watch a dude just be pretty much perfect the entire race and absolutely dominate. Had to deal with lapped traffic, coming from the back of the field on the restart, didn't touch a single car doing it, I thought it was awesome. I appreciate when people are absolutely on their game and it was awesome to watch. The cars slid around, the track had no grip, and he was just on full-kill the whole time while the car was clearly an absolute handful to point it straight and try to put the power down. I haven't seen Next Gen cars slide around that much ever, and it was awesome. Teams and drivers are finally getting those things stable and comfortable despite the lack of any suspension travel. If that's not entertaining idk what to say. I do think one big takeaway that people are finally talking about, this is what Next Gen with less mechanical grip looks like, and it was awesome. Give them more power, and less tire. I like the talks of more power and grooved tires, that would be awesome. Time will tell.

Hey everyone, I think we can all agree there is a need for an accessible, rear wheel drive, entry level / casual racer class that doesn't allow scope creep or builds to get out of hand in any way. I wanted to start posting this in the public eye for feedback. I'm sure some of you have seen this circulating behind the scenes and some the tracks and promotors are aware and have been giving feedback as well. Do you think this would bridge the gap between people that are not going to the track at all as a fan or competitor, and their ability to find racing relatable and get involved? If you don't want to click on it, fine, the summary is any RWD 6 cyl or 8 cyl, naturally aspirated, 3400#, ZERO Modifications other than safety and stripping things out, and the tire rule is as follows: "2. Wheels and tires must be OEM. No aftermarket aluminum that are not OEM style. Steel police style or race style wheels are permitted, no low offset wheels that stick out beyond the fender. OEM size and offset or similar required. Tire size must be 205-245 width, a min sidewall of 50 and max of 65, and all four tires matching, with 340 or higher treadwear DOT radial.. All four tires must be same size and no stagger is allowed in any way. Tires are to be 340 treadwear minimum, with a minimum tire pressure of 35psi to be checked pre race and randomly post race. Used tires are strongly encouraged, and tires that fir the criteria directly above and have date codes older than 2 years with more than 4/32 of tread and less than 9/32nds of tread can run 25psi" After speaking with many folks, we all find that, depending on how resourceful someone is, these cars could be built race ready for $500 - $4000 on the extremely high end. The Crown Vic would be the obvious easy button here, but this also allows the Lexus LS400, and other random RWD cars that sit behind shops and other places with very easy repairs to get running for this class to be pulled into the shop and put on a track as a very cheap disposable modern bomber/pure stock style car considering the cars that are sitting around in the year 2023. If this sounds provacative, I do implore you to read the rough draft of the rule book, twice, and chime in with your thoughts, or tag a friend who you know has been itching to go racing but can't justify spending $10k to try it out, but could totally spend a couple thousand to try it out and have something they can sell for about that when done. The way the rules will be written the safety will also attempt to align with 24 hours of Lemons and other items so that racers can have a low-budget car that they can do an array of motorsports activities with very cheap, as well as a group of cars that make v8 noises, and can do a standing burnout, as the front wheel drive and/or 4 cylinder format is something that does disinterest some folks and keeps them from getting into some of the existing entry level classes that are still quite more expensive than this locked down rule format where stock means stock. Again this is aimed at getting new people to the track and involved in motorsports. If you're concerns with one car having a better motion ratio, ackerman, torque curve than the other 40 cars you could use in this class, you have completely missed the entire point of this class to an aboslutely phenomenal degree. Street SedanBeta.pdf

You can mad dog Ross all you want, but this dude has a lot of people talking and watching NASCAR. I think he's great at that level. The only car he did even slightly wrong at Darlington was himself and Larson, after Larson decided to throw back to Russ Wheeler, and I am a huge Larson fanboy, but we all saw that coming, and a dude that races 5 nights a week should have known he was playing with fire squeezing Chastain up in the wall, and that Chastain would probably do it back either correctly or incorrectly. Larson understands "race how you want to be raced" and I wouldn't play that game with Ross Roulette Wheel Chastain having no clue what you're going to get volleyed back your way after you fire the first shot. Lots of Crickets when everyone else wadded their stuff up on the other restarts and Chastain had nothing to do with it. Some of you guys are starting to sound like Christopher Bell, lol.

You left out Kaulig or JTG, they're at least 6th in line. lol.

I'm really curious, if any new cars are getting built, or the old promoter is just using the arm emoji talking about how he knows 20 cars are getting built. It would make sense to align with MIS and the other regions, I think Owen has enough common sense to do so unlike the previous promoter. With that said I just wanted to thank the previous promoter for creating racing, building the track with his own two hands, and getting every car on track and every series across the country their start as he likes to take credit for. /sarcasm Rodney what are you guys doing for tires over there? I saw one the Georgia tracks running Coopers/BFG on the outside and you can run whatever you wanted on the inside to keep costs down which I thought was absolutely brilliant.

That one above is perfect for something I need, shot you a text from 9363481923

Glad to see it isn’t Pintos with OE fuel tanks required, name had me concerned http://www.i37speedway.com/news/?i=127144