Hyperfest Registration

[G.Irish]

That's the thing, HC wouldn't have grown so quickly without the crossover.

you guys keep saying this but I just dont buy it. HC grew quickly because there was a very strong and very enthusiastic core of racers (most of which were not scca crossovers) that i listed in my previous post. SCCA guys filled out a few spots to see what the hubub was about, but it wasnt the core of the series.
Remember a couple years ago when we were chatting about the club, and how most new clubs die out after the first wave of founding officers graduates? Same thing here. Lots of enthusiasm from the founders, after that it easily trails off.

There's at least 20 guys who've left HC and are racing SCCA right now. Some of them were originally NASA guys but either way that's not good. I may very well be one of those guys next year if NASA-MA goes to a spec tire. Same with RJ.

NASA has to think about all of the classes true, but part of the reason they got the deal in the first place was because of the two most popular classes: American Iron and HC.

eh....Im not convinced HC is one of the most popular classes, ...you look at numbers from a lot of the other series and they are right up there if not past the HC numbers. and AI was spec toyo from the beginning, toyo didnt need this deal to get on that gravy train

Car count wise American Iron is the only class that was bigger. Its[HC] not the biggest class anymore because of aformentioned reasons but let's be honest, whenever you see NASA ads in GRM or whatever, they were not ads of GTi Cup or Spec Neon. HC and AI were the first two classes that actually got popular within NASA. Before that I remember there being a small hodgepodge of cars here and there, some weekends you had 8 or 9 Factory Fives but HC and AI were the first two classes in the East that really took off.

AI's situation is a bit different because they have zero chance of crossover anyway. But even then, if Toyo didn't need HC for the aforementioned gravy train then it would be no problem for them to exclude Honda Challenge from having to use the spec tire.

SCCA SM has a spec tire deal too but you don't see SCCA forcing EVERYONE to use Toyos.

true, but a scca SM field is larger than all the nasa classes put together.....but I think ultimately we are seeing the negatives of a for-profit organization. For years we were told about all the advantages. Customer driven, listen to input (ironic...), etc. But in the end they are there to make money, so corporate deals are goign to be a given. Does that make it right? or ok? maybe, maybe not, but it shouldnt surprise you. Just like SCCA pro inking spec tire deals, we probably should have seen it coming.

Yep. Maybe the money numbers work out better with the spec tire deal so I wouldn't blame in that case. However, what I see is the cold plain fact that it costs a LOT more to get new customers than it does the keep the old ones (some business books say 10x). Maybe the Toyo money is big enough that it makes up for the lost revenue.

Why should a series that overwhelmingly doesn't want a spec tire
be forced to use one so that a bunch of smaller series can get the deal? Seems to me that the smaller series would be getting a deal they didn't deserve to the detriment of a series that was already popular.

other regions especially west coasters would disagree with the overwhelming part, but I wouldnt necessarily disagree with you except for the fact i think you are overstating the popularity of HC. Maybe you just have had tunnelvision for HC and paid attention to all the ht threads and everything, but its not nearly the biggest game in town.

Its pretty much been ONLY the West Coast that wanted it. MWHC, ECHC, and SEHC have all been against it. And again, HC is not the most popular class anymore for the aforementioned reasons. The only other series that ever pulled 25+ entrants was American Iron.

The thing is that there was already a problem with the rules and this whole thing exacerbated that problem. Kinda like how the colonies were already having a problem with British rule but the Tea and Stamp taxes pushed them over the line.

almost all that rules dicking was with h1, but h2-h5 have seen the biggest attrition, and h1 is the strongest class.

That's because h3-h5 can all go to the SCCA. H1 is the only place for H1 cars to race. Most of the foolishness was in fact H1, but when you have the national director saying stuff like, 'We don't need you', 'Stop whining', and 'We don't need SCCA's table scraps' its going to piss people off. Add nonsense at the track, and SCCA getting its act together and you've given people the motivation to leave and a place for them to go.

The BS was a lot of things that put people off. It didn't have to be a rule change or nonsense that affected your car specifically, just something that shook your confidence in the leadership and direction of the series. There's a reason 944 Cup opted not to be a national series.

im not convinced. not everyone read HT. you may have been deep into the politics of it, but not everyone was even aware of it especially those scca crossovers you guys keep talking about

Yeah but between HT, Nasaforums, word of mouth, stuff happening at the track, there are plenty of ways for stuff to get around. Certainly not all of the attrition was due to the tire issue, it was a lot of things. But the tire issue has definitely gotten more people to jump ship.