New Classes On Club Racing Horizon

The popular E46 BMW 325 from SPEED TC will now have a good place to race on the Club level (Weber Image)

TOPEKA, Kan. (July 6, 2006) - In the July FasTrack®, the official member notification bulletin for Sports Car Club of America, Inc., it was announced that the Club Racing Board has recommended a number of new classes for the 2007 season. Highlights include a place for SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge cars to race, a home for ultra-high performance sports cars in Touring, the next level of performance in Improved Touring and a new motorcycle-powered formula car class.

Designed to fulfill the need for highly race prepared production-based automobiles, the “Prepared” category (which the CRB calls a working title) has been recommended, with B Prepared designated for SCCA World Challenge GT cars and D Prepared designated for SCCA World Challenge Touring Cars. Classes “A” and “C” may be created at a later date to fill the performance level gaps above and between the new classes.

“The creation of Prepared is a necessary and somewhat overdue step forward in the Club Racing division,” SCCA President and CEO Jim Julow said. “At the moment, there is not a real place for modern performance, GT and touring cars to compete in race preparation. The new category is similar to the current production category, in that it involves cars that were once street based prepared to a high level. What is different is the relevance of the cars to the current marketplace.”

Only cars produced since 1990 will be initially classified. The CRB’s goal is to maintain these classes as the marketplace progresses. Each car will reach a certain point, after it is out of production, that it will no longer receive positive competitive adjustments within the class.

“The historical similarity of having, for instance, a ‘BP’ on the side of a baseline Corvette is not a coincidence. It’s the natural evolution, with a 20-year or so gap in the middle. However, lumping the new category, which will run on DOT-approved tires and will likely have approved aerodynamic devices, into the current Production name is not the correct course of action,” Julow said.

Recognizing the missing performance level beyond the current Touring 1, the CRB has also recommended the realignment of Touring classes, moving the current T1, T2 and T3 classes down one number designation to T2, T3 and T4. A new Touring 1 class will be introduced for vehicles with performance levels similar to the Corvette ZO6 and a large number of exotic sports cars.

“Throughout history, there has always been on performance level higher than that of the current Touring 1 category,” Julow said. “Call them supercars or exotics—they beg to be raced. In reality, when the realignment of Touring occurred a number of years ago, this probably should have been the result, with the current Touring 1 being the second performance level.

“Additionally, realigning the Touring names in this fashion gives Club Racing a logical progression for the racer who buys a car, builds it to Touring specs and then wishes to further develop it into a Prepared car. While there will always be exceptions, the intention is for a T1 car to progress into AP, T2 into BP, T3 into CP and T4 into DP.”

Like Touring, the Regional-level only Improved Touring category will have a new class to recognize cars with a performance level too high for the current classes (S, A, B and C). ITR has been added to include cars with stock horsepower levels around 200, like the 1997-1999 Porsche Boxster, 1989-1996 Nissan 300Z, Honda S2000, V6 Chevrolet Camaro and a variety of BMWs.

Finally, recognizing the popularity and practicality of motorcycle engine power in racing, the CRB has recommended the creation of Formula 1000 for regional competition. Formula 1000 will include chassis eligible, or similar to, Formula Continental, but with a restricted 1000cc motorcycle engine.

“The Club Racing Board has taken a lot of input and developed a cohesive plan to move our racing classes into the future,” Julow said. “I applaud their efforts and look forward to seeing these classes move from the conceptual phase into reality.”

All of the classes are subject to Board approval at the August 2006 meeting. Each of the new classes would receive “Regional-only” status for the first year, with the possibility of being recognized as a National class in 2008 (excluding ITR), should numbers qualify it as such.

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