Whiskey11
SCCA Autoscrosser #23 STU
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2012
- Posts
- 1,644
- Reaction score
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In that case you'd likely run 285 RS3s in STU, or run 305+ A7s in ESP. The time difference (on a 70 second course for an STU car) is:
ESP
0.849
69.753
-0.247
If that ^^ is true then the most competitive class for our cars IMO is ESP. Not sure if there were any recent changes to STU class though.
PAX is absolutely, positively, the worst way to compare classes as ST cars lose less time on asphalt to SP cars because Hoosiers don't gain as much grip and ST tires don't lose a whole lot on that surface.
To add insult to injury, STU's PAX is even harder because of the dominance of AWD cars which benefit even more from asphalt vs concrete surfaces over Hoosier shod cars.
To show what I mean, Brian Peters in STU at Nationals ran a 122.134 combined time. Billy Brooks ran a 117.905 in ESP (in a WRX...). PAX would require Brian Peters to run a 118.323 to PAX the same as ESP. Not going to happen nor has it EVER happened at Nationals.
If you go to the Data-Derived Autocross Index (DAX) setup the index for STU is .834 and ESP is .852. This would have required Brian Peters to run a 120.450 to PAX the same as ESP. That index uses only National Tour and Nationals results to determine the factor and is a lot more fair for comparing cars.
That all ignores the reason why we requested to be moved to STU. That was to show that wider wheels and tires would not make these cars overdogs in STX. Unfortunately CAM popped into existence and has given a healthy dose of "sit on our hands until that shakes out" to the STAC and live axle allowances. I think we were lucky to get the brackets and lower control arms but I think we presented an extremely healthy and strong case to them.
With all that in mind, I remain hopeful. My car has about 100lbs of weight to come out, maybe a hair more, some power, a good diff (ordered!) and the wider wheels and tires for STU to go and had I ran .75 seconds per day (with all of that done) faster than the local I normally run against, I would have placed 9th just outside the trophies. Now I don't know if there is .75 seconds between all of those mods, or more, or less, but I remain hopeful that it all adds up because I DO think these cars could trophy in STU with the right driver (read: Not me, I'm a hack).