The future of the SC Shootout through my eyes.
I don’t have much skin in the shootout game, but let me give you my .02 cents. I am not the guy that went to every single one of them, a lot of times it was because I did not have a SC that was ready, but I am also not the guy that that missed it every year. But an important note is, I was either number 1st in long distance recognition or second. But this is coming from a guy that drives his SC to the events, and have broken down on every other Carlisle show trip. With that said, what motivated me the most to attend? To me, one, it was a chance to level the playing field. Throughout the year most people did modifications and ran their cars locally and provided their results. But only to be faced with scepticism from fellow members, things like elevation, track prep, humidity, dyno calibrations (corrected or uncorrected) (Mustang vs dyno jet) etcetera. Second reason was showing off my junk, when ready and had something new or exciting to talk about, otherwise I was not interested. Last although important, the company meaning seeing the club members we BSd with over the year. But in reality I was never able to get to get to the level needed to stay competitive, drag racing has never been my priority for my car and although I like going quick and fast, the thought of buying a trailer, safety gear buying slicks/line locks has always been second priority. But I raced, and chanced failure, 16 hours from home, just to say I did it, comparing MPH with the best of them. 60fts, reaction times, launching that’s all grass roots racing which I was never a part of in my neck of the woods, but I conformed, for the sake of competing ran it and changed it and in the end had good time. But fast forward now, our cars got old and expensive to fix and with limited parts availability. I can’t be doing the things I did when the cars were 10 years old, some are now 30yo, we can’t just walk into an AutoZone and send it. It requires to be fully ready, own a trailer most times and become a semi-professional track racer, Jacob excluded. The fire at last year’s shootout made me realize that “anything” can happen and it’s simply not worth it subjecting the car to the abuse 16 hours away from home, couple that with insurance not paying out during competitive events and one can see how the format of the event becomes less attractive. I do agree that any type of competition will be fun and will abuse the car one way or another but I almost feel that those semi-professional SC owners have now become a handful and more owners have fallen into my dilemma. As it becomes expensive to soup up an SC, you can see the young/new owner are just trying to maintain and keep their classic car running, the idea of modifying their cars is nice but it’s simply not priority when you have harmonic balancers breaking, DIS and ignitions failing, and shot paints and rotted lower quarter panels. There is only so much a new set of chrome speedstars can do to a car with sun baked paint job. So to me it’s no surprise that competition among ourselves is in now in the rear-view. I commend those that want to keep it going, but the ¼Mile racing format IMO has run its course if only among us. Extending the invitation to other clubs and models would be starting the event from scratch, but as time goes by you will see polarization of the cars, semi-professionals against stock hellcats or supercharged v8 birds or are the turbo SC going to step it up and save the day? And what about the 14-13s super coupe guys? and who will those be running against what a 13s stock Camry?
All this brings me to my next point. For me to get excited it has to be a larger event similar to Carlisle Fords Nationals and include things like dyno competition and also not so hardcore competitions like ½ mile racing on street tires etc. or a larger autocross/road course event, and while the real car show cars will stay away from these competitions, it is friendly for the average Joe to have fun with their semi stock sc.
As an alternative the Epic Drive might need to evolve into just that, because most classic cars eventually fall into the rally or car show event type category so the owners have a relaxing and enjoyable time when attending. $.02
I hope the influential people can put something together but those are my thoughts.