by Brian Stevenson » Sat Mar 23, 2024 7:24 pm
My $0.02 is this, and bare in mind that I actually couldn’t ride a rocking horse and I’m a sample size of one, but anyway.
So if you exclude anomalies like Darrell Cooney (who would probably win on a Honda Cub) A more modern bike will give the average VRRA rider a distinct advantage, hence my initial comment
From my own experience at Shannonville I can easily do 8 seconds a lap better on the Pro track on a FAST school bike than I can on my P3 or P4 bike. And we are talking about a 400 Ninja here. So, if you extrapolate that out that’s around 4 or 5 more laps in 2 hours. And I think that’s a fair comparison as I’m comparing it with my GPZ550.
My other concern is that if I have to race, as an example, my P3 heavy bike against a 750 SRAD or even a R6 or RC51 from the modern invitational class, It’s like comparing apples to oranges. It has no brakes (comparatively speaking), damping rod forks, skinny wheels, axial master cylinders, etc., the list goes on. Can I put all the cool modern stuff on a P3 bike to try and make it a bit closer? Probably not without infringing on a bunch of rules. But my contention is if I'm being scored back to back against a P5 or invitational bike, why cant I run those parts? Don't worry, I'm not advocating for this but it seems fair.
At this stage I don’t think I’m interested in riding a P3 in endurance, although I was thinking about a 500/4 P2 Honda, but I am actively looking for an R6 that I have to prep in a couple of months (I do have an ad on the forum). My real concern with that approach is that it further waters down the vintage DNA running in Endurance.
It would have been nice to have had this information at the AGM. Would it be an option to leave things as they are this year, work out the handicap change(s) required and present it at the AGM in November?
If you have concerns with the calculation, there is a PHP script in the web site that ingests the data from MyLaps and does the calculation based on the current formulas. These formulas are in spreadsheet form as well and have been well tested. Clearly this just couldn’t be pushed to the web site as Mylaps has no clue about penalties or things like that and would need to be reviewed.
Anyway, my $0.02 (FWIW)