CHAMP Car people, do I understand the rules right?

First off, this isn't going to happen.  I got intrigued by the conversations going on around the LeMons Rolls in this thread.  If I were ever to go crapcan racing Champ car appeals more than LeMons.  Not that there is anything wrong with LeMons, but the wild cars just don't appeal to me as much as more standard cars.  Anyway, I wandered over to Champcar.org and had a look.  From what I see all cars are given a base points value.  Safety stuff is free, but all mods and upgrades have a points value assessed.  500 points is the target, for every point over 500 you get 1 penalty lap.  So a 505 point car would get 5 penalty laps and a 603 point car would get 103 penalty laps.  That seems a way to stop overdogs dominating and giving slow cars a chance for some mods to make them competitive.

Just for E36 M3s and giggles I punched in my car as a random starting point.  99 2.5L Boxster, expecting it to be considered a complete overdog and have something like a 700 point base.  I'm amazed to see it's only given 475 base points with -75 points for a standard automatic trans.  That means a base 2.5L auto Boxster starts with 400 points leaving 100 points to play with for reliability and mild upgrades. 

I think I would be allowed the following:

Acusump 10

LArger trans cooler 20

Front air damn 10

Front splitter 10

REar spoiler 10

Shocks 0 (up to 2x stock value)

Springs 0 (same shape as OE within +/- 0.25" ID/OD) - to me that means you can change wire diameter, thus rate for free?

Brake ducts 0

Brake / rads / cooler mesh covers 0

CAI 0

So all that lot would only be 60 points meaning my Boxster would be a 460 point car, no penalty laps and 40 points in the bag for other changes?

That seems too good to be true.  Now, it wont happen as I want this car as my Summer DD, but I was just amazed to see that it theoretically could be legal.  I know a 2.5L Boxster, especially with an auto, is painfully slow in a straight line, but it's an amazing chassis.  

Yes, you're understanding correctly. There's a reason Champ cars are so much faster than Lemons cars! 

It's 1 lap per 10 points over 500, so that 603 point theoretical car would have 11 penalty laps. I haven't paid close attention in a couple of years, but AFAIK most of the front running cars are in the high 500-low 600 point range. Aero has become a really big focus lately, even over power. Boxsters are starting to become popular for this kind of racing, not sure about in chumpcar in particular. Springs are "free" but the sizing limitation means you're more or less limited to different application OE parts, so chances are you can't get a ton of extra rate out of them. Plus non-adjustable dampers mean you won't want to run springs too far beyond stock rate anyway.

Tom Suddard said:

Yes, you're understanding correctly. There's a reason Champ cars are so much faster than Lemons cars! 

Is Champcar that much faster than the fast Lemons cars or is there just a bigger gap in Lemons between the fast and slow cars than there is in Champ?

On topic, an automatic Boxster as an endurance racer is an intriguing thought. Don’t have to worry about a missed shift and the destruction that follows. I bet it shifts better than the slush box in a typical domestic sedan.

I read the rules over and over, and couldn't figure out how a 2.4 turbo swapped early Neon was only one class up from my dead stock Integras.  I figure sexual favors for the tech guys.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

Because the classes are literally just  determined by engine displacement and don’t have anything to do with potential performance of a particular car. Theoretically a car in A class could have as much chance at the overall as a car in D class, assuming equal levels of prep, driving, strategy, etc.

In reply to BlueInGreen - Jon (Forum Supporter) :

So, you just start over while ignoring the base car?  We had a K24 thought, but an engine swap and turbo for the Integra gave us, like, 2000 points and a billion extra laps.  I presume I missed something somewhere, but I never figured it out.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

Sounds about right. And you’re not the only one confused by how the rules about engine swaps work. For me it helped to go to a few races to see what’s actually racing and what the fast teams are doing. The rules are unique and seem odd sometimes but made more sense in context.

I’m not anywhere close to building a car and fielding my own team but that sure hasn’t stopped me from thinking about what I would race if I could :P

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

I took a pretty much bone stock 98 Dodge Avenger to Watkins Glen last year and was in C class because it had a 2.5 v6. We  were getting outrun by Miatas, well honestly we got out run by pretty much everything but the tow truck, but that was a close one. I checked on doing an engine swap and the added horse power rating would jump me up to 10000 point and EC class. We had fun, but not sure about the classing and the engine rules.

So if you look at a Mustang II with a 5.0 V8 at 140hp is 150pts.  I just did the swap for a 2.5L 227hp Volvo T5, and it adds 150pt.  So still just 300pts.

https://champcar.org/mainweb/register/vpi-swap.php

There really aren't classes in champcar.

It's literally a trophy for whoever runs more laps than other people with the same size engine.

It is single class racing.  An a, b, c or d car can all win.  In fact, they do!

Most front running teams are right at 500 pts.

On what page are the modified points outlined?

Looked up a few Alfas- most of them are 200, and I'm not really sure why they all are the same- an Alfetta isn't a GTV6 isn't a Milano.  But seeing how successful the MIlano has been in endurance racing, I just wanted to take a look at it.  But all Spiders are 150.  Not sure if it's possible to use just 50 points to equal the base potential of the Milano, though.

And it's curious that I can't seem to find the Merkur in the base list.  That seems to be a really good car to start with, too.

Lastly- the Miata I have sitting in my garage starts at 350.  Can I use 200 points of mods to make a Spider equal to a Miata....

There were a pair of Sahlen's prepped Boxsters at the last Sebring champ race.  They were absolute screamers.  I believe they won one of the double 7s and had mechanical issues day 2. They were the fastest cars out there by a fair margin. I'm not saying they were cheating, but they were significantly faster than the other boxster or 2 that were there. 

my personal opinion is that these teams with huge budgets, tractor trailer rigs and nascar style pit booths are not in the spirit of low budget racing. However, the Champ organization just loves having these kinds of teams show up. 

We saw the same thing when we went to a Chump race at Daytona a few years ago.  We we thinking of building an SC300 for Chump car racing until we went to a race.  Semi-tractor double deck race car haulers, full pit telemetry, huge support teams and we said no thanks.  Having never attended a race we thought it was a bunch of grassroots type people having fun, not pro teams, pro drivers and huge budgets.  We decided to stick with out HPDE "fun" events and sold the SC300 on.

Ya, it's kind of a downer. Although 90% of the teams out there are the grassroots guys.  

I take it you guys haven't actually gone and talked to the sahleens guys....

Yep, they have a crew.  Yep, they have nice stuff.

They will also talk to you and offer advice and are just regular racers.

I believe there were 3 or 4 cars that had faster laps at the Sebring race.  The 3rd gen camaro was bad fast.

The full pit telemetry can be as cheap as $300.00 if you get the racecapture trackmate.  I want that!

We spend that much in beer for the weekend.  Lolzers.

 However, the Champ organization just loves having these kinds of teams show up. 

Where did you get that info?  

I mean, sure, any small organization would like to have professionals lend legitimacy to their brand.  

The big teams don't get any slack or free passes or anything like that.  They follow the same rules as everybody else.

Events at prestigious tracks like Daytona and Watkins Glen always bring out the big money teams. But they aren’t unbeatable and they aren’t having any more fun than the guys towing their race car with an open trailer.

I actually did go and talk to the Sahlens team, and I agree, they were nice guys. Doesn't change the fact that they're bringing a whole army of firepower to a knife fight.  Just one dudes opinion. 
 

$300?  (I do realize you're referencing just the software or some small part of this setup)

wvumtnbkr said:

 However, the Champ organization just loves having these kinds of teams show up. 

Where did you get that info?  

 

I mean, sure, any small organization would like to have professionals lend legitimacy to their brand.  

 

The big teams don't get any slack or free passes or anything like that.  They follow the same rules as everybody else.

I've seen them proudly post pics of the big rigs on their Facebook feed. 
 

im not saying the pro teams are not within the rules. I'm saying they're not within (what I perceive to be) the spirit of the series. 

There was a superfast porsche at my last Lemons race with fancy rigs big crews, etc, too.   Heck there are regular big-dollar racers at Lemons races.  That don't win either!

It makes it sweeter when you do win, but c'mon they are cheating.   Lemons in particular is so full of bullE36 M3, you can cheat all you want without penalty after you've paid in so many entry fees.

The only way to truly get cost containment is have a claimer rule, so any competitor can buy your car for fixed budget amount.

They ALL don't REALLY want cost containment, they WANT you to spend big money, at least Champ is more upfront about it. 

The pro teams spent zero dollars on the haulers and the pit setups, because they already had the stuff from their pro racing setups, they've just started branching out to the smaller series. And I'm sure they're spending cents on the dollar to run chump races compared to pro races. The thing about racing is if there's a competitive atmosphere it's impossible to keep it truly low budget for long. And you might be surprised at how much effort and money some of the "amateur" teams are putting in. They might not have the show off-y stuff, but I'd be willing to bet those boxsters aren't the most expensive chump cars out there.