[Marvin Robinson]

Look, everyone, I see a lot of arguing over advantage being to the "faster" car, and whether it's "fair" or not. What is being confused here is exactly what is a faster car. The AA/S car should always be the fastest car in the eliminator, simply because it has the highest HP/Wt ratio, the question is: is it the fastest AA car. In the case of two same class cars against each other, the race is heads up, and the advantage naturally goes to the fastest car - as it should be.

What's being left out of the discussion is the DRIVER... we race each other for a reason, it's a contest of machine AND MAN.... otherwise, we could give out the prizes after qualifying rounds are over. The drivers compete against each other as well, and that's what the handicap starts allow, the dialing under making the eliminator a level field for everyone... the faster cars DO often have the luxury of seeing a redlight and getting a "bye", and we can rightly debate whether this is fair, but the faster car part is an apples/oranges type of argument. I remember when handicaps used to be set by the National records, and that penalized those who didn't have the ability to go as far under as the guy in the next lane, so some drivers, depending on class matchups, had an unfairly earned advantage. If you think about it, that system could actually favor the slower cars, because any HP improvement will have a bigger effect on a lower HP car (although I know the weights involved would smooth that out somewhat).

The system we have now keeps the driver component in the equation, and the only question is if it's fair to allow the 2nd car leaving the chance to get a freebie... I've been on both the rabbit and tortise side, and there are several advantages the faster car will have regardless of how you handle the redlights. Giving both drivers the opportunity to beat themselves on the tree might be a little more fair... but I don't know that we can ever have a calm or reasoned discussion about it because passions are so high. I think the only time having a faster car should be an advantage is when the two cars are in the same class, and with exception of the redlight issue, we already have that.