[Alan Roehrich]

I think that "a reasonable effort to follow the spirit of the rules" policy is really where we should be going here.

However, there are two problems with that idea, as much as I like it.

1. "A reasonable effort to follow the spirit of the rules" is in itself a rather subjective idea that creates a really big gray area. The fundamental idea is sound, and really goes to helping keep the class as easy as possible to participate. Unfortunately, we will have a real problem defining what "a reasonable effort to follow the spirit of the rules" constitutes. Drawing the line is going to be difficult. And we already have a pretty broad and inconsistent application of the rules.

2. We no longer have guys like Travis, Dave, and Wesley attending and overseeing tech at all of the events. So there is a serious lack of experience and knowledge as to what is and is not correct, and possibly what is or is not a real performance advantage.

Despite the fact that we have all sorts of "replacement" parts allowed, we still don't want to have the cars stray too far from what they should be. By the same token, we do not want to send anyone home over trivial mistakes that do not offer a real performance advantage. We have to realize that it may be nearly impossible or prohibitively expensive to find the exactly correct part for some cars, and a reasonable facsimile should be acceptable. After all, to compete in Stock Eliminator you may need to spend $30,000 (or more) on the powertrain to be reasonably competitive, if you cannot do much of your own work. Do we really want to tell someone they need to spend 6 months and thousands of dollars to find some trim and/or lights, that won't matter on the track?

Should there be a list of things that get a pass? Maybe trim, marker lights, tail lights, turn signals etc should get a pass, but bumpers and grilles/grille shells should not. I don't have the answer.