Two more thoughts in regards to Jon & Stan.
When the ECTA was young there weren't many competitors. Few competitors also means little money. Allowing one to run a single vehicle in mulitple classes helped to provide the money needed to keep the place running. Sure you can raise fees and get your income many other ways but the bottom line is that the members voted & that's the way they want to keep it, "regardless of how they do it out west"!
Stan, another reason people have opted to run multiple classes and run on open classes is to fill them up so that one day, sooner then later, the points race will be meaningful and based on actual increased speed achievement not on who can find the most open classes. Now I don't mean to pick on the people running the current points races, they're playing by the rules and that's how it should be. However, some of us look forward to the day when the points can actually reward real progress.
And Stan, I've set many records on open classes. Are you trying to tell me I shouldn't be proud of my achievement? Some of my records have been upped, but not by much. To me that means I didn't set a soft record. Somebody has to set the first record. Just because the class started as open doesn't mean it's set as soft. Just because some classes aren't widely popular doesn't mean they're not an achievement. Getting a ton of extra speed on a small cc turbo bike over the same small cc NA bike is not a common occurance. You don't get a lot of extra mph out of a small trubo. (heck, sometimes the weight of the turbo outweighs the hp gain & actually slows down the bike!
) So, setting the turbo records with a non-turbo bike doesn't guarantee it's a soft record.
So Stan, if you don't like my records and you don't respect how I acheived them that's fine with me. You're welcome to join us or you can just keep playing with the SCTA but in all honesty, don't knock it until you try it. Bring something out to top my 50cc & 125cc records & show me just how slow I really am.
Deb