One thing I hadn’t considered with the switch from group 1 to group 5 is that my car number (#24) might already be reserved in group 5.

Fortunately, Colleen over at the region office sent me an e-mail alerting me to the conflict.  So I checked the permanent number list, and #24 is definitely taken by a Spec Miata driver that also races in ITA. And to make matters worse, for ’07, there were only four numbers unreserved in that group! So I’ve decided to switch to #22 to make sure that I get the same number all year long. It’s available for ’08 in both groups 1 and 5, so that if I want to run both groups, I should be able to get that number and not have to worry about temporary graphics.

NASA doesn’t track permanent numbers at all. But they require unique numbers per-class, not per-group like the SCCA. Must be tough for corner workers and timing & scoring, but I don’t make the rules! Since the classes I could run in NASA are all fairly small, I’ve got a pretty good chance of getting whatever number I choose.

The numbers on the hood were too big anyway, so now I have a good excuse to change them.

For 2007, the first year for ITR, we’ve been racing in group 1.  I had originally hoped that we’d be in group 5 with the rest of the IT classes.

Well, the San Francisco Region has decided to move us to group 5 for next season.

This is good news, in my opinion.  Group 1 primarily consisted of ITE and ITX.  We were faster than ITX but stuck amidst the slower ITE cars.  Now, we’ll be among the fastest cars in the group, so I’ll have a reasonable chance of being on the pole of the entire group!  And since our cars are also legal for ITE (although not competitive there), this means that we’ll be able to do dual entries, and race in both group 1 and group 5 in the same weekend.

Anyway, you can now look forward to some different scenery in the in-car videos for next season.