I love you guys and the sport you deliver but I have to say that this thread demonstrates the essence of "club racing." Pages of talk about the nuances of drive-trains; past history; old bad blood; justifications for increasingly smaller niches in the motorsports spectrum... Not a lot of concern over what type of show is given the fans.

This is perfectly fine as long as the participants want to continue footing their own bills in a 100% "Pay to Play." game. This is not good if they want bigger purses and greater recognition. The SCCA can do perfectly fine running in shopping center parking lots and staging Poker Runs for its members and the players are happy with it. If the 2 TQ groups are happy running at empty county fair tracks then all the power to them. We all play this game as we like it and if the TQ and similar classes are happy with the "Club Life" then all the power to them.

But the TQ's and all similarly SIZED racers can offer fans an exciting show on tracks that full-sized sprints and midgets cannot. The smaller width and wheelbase lets them turn the Speedrome into a racing madhouse. The tight cornering makes the pointy-end of Mt. Lawn exciting. They should be the winter racing superstars at coliseums all over the Midwest.

Instead they spend their time fighting over chain-drives, old rivalries and "tradition."

The fans in the stands don't care a tin whistle if the car is chain-driven, shafted of the crank or powered by a squirrel on a wheel. The fans like the speed and quickness the TQ's can deliver. They don't see anything covered by the skin and, frankly, don't care. The only people who care about the TQ vs. mini-sprint vs. UMRA vs. MTQRL or any of that are in the pits. ... trying to figure out how to get enought money to make the next race.

If you all have unlimited pockets and don't need fan support; then continue on this path. Fight every change to prevent your parts from being obsoleted. Split off another category of racecars every few years when a better, faster, cheaper, different, whatever shows up in the pits. Hold a drivers' meeting before every race to hash and re-hash each tiny problem and change the procedure at every show to suit each passing whim.

If you want to strengthen your position to make TQ's a viable class of racers in front of paying fans who can help you increase your purse then do it. I've seen the mini-sprints and TQ's run together. They are very compatible with each other and the fans couldn't tell the difference. Stock car fans at weekly tracks generally don't care for the midgets. The TQ's, however, can deliver an exciting show at places like the Speedrome, Mt. Lawn, and other tight bull-rings. They COULD be one of the stars of the County Fair circuit due to their versatility on a variety of track sizes and their ability to put on a show on the unbanked crappy tracks. They could be... but aren't.

This has been an ugly summer for spectator sports with all manner of attendance down by 10-20%. Even the county fairs have seen this drop. NExt summer will probably be as bad. The TQ crowd has a choice: continue wandering the narrow cow paths into obscurity or come together and shape a road together.