Sandy, I read the post about the rules, a good while ago, and I understand the schedule not being able to do much, til the tracks have their meetings, I, and a lot of others, were curious about the weight rule, it was supposed to be moved up this year, at least that's what was posted before last season started, that and the fact little is being communicated, makes it hard for the owners to make any moves, if need be. Thanks! Bob

Wow am I happy I just took the time to read this thread.....and I am extra happy that I got to read Nicks advice in particular..

I am a 39 year old male, 6ft 2in tall, wide shoulders, big feet, big hands, and I weigh 200ish pounds...having read the advice mentioned above I now know that with a little diet and exercise that I can easily get my own weight down to that of a 14 year old, 95 pound girl who's barely 5 foot tall and wears shoes and clothes found in the Jr or Childrens section at JC Penny..

Had I known this could be accomplised so easily I would have done it a long long time ago because the series I primarily race with has no weight rule at all...

Any weight rule that doesn't include the driver defeats the purpose of having a weight rule from a competition aspect...Period..

A reasonable car weight rule can for sure have safety benefits, but these ridiculously high weight rules that some groups have in place, especially the ones that punish alcohol cars so severely, are the exact opposite of helping safety... excessive ballast tends to fall off on the track or become a projectile in a crash, filling a 25 gallon tank full of fuel when you only use 5 gallons creates 5 times the potential power of a fire, and if my car is stalled on the track or sitting upside down I am quite sure the 900 pound car that hits me is going to hurt much less than the 1050 pound car that hits me.

Darnall, I'm sure you have already surmised, the 850lbs wasn't just a number out of a hat, it was arrived at, after weighing almost all the cars, and almost all the drivers, and those of us that actually build cars, know within a few pounds, what they should weigh, knowing the regulations on tube sizes and etc, and the weight of most of the components, so a car that should weigh in the neighborhood of 675-700, give or take a little, and a "normal" size driver, shouldn't have to add but a few pounds of ballast, now we only have maybe 6 or 8 that will have to add any weight, but 85% will still be over weight, some as much as 100lbs, but unlike go-karts, that have a "class" for almost every weight kart and driver, this is where we stand, as do a lot of other racing entities, but like you say, some parity has to be arrived at, and a lot of us feel like the number that it was supposed to be, meets that requirment, yes, if your under, you really feel penalized, but if your way over, you man up, and take your "penalty". Just sayin! Bob!

what you say about how the club got together and weighed all the cars/drivers and tried to come up with a good middle ground number is, in my opinion, the best possible way to come up with a fair weight rule. the way I see it, there should be an equal number of guys who race heavy as there are guy who have to add weight. If they came up with a good number and then changed it that drastically it seems there really wasn't any reason to have gone thru the effort they did in the first place.

I absolutely have no dog in this fight. I only felt like I needed to chime in after reading the part about how any driver that is heavier has the ability to diet and exercise and that will even out their disadvantage. While that argument does have some merit, there is no way a person can overcome their DNA and personal framework and come out on equal footing as somebody as small and tiny as some drivers are naturally.

being one of the biggest guys that races a midget, driver weight rules have always been something i was passionate about. i have written on lot here and on other forums about it. Way back in the MARA days i wrote up a proposition to be presented to the board about doing an "either or" weight rule. it was a 900lb midget or a 1080 car/driver combo weight. either one would be legal. it wasn't perfect from a competition standpoint since the 120lb driver would still have an advantage, but it did allow the big guys to lighten the car up if they chose to. it would be an easy fix, since anyone with a 900lb midget, which was the rule at the time, would still be legal with no changes. it fell on deaf ears unfortunately and MARA is long gone now, but the rules transferred on to POWRI and still remain today without driver weights included. Being about a 250lb driver, it still irks me that i have to think about how much extra fuel i need in the tank at the race with to make weight.

I understand completely, back in the day, we had an "ambiguois" weight of 500lbs, car only, it took years, and tears, to get it "raised" to 550lbs, still "almost" impossible, but an achievement nonthless, can you hear the screaming, and yelling, if it were to be 700, or 750, car only? Talk about a crime, if it were to happen, the suicide rate would go out of site, just kidding, of course, but, the fact remains, there still needs to be parity in the weight of the car, and driver, if necessary, then most of the doubt would be gone, and as usually happens, the light guy don't always win, but at least there would be parity, that's all we ask, and there is always that possibility, that with the added weight, the super lite guy, might really come to the front, he now has some weight he can transfer, to something other than the scales!! Bob!