SA R34 Ruled out for FD competition
- Thread starter Mars
- Start date
wow i gotta get a look at that rule book to better understand them for ruling team sa r34 out because of oem front suspension. oem suspension setup is illegal? how is it illegal? logically they running a coilover setup and other upgrades right? is it the awd to rwd conversion? interesting...
BLADDER_MASTER
is no more
Where's Chuck with his "FAIL" images when you need him.
a lot more is discussed in this thread http://www.drifting.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25200 I guess it is due to the rwd conversion with OEM parts
BLADDER_MASTER
is no more
tyndago said:
I guess that sums it up?
And if that's what they're complaining about, the Scion should fail.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tyndago
This is very much based in reality.
Heres the problem. No Skyline had Struts in the front. C34 had them , no R34's. They used OEM parts , but OEM parts from C34 not R34.
That is where there is an issue. Formula D can "pre approve" suspension changes. They could have said that the struts in the front are fine. SA could have said they are OEM parts , from a different Nissan.
[quote:
I guess that sums it up?
And if that's what they're complaining about, the Scion should fail.[/quote]
yeah thats what i figured the reason would be. man thats bogus though leave to us americants to make things difficult. why make such a big deal its an oem front suspension front from another car in the nissan family. what are they gonna do next break FD up into hp classes? no more engine swaps! GO FD!
Originally Posted by tyndago
This is very much based in reality.
Heres the problem. No Skyline had Struts in the front. C34 had them , no R34's. They used OEM parts , but OEM parts from C34 not R34.
That is where there is an issue. Formula D can "pre approve" suspension changes. They could have said that the struts in the front are fine. SA could have said they are OEM parts , from a different Nissan.
[quote:
I guess that sums it up?
And if that's what they're complaining about, the Scion should fail.[/quote]
yeah thats what i figured the reason would be. man thats bogus though leave to us americants to make things difficult. why make such a big deal its an oem front suspension front from another car in the nissan family. what are they gonna do next break FD up into hp classes? no more engine swaps! GO FD!
Last edited:
ok understandable two different car families...now are s13.5 and s13.4s allowed?
is this a thing of only americans can win and not outsiders?
Last edited:
Gabe163
Spectator
haha top 16 is gonna be all 240 hatches just different color and #24 is gonna win :laugh:
quoted from member name: Formula D
http://www.drifting.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25200&page=8
Wow, popular thread. But you got us. It’s a huge conspiracy. We favor certain teams and we do things behind doors and we look the other way when someone sponsors us. We do it all in the name of the dollar. Mooo haa haa haaa…. Come on, get out of there with that! We’ve fined our own past Champion Rhys Millen. We even lobbied to have D1 drivers here, so the argument we don’t want any J guys doing well is a lil soft. This is as down the middle organization as it comes. Forget all that stuff. Some of you are way off the reservation and doing a disservice to the team in question and the community of drifting by speculating and gossiping about things you don’t have all the facts on.
There is no specific reason that we have been holding off in responding until this time. Rather most times teams and organization handle matters of dispute in a professional matter mostly done offline and generally with the team principle, not in a public forum. But it’s fine. When one party has the forum all its own certainly, the picture painted will certainly represent the far reaching realm of that side. Kind of like the guy who tells the officer he wasn’t speeding only to find out he got caught on tape blowing a red and counter locked on the 22/5 Freeway interchange and then when showed the tape says, “ok officer maybe it did break the law a lil bit.”
So going back a bit.. Ask any team that has ever done a build that they feel falls within gray area of our rule book (and there is gray in every rulebook in every series) and you will find that that team has consulted our Chief Steward for direction on how to do it in accordance with our rules and within the confines of what is fair. To state an example that has been used in this post, the Scion team did just that. RSR, Design Craft(Gary Castillo), the entire team along with Toyota/Scion worked alongside Randy to complete this one of a kind and EXTREMELY unique build. Racing is all about finding gray and gray they did. Now we don’t want every team to do that, but they did work within the gray and created a precedent of which we found helped us in how we work with these types of builds and circumstances in the future. You would never know the detail or time that went into the back and forth from them to us rather you are speculating on stuff you don’t even know. The flip side is that SA did not contact us about the details of their build. Gray is gray..
..here is black and white:
Long Beach/Annual Tech. SA Drift brings the car to tech and our staff finds that the original suspension on the R34 has been modified to a strut-type suspension. When FD staff addressed the concern with SA staff, we were told that the R34 was available with strut suspension thus falling in line with the guidelines of suspension as directed by the rule book. For us and for fairness to other competitors, anything out of the ordinary like that has to be verified. So we worked with the team to try and verify the information.
This was to no avail. So our own staff exhaustively did the research and getting all the documents and paperwork from Nissan, spending many hours to make sure that we knew exactly what was what. Conclusion: R34 did not come with strut suspension, rather double wishbone. The suspension parts rather came off that of a C34. The team maintained the whole time that the R34 came with strut suspension. Not once prior to entering the series did they alert us of the build or ask for any kind of guidance (again this is a common practice for many builders that work in the series) on what they were doing.
Rather SA maintained that the parts were in fact from an R34. This is a black and white issue. And we investigated it for nearly two rounds so as to make sure we knew exactly what we were talking about and to take the time to get the right information. You can’t complain about the rule book after the fact. That rule has been there for a long time.
At this point, our Chief Steward is basically backed into a corner with a clear illegal violation so a fair penalty was assessed. People that knew of the violation were calling for a very stiff penalty, even for the car to be completely illegal. So what we assessed is more than fair. Everyone knows that FD always give the benefit of the doubt and always is lenient when it comes to docking points or fining teams (Which by the way go to charity).
You really have to do something over the top for it to happen. Anyone that competes with us knows this. We have given the benefit of the doubt many times over.
Formula Drift has been criticized by teams in the past for being too soft and so in the off season we invested in additional tech staff to work on making sure teams are building cars that fall within the guidelines. We have already worked with teams to fix numerous safety issues and validate many, many builds. These are often not public record (unless someone makes it so) because teams to be charged with a safety or build penalty is an issue we like to deal with as much courtesy, delicacy and care. Imagine if you are a sponsor and you just plunked down many thousands of dollars to the team and then read on a public forum that your prize driver can’t build a roll cage to spec. How do you think that makes the team and/or driver feel knowing their sponsors embarrassment? There is no need to bring an issue to the public and embarrass a team and it’s unfortunate that other teams have been pulled into this unknowingly and unprovoked and without any hard data to back the accusations.
There is no inconsistencies in rulings regarding builds. You either did it properly or you didn’t. You either consulted with FD staff on your build or you didn’t. Many teams have already fixed issues have been penalized and have gone on their way. Others are still being investigated. No one knows how many other active investigations are going on. It is a sensitive and special process and we take care in how we do it.
People either believe this is a fair organization or you don’t. Most do. If you don’t, then I don’t know what to tell you. So what do you want to do from here? Do you want to keep the public bashing and trying to make a case for whatever you are trying to do? We hope that efforts shift to trying to help the team fix the issue. The penalty is fair; qualifying points are taken, small monetary fine and 10 weeks to fix the problem. We are very happy that Takatori is in the series and it is a very unfortunate series of events that have led us to this point. It is, however, not an excuse that the builders translated our rule book incorrectly.
Long story short…
- C34 suspension is OEM to C34 chassis vehicle not R34 chassis
- FD was never contacted or consulted on the build prior to Round 1
- Vehicle was brought to FD LB.
- Suspension was suspicious and FD tech staff did through research to investigate.
- Team did not supply need information to support the legitimacy of the change.
- FD assessed the issue and issued the penalty; qualifying points from Rd1 till the suspension is fixed and monetary penalty.
- SA team has until RD 6 to fix the suspension.
Our suggestion is that people keep the irresponsible speculating and rumor-mongering to a minimum and get back out on the track and run.
http://www.drifting.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25200&page=8
Wow, popular thread. But you got us. It’s a huge conspiracy. We favor certain teams and we do things behind doors and we look the other way when someone sponsors us. We do it all in the name of the dollar. Mooo haa haa haaa…. Come on, get out of there with that! We’ve fined our own past Champion Rhys Millen. We even lobbied to have D1 drivers here, so the argument we don’t want any J guys doing well is a lil soft. This is as down the middle organization as it comes. Forget all that stuff. Some of you are way off the reservation and doing a disservice to the team in question and the community of drifting by speculating and gossiping about things you don’t have all the facts on.
There is no specific reason that we have been holding off in responding until this time. Rather most times teams and organization handle matters of dispute in a professional matter mostly done offline and generally with the team principle, not in a public forum. But it’s fine. When one party has the forum all its own certainly, the picture painted will certainly represent the far reaching realm of that side. Kind of like the guy who tells the officer he wasn’t speeding only to find out he got caught on tape blowing a red and counter locked on the 22/5 Freeway interchange and then when showed the tape says, “ok officer maybe it did break the law a lil bit.”
So going back a bit.. Ask any team that has ever done a build that they feel falls within gray area of our rule book (and there is gray in every rulebook in every series) and you will find that that team has consulted our Chief Steward for direction on how to do it in accordance with our rules and within the confines of what is fair. To state an example that has been used in this post, the Scion team did just that. RSR, Design Craft(Gary Castillo), the entire team along with Toyota/Scion worked alongside Randy to complete this one of a kind and EXTREMELY unique build. Racing is all about finding gray and gray they did. Now we don’t want every team to do that, but they did work within the gray and created a precedent of which we found helped us in how we work with these types of builds and circumstances in the future. You would never know the detail or time that went into the back and forth from them to us rather you are speculating on stuff you don’t even know. The flip side is that SA did not contact us about the details of their build. Gray is gray..
..here is black and white:
Long Beach/Annual Tech. SA Drift brings the car to tech and our staff finds that the original suspension on the R34 has been modified to a strut-type suspension. When FD staff addressed the concern with SA staff, we were told that the R34 was available with strut suspension thus falling in line with the guidelines of suspension as directed by the rule book. For us and for fairness to other competitors, anything out of the ordinary like that has to be verified. So we worked with the team to try and verify the information.
This was to no avail. So our own staff exhaustively did the research and getting all the documents and paperwork from Nissan, spending many hours to make sure that we knew exactly what was what. Conclusion: R34 did not come with strut suspension, rather double wishbone. The suspension parts rather came off that of a C34. The team maintained the whole time that the R34 came with strut suspension. Not once prior to entering the series did they alert us of the build or ask for any kind of guidance (again this is a common practice for many builders that work in the series) on what they were doing.
Rather SA maintained that the parts were in fact from an R34. This is a black and white issue. And we investigated it for nearly two rounds so as to make sure we knew exactly what we were talking about and to take the time to get the right information. You can’t complain about the rule book after the fact. That rule has been there for a long time.
At this point, our Chief Steward is basically backed into a corner with a clear illegal violation so a fair penalty was assessed. People that knew of the violation were calling for a very stiff penalty, even for the car to be completely illegal. So what we assessed is more than fair. Everyone knows that FD always give the benefit of the doubt and always is lenient when it comes to docking points or fining teams (Which by the way go to charity).
You really have to do something over the top for it to happen. Anyone that competes with us knows this. We have given the benefit of the doubt many times over.
Formula Drift has been criticized by teams in the past for being too soft and so in the off season we invested in additional tech staff to work on making sure teams are building cars that fall within the guidelines. We have already worked with teams to fix numerous safety issues and validate many, many builds. These are often not public record (unless someone makes it so) because teams to be charged with a safety or build penalty is an issue we like to deal with as much courtesy, delicacy and care. Imagine if you are a sponsor and you just plunked down many thousands of dollars to the team and then read on a public forum that your prize driver can’t build a roll cage to spec. How do you think that makes the team and/or driver feel knowing their sponsors embarrassment? There is no need to bring an issue to the public and embarrass a team and it’s unfortunate that other teams have been pulled into this unknowingly and unprovoked and without any hard data to back the accusations.
There is no inconsistencies in rulings regarding builds. You either did it properly or you didn’t. You either consulted with FD staff on your build or you didn’t. Many teams have already fixed issues have been penalized and have gone on their way. Others are still being investigated. No one knows how many other active investigations are going on. It is a sensitive and special process and we take care in how we do it.
People either believe this is a fair organization or you don’t. Most do. If you don’t, then I don’t know what to tell you. So what do you want to do from here? Do you want to keep the public bashing and trying to make a case for whatever you are trying to do? We hope that efforts shift to trying to help the team fix the issue. The penalty is fair; qualifying points are taken, small monetary fine and 10 weeks to fix the problem. We are very happy that Takatori is in the series and it is a very unfortunate series of events that have led us to this point. It is, however, not an excuse that the builders translated our rule book incorrectly.
Long story short…
- C34 suspension is OEM to C34 chassis vehicle not R34 chassis
- FD was never contacted or consulted on the build prior to Round 1
- Vehicle was brought to FD LB.
- Suspension was suspicious and FD tech staff did through research to investigate.
- Team did not supply need information to support the legitimacy of the change.
- FD assessed the issue and issued the penalty; qualifying points from Rd1 till the suspension is fixed and monetary penalty.
- SA team has until RD 6 to fix the suspension.
Our suggestion is that people keep the irresponsible speculating and rumor-mongering to a minimum and get back out on the track and run.
Miami_drifter
Driver
+1
E'sFactoryAE86
Well-Known Member
I comepltely understand what they mean....
but what can be said about the SCION TC with its RWD conversion?
I mean its so fucking far from the stock car it started as.
Gimme a fucking break.
If the situation is that Signal is using shit thats not OEM for the R34 then r u saying that the RWD conversion is like some kind of fucking TRD conversion package option? lmao that shits not OEM...
c'mon FD sucks balls.... those muhfuhkus FAIL.
but what can be said about the SCION TC with its RWD conversion?
I mean its so fucking far from the stock car it started as.
Gimme a fucking break.
If the situation is that Signal is using shit thats not OEM for the R34 then r u saying that the RWD conversion is like some kind of fucking TRD conversion package option? lmao that shits not OEM...
c'mon FD sucks balls.... those muhfuhkus FAIL.