Any thoughts on what the penalty should be for using old rains during a qualifying session for a National?

It's a "non-compliance" issue.

In qualifying, you lose your times.

In a race, a benevolent outcome would be "last in class". The less benevolent outcome is "DQ". Which one chosen depends on "circumstances".

This was tried at VIR to avoid having two sets of rains for someone running both regionals and nats. Since there was a dry Qual session it did not matter, but had this been the only Qual, he would have been 1st out of 40+ without trying. (he tried to sandbag)

Be ready to sandbag loads if you want to go un noticed. The new rains are much much slower then the old ones. Reguardless of where one normally runs, with these and little effort you will be faster then those on new rains. Very hard to sandbag if your out front.

At Mid Ohio this weekend, it was only two grid positions.

Hard to believe unless there were only 3 SRFs. There was about a 10 second difference at VIR. (2:16 dry, 2:2...'s old rains, 2:3... new rains.

I was going to buy some of the new rains this weekend at Mid-0 until I found out how useless they are.

We were in the same qualifying group as SM and they were passing us.
What a humiliating fiasco

Talked with the Good Year guy and he said that he is taking a whole truckload of unsold rains back home & was less than pleased.

Scott Rettich qualified pole in the rain with a 2:27.464 and a day later in the dry with a 1:39.323

1) Useless? If Scott was almost a minute off of a dry time than I'd say they were very useful in that he got around the track at all (he was about 20 second off a dry time at VIR). Sounds like slicks wouldn't have made it out of the pit lane.

2) Humiliating? Why do you care if an SM (or any other class) is better or worse in the rain? Same tires for all SRFs which is where your competition is.

3) We have one observer that says "only 2 grid spots between old and new rains" and another that says new rains were useless because they were so slow. Seems pretty contradictory - someone want to clarify?

In the dry, Scott was a second faster than the field. In the wet, on the new rains Scott was two seconds behind one car that was on the old rains and multiple seconds ahead of the rest of the field on the new rains. The car that had qualified on the old rains was moved back two positions to third on the final grid.

With regard to the general impression of the new rains, there were so many SRFs spinning and going off course that about half of the first qualifying session was run under full course caution.

The comments about the Miatas being faster than the SRFs reflect the fact that we were qualifying in the same session as the Miatas. They were going by at a good clip and could slow down for the corners and change direction a lot more effectively than we could. Not a big deal until one of them takes a section of road you were counting on being able to use.

Denny Stripling has a pretty good write up of the new rains ( see commentary for the March race at TWS ).
From a FNG's perspective, the new rains are a great learning tool as they forced me to learn to drive the rain line.
During the Thursday test, I was able to run drys, old rains, and new rains. It is tough to make a great comparison based on the limited amount of data ( 2 sessions on each, still a pretty new driver ), the new rains are clearly faster than the drys ( best guess, 10-15 seconds ), but not as good as the old rains ( 10-15 seconds slower ).

The old rains are worth much more then 2 sec a lap. Put that same driver that was 2 sec ahead of Scott on the same tires and he's behind him by 10-12 sec.

No one said that they are easy to drive but they last and we are all on the same ones. Can't have it both ways.