[clyde]

There are plenty of cars that are fun to run but can't win. And there are plenty of cars that can win but are not fun to run. And there are a few cars that are fun to run, but haven't been developed enough to know if they can win.

When you believe that you, as a driver, are capable of competing at the national level, you don't want to sink all the time, money and effort into a car unless you think the car is capable of winning. Without at least partial development, you can make some pretty good guesses, but you need to run it against the competition...competition that includes drivers that you know to be fast in cars that you know to be fast...and everyone has to have a good day that day.

Right now, we have the RX-8, which we know to be the car for its class next year (barring the JCW MCS being a whole lot better than anyone really thinks it can be and the power increase for the 350Z is negated by a weight increase and a revised suspension). That specific RX-8 is well developed and well sorted. While there is still room for improvement, it's not lacking for anything. There is also no consensus yet on what the fastest setup is. At Nationals this year, alignments settings were quite varied, shock settings were varied and a number of different front bar rates were used...and the fastest cars were all right with each other.

The Boxster S, OTOH, is an unknown. It might be good enough to win. Or it might not. There's no way to know for sure without spending a lot of money and putting in a lot of time and effort.

For 2006, in the RX-8, John and I will have to spend less than we did this past year (given a similar schedule) and we have a car that we know can win. To try making a run in the Boxster S, we'd have to spend a great deal more than this past year and we probably wouldn't have a good idea of whether it can win until mid-late summer. However, 2006 will probably be the last year I'll want to run my RX-8. After three years, I'll probably be ready to move on, and there are strong indications that the 2007 RX-8 will get a significant power increase which may hurt the 04-06 models a great deal. At the end of next season, I can sell the car and buy a truck. I can sell the mods/extras and put that money into the Boxster S then and we can make a run in that car. Between now and then, we can start fiddling with it and see if we can get a clearer idea of what we might be able to do with it in 2007.