Bryan, I agree some of us have purchased tires at other places other than BP. I'm one of them. I purchased JD tires from Swiss when they first became available since BP didn't have any "JD" tires initially when Jail Doors began racing. Of course, since those days, we now have JD tires at BP (except for Swiss JD tires!).For years now I have been running many tires I have purchased over the internet from various sources. EVERY SINGLE tire I have ever run has been nothing trick and potentially and READILY available at Buena Park in a couple of days from several distributors.
No one has ever said a single word to me about this being illegal and everyone I know has purchased some tires at one time or another at places other than Buena Park.
Since we are trying to clear this up I have a couple more questions. Should Buena Park be expected to carry every single tire combination by every single manufacturer and if so in what quantities?
If they are temporarily out of stock of a certain brand on a given day, does it make that particular tire illegal that specific day?
Where does it end?
We certainly can't expect BP to stock a lot of different tires as the track will end up with a lot of inventory which will probably not move quickly and therefore a business liability.
As far as: "If they are temporarily out of stock of a certain brand on a given day, does it make that particular tire illegal that specific day?"
No. They are still legal. The raceway cannot be expected to have stock available at all times and therefore those tires which have been sold at BP (in stock now or not) will be allowed unless they have been banned.
After the Checkpoint, the D3 board needs to address the "current" tire situation to come up with a fair and reasonable tire policy (to be included in the posted D3 rules) which is good for the local raceway (BP in our case) and "fair" to all D3 racers, local or not. It's difficult if not impossible to enforce any tire policy unless anything goes. However, as we've seen in the past with USRA, anything goes or the latest, greatest product endorsement leads to an unstable environment for everyone, especially the raceway.
Hopefully, we can get a good quorem of racers to participate in the tire discussion after the Checkpoint (sometime) to make sure we address everyone's concerns. It's an impossible task to come up with a rule which "everyone" agrees with and will stand the test of time, but we need to start somewhere as far as including a tire rule in our posted D3 rules.
The D3 rules were intentionally made as simple/concise as possible. Paul Sterrett doesn't believe in having a lot of rules (i.e., NASCAR, F1, etc.). I don't either as we know some racers never read the rules and complain later when they realize they haven't been following them. It's obvious now that we do need a tire rule included in our posted D3 rules.
Keith
