Saw the piece in Nationals Results Book on the GP protest. Anyone care to elaborate on what happened and what the end result was?

The competitors ( the GP winner & 5th place finisher ) claimed and declared that they were running on Hoosier Tires at all four corners of their vehicle. It was discovered later on that the two front tires were in actuality, Goodyear race tires "disguised" as Hoosier race tires. This was deception accomplished by placing "Hoosier Lettering" on the sidewalls of the Goodyear race tires. The vehicle also had Hoosier contingency vinyl graphic letters on it.
This action was later determined to be an act of "Unsportsmanlike Conduct".
My understanding is that they were given a reprimand - don't know whether if it was a written or verbal one that was handed down.
The final results are as stands.
I don't know know if the final decision ( that was handed out by the protest committee or whoever handled the protest ) taken was fair or not.
I have no opinion either way even though I was a GP competitor at this event.
I will say that regardless of this tire brand deception that was undertaken by this duo, doesn't take away the fact that they both drove extremely well to secure the GP Championship and to take the 5th place position. It
is unfortunate that it occurred under this strange and unusual circumstance.
I will finish by saying that I don't believe that there was any malicious intent to cheat or to hurt anyone by either one of these competitors by what they had done, but it is rather odd.
Maybe one of them will read and respond to this thread. Hopefully, they will try to explain why they did what they did and what they had hoped to accomplish.

Free tires?

Yeah, they could have been playing a joke. We have a Hoosier/Goodyear/Avon war going on in DM/EM and I have made my share of jokes about it. Glad I never got protested. :)

Not that it is any of my business, or that we will ever know the whole story, but I wonder how this escalated to a Unportsmanlike Conduct protest in the first place? There is no SCCA rule against running one brand of front tire and one back and in P&M there is no requirement for a tire to even be bulk manufactured. You could make your own and run them. It would seem the "normal" procedure would have just been for impound to note that the vehicle did not have Hoosiers/GY on all 4 corners and relay this info to Hoosier/GY so they didn't pay...so as they say, there must be more to the story.

As a vendor who posts contingency, if there was an attempt to defraud, I would be very upset. I would certainly ban them from contingency eligibility for a long time, possibly forever. But even that would be outside the SCCA and Protest Procedures.

DaveW

The involved parties are notorious for jocularity...so there's a good chance it's all just a joke. Hopefully, they did not sign up for Hoosier contingency for this event. --Andy

Aw man, I actually did the grid walk for impound the 2nd day for this heat. I'm pretty sure I didn't pick up on it. It was a busy heat with lots of 2-driver cars. No excuses though. I missed it, and I shouldn't have.

I wouldn't blame you for not seeing it....why would you look any closer than seeing "Hoosier" painted on the sidewalls? The fact that you were the grid worker, and you were not told by the competitors makes me thing it's not a joke...you would declare this to the grid workers if it was a joke simply for the obvious reason of not wanting to appear as though you are trying to cheat some contingency money. I know I would be worried about that...

From what I was told, they did not.

However, I have seen plenty of folks "disguise" their parts in the past (sanding springrate nomenclature off of springs is one that comes to mind). To me, this isn't any different.

tkm wrote:

However, I have seen plenty of folks "disguise" their parts in the past (sanding springrate nomenclature off of springs is one that comes to mind). To me, this isn't any different.

Why is that a problem?

If I spend a day renting a skid pad to dial in my set up. Or if my sway bar is painted an obnoxious color from the vendor and I want to paint it black.

How is this required to be public knowledge?

I think we sum it up well in the results booklet. If you missed it here it is:

The protest committee finds that misrepresenting a sponsor's product by any means
including altering the trademark is prejudicial to the interests of the SCCA. The protest
committee has issued the following reprimand.

Misrepresenting a sponsor's product for any reason, including altering a sponsor's
trademark for the purpose of competitive deception is not consistent with the Core
values, specifically, creating an overall positive effect. The committee would stress to
all competitors how important and valuable the contingency program is to the sport and
while choosing to participate in the program is optional we must always respect the
intellectual property of our sponsors. We must also recognize that the goal of
sponsorship is generally to promote sales, the misrepresentation of a sponsor's
product may be detrimental to that goal, and that the sponsor's integrity should not
be affected by the actions of a competitor.

I see no problem disguising spring rates, XX part manufacturer, or waiting until pulling into grid to "reveal" your tire choice/contingency sponsors.

Absent some extenuating circumstances we're not privvy to and presented on appeal - defrauding the SCCAs corporate sponsors (ie - claiming contingency from a manufacturer whose equipment was NOT on the car) has larger implications for those sponsors continuing support of the program and impacts a larger audience than just that event's attendees - I personally, would have liked to see some recognition of the (generally) unsportsmanlike conduct that is false marking.

I think that this punishment amounts to a scowl (not even a slap on the wrist) in response to transgression that is acknowledged as counter to the core values. In my opinion, at least a one year suspension including the event this was found for the parties ability to claim any contingency from any SOLO affiliated program would be a warning to dissuade others and a fair punishment. (ie, in 2013 the parties in this case would be eligible).

There was no evidence of any intent to claim contingency, if that helps in understanding where the handling of this protest landed.

Full disclosure... I run in GP and I know these guys.

To me it's a matter of intent to defraud or not. If they were signed up for the Hoosier contingency and were attempting to "cheat" the program... That's really not cool and I'd want to see DQ and exclusion from future contingency at a minimum.

If there was no attempt to defraud, and they were just attempting to hide what tires they were using from the competition or were just playing around... No harm, no foul.

I do not know for sure which of these is the case, but I've heard from multiple sources that they weren't signed up for the Hoosier contingency and left the "tires" section blank on their entry. If thats the case... Who cares.

Maybe I can add some info to why you should care about the situation. First, I've known Mike and Fred for a long time and considered them "friendly adversaries" as we've competed against each other on and off through the years.

On Thurs. in impound, when I went down to talk to them after competition, the tires were off, in the hatch of the car, covered up. Again, since I considered these guys friends, I didn't question it.

On Fri. when I went down to congradulate them, I saw the tires for the first time. It took me a while to figure out what I was looking at, and when I questioned Fred, he looked me right in the eyes, and told me the tires were Hoosiers.

The quality of the work, removing the Goodyear and the making of a stencil, proves premeditation and quite a bit of planning. The tire removal and flatout lying shows intent to deceive. Lastly, I know Mike called and appologised to Hoosier which shows remorse. I won't speculate why they did it, only they know. But this was not a joke.

Allen

As a contingency sponsor, it looks like there almost had to be intent to defraud, which ticks me off but doesn't surprise me (general statement, no experience with this car/person)

But, there is no logical reason for any of this to have happened, which tells me that there is more to the story somewhere that we don't know and probably never will.

If it was intentional, the penalty is laughable, but the rule book doesn't give a large range of options between hand slap and expulsion.

Davew

wow. thanks for your experience, Allen. After reading through the first part of the thread I was lead to believe that this may have just been a joke, but it sounds like it wasn't. I just can't believe that a competitor of this sport could do that. Without hearing their side of the story, it does sound like an attempt to win free Hoosiers but the second they realized someone was on to them it is claimed that they never registered for Hoosier contingency. Hoosier is the easiest company to maintain contingency, they are extremely reasonable and easy to work with. This is one of the many reasons why I love the company and the representatives at Hoosier. Personally, I would much rather win a championship on a faster tire rather than win 4 tires. Goodyear needs the support in order to provide a contingency program. This experience just robbed from that support.

Dan

They don't need to apologize to Hoosier (well, yeah they do) but perhaps more to Goodyear. They won the class, and did not get recognition/credit for it.

When working impound for a prepared class at nationals in '10 I was told by some competitors they had a prior arrangement with Hoosier for contingency despite only running Hoosiers on one end of the car. The painted tire company name on the non-Hoosier tires had been removed, but no other attempt had been made to disguise the brand of tire, it was still visibly embossed on the sidewall. I marked them down on the impound sheet as running mixed brands, they show in results as N/A for tire brand.

Those "Prepared" competitors in '10 that told you that they had an a prior arrangement with Hoosier for partial contingency were not telling you the truth. I have dealing with Jeff Speer from Hoosier for years, and we discussed that topic and neither them nor GY would ever agree to such an arrangement.
My feeling is that if the area for tire listing is "N/A" is a sneeky way to try and gain sponsorship contingency payouts from a manufacturer as long as the grid impound workers didn't CATCH & NOTE on their contingency sheets the disparity in the tires that were actually found on the vehicle.

It may have been a local Hoosier distributor, I don't recall the the details. That's why I wrote the discrepancy down on the sheet...