That’s all Mobley is asking for, too, to be treated fairly and equally. He admits feeling at times somewhat spurned by the Southern clique that dominates ORSCA. “All I want to do is race. All I want is to do the same thing as my competitors, so whatever rules are made, whatever my competitors are doing, I just want everybody to be treated the same. That’s all we all want.”
Fenn says he, ORSCA tech director Ray Donald and former tech man Todd Roper, now with the IMSA sports-car racing series, will sit down this week to pore over the results, analyze the data and come up with remedies, if required. He suggests weight penalties may be imposed on certain cars—which could include Mobley’s, though not necessarily—in time for the next race and for the rest of the season.
“I think the main issue is that if it’s not right, if they determine it’s not within the rules, then I’d support the possibility of adding some weight to the car so he can finish the season because there’s no way he could fix that car—if in fact there is something wrong with it—during the season,” says Jack Barfield, the 2004 ORSCA 10-wide champion. “They’re (Mobley and Sexton) the points leader right now and you can’t just snatch it away after you’ve let them run the car this far. I think everybody would be satisfied with that.”
Barfield confirms he knows of at least one other car that does not meet ORSCA criteria and would have to add weight under same decision, but it’s a matter of integrity and credibility for the organization and the class. “The whole nation is looking at ORSCA to set the standard for these cars and if we don’t do something about it, it’s going to really get out of hand.”
As much as he agrees with Barfield’s assessment, Fenn emphasizes that setting rules and imposing penalties requires a careful balancing act. He realizes it’s all too easy for a sanctioning body to essentially legislate itself out of existence. “The one thing you don’t want to do is start throwing rules out there before you know where you’re at. You don’t want to with one swipe of the pen make every car you’re trying to race illegal; you can’t do that, you’ve got to have racecars. But, we have to draw a line here somewhere because if we don’t, who’s to say where we’re going to go next?”
Exactly, because a car like Mobley built not only raises the performance bar for all competitors, it escalates the already formidable cost of running a top 10-wide team to near-stratospheric levels.
“We have an obligation to the guys who have cars purposely built for the series and we’re certainly not going to allow someone to come in with an un-purpose-built car and start dominating because one thing these guys are not going to be is at a performance disadvantage—they’ll spend whatever it takes—but that’s part of the problem of the class,” Fenn concedes. “It’s simply not fair to tell our guys that because we’ve allowed something strange or off-beat that now they’re going to have to spend another $100,000 to compete with it. It’s our job to keep that in check, but the problem is, we isolate ourselves when we add rules.”
Mobley offers no apologies for building a state-of-the-art car, but makes sure to stress his is no Johnny-come-lately, spend-a-lot-of-money operation. “We’ve been at this for six or seven years and I can remember for three or four of them coming down here and doing nothing, wondering why we even made the trip,” he says. “But I think if the car didn’t run as good as it does, you wouldn’t hear one word about it; that’s my honest opinion. The car is legal. They came over, they took their measurements, they’ve got everything they needed to get and now I just want to get through this and go racing.”
Steve Kirk Jr., the defending series champion and race winner at Atlanta tends to agree. “If the car is legal, it’s legal; if it’s not, then whatever’s not right on it needs to be fixed. They just need to pull up a new GTO beside it and start pulling measurements. It’s as simple as that,” he says. “That’s what ORSCA’s tech is for—if they’ve got one—somebody’s got to stand up and say whether it’s right or wrong, either that or just shut up about it and let them race.”
