Thunder Car News

I wanted to clarify some issues that seem to be out there in the rumour mill. The rumour is the changes we are making will make some current Thunder Cars obsolete. Well, in fact the very opposite is true. The changes we are making will make our older Thunder Cars more competitive with the new class of Thunder Car.

There seems to be a misconception about the new rule allowing Metric tube Chassis cars in the class. There is no competitive advantage with this new rule change. Both cars, original chassis cars and tube chassis cars, have the same measurements and both weigh about the same. The only advantage with a tube chassis car will come when it is time to repair the frame. This rule was made as moving forward the GM original chassis will in fact cost you more to make it race ready, and will be harder to get. By allowing the metric tube chassis car allows our prospective Thunder Car drivers to purchase a wider array of cars available on the market today. This ultimately will reduce the cost of getting involved with the Thunder car class.

We have made changes to the built motor option to make the motors closer to the horsepower and torque output of the 602 crate. The changes from a cost perspective are small to update the built motor to compete fairly with the crate motor option. If you cannot afford a new crate motor, then you can make some minor changes to your built motor and be able to compete with them. This will again bring the cost down to compete in the class.

The weight for all cars will be increased to a minimum of  3200 lbs, with penalties for performance upgrades. This means that our top runners from last year will have to add on average over 150lbs from last year. This will bring up the competitiveness of the heavier cars we had out last year.

The rules have been rewritten and are going through a final reading before being released. We should have those by the end of the week.

These changes were made to make our Thunder class more competitive for all drivers, reducing the cost for someone to get a Thunder Car, and to make the racing more enjoyable for our drivers and fans alike.

Please feel free to give me a call if you have any questions on the new rules.

Todd Gow