Quote Originally Posted by Tumbleweed
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D. Violations of technical and safety requirements judged by MRA Officials to gain a performance advantage will result in the rider forfeiting points and monies earned in that class for that day, and all points earned previously that year in that same class. Violations judged to not result in a performance advantage will result in fines and/or suspension.
Now I understand that if you read both of these penalties they sort of contradict each other. But the bottom line is the 3 riders who were found to be cheating all had the same change to their bikes from what I have heard. This is a change that has been proven to give extra horsepower.
I think you're talking about the air tube issue, no? If so, there is another relevant part of the rulebook.. namely 2.2.2.C.10.d (sheesh..)
d. Should the stock fairing include air-ducting tubes, those tubes may
be removed or replaced with aftermarket air duct tubes provided
they retain the stock internal area and overall shape.
Keep in mind, I don't have a dog in this fight - I'm just trying to add some clarity to the discussion as I know it.

The crux of the issue is around the phrase ... "to gain a performance advantage" - which speaks of the intent of using them. If, as CWeed says, it's clearly an HP gain (like bored throttle bodies would be), then absolutely they should be disqualified.

So the answer I got from people also not affected by this issue was that this is a maintenance & bodywork fit change and has questionable/unprovable effects on power output, possibly even negative effects in some conditions.

Since there aren't any dynos that anyone knew of where ram air effects (via different tubes) can be measured, nobody can tell if these tubes do anything to performance.

Although I wasn't in the loop for an "official" annoucement - I'm assuming it was decided that they did not result in a performance advantage and so fines were levied. I'm sure Ray-Ray or Glenn will correct me if I'm wrong.

Cheating will kill a club as will appearances of favoritism. This is a tough call and I personally know everyone involved with it has/is taking it very seriously. I hope most people will support the officials' decision and those who disagree with it will make suggestions on what we can do in the future to make things like this less of a problem.