Majors/Regionals in Northern Conference

[Dayle Frame]

Nationwide Majors attendance is way up (30%). RAtl = +45%, Pueblo = +52%, Sebring = +12% And, of course, its through the roof out west (avg of +58%). But how about locally? The June Sprints has 301 signed up now.....358 hit the track last year (-16%). So NorCon has had one higher than last year (BHF), one the same as last year (MidO) and one lower than last year (JS). Predicting what G'Man, CatNat and Grattan will do is mere speculation.

GLDiv and CenDiv participation is off. And its the regions that are hurting if drivers don't show up. It costs regions a lot to put on a race and we need drivers to show up for these events to pay the bills. The vast majority of regions do not have cash reserves to keep taking losses. We exist year to year and have to very scrupulous with our resources. We price our events to make enough money for the next season. No more.

We all know that a bunch of us aren't going to the left coast for the Runoffs. But you can still race, have fun, compete against your buddies for division and conference championships, etc. Please consider coming out to the remaining three events at GingerMan, Road America and Grattan. If you can't make it to a Major, come on out to a regional or two. These races are in even more trouble. Poor car counts for years have made regional races a nearly endangered specie. Please help the regions that have allowed you to race over the years.

Regionals are where the next generation of Majors drivers will come from.....help them out by attending regionals with/for them. There were drivers in the past that paid it forward and allowed us to start our racing careers. Now its our turn.

Dayle
(off my soap box now)

 

[peterzekert]

To ALL Regional Executives; Race Chairs; Registrars and anyone who sees the impact of national level BoD decisions on the local regional level - PLEASE, please, please write the Board of Directors with your observations. The BoD needs to hear from your Regions.

Email for the entire Board of Directors is BoD "at" SCCA "dot" com.

Thank you,
Peter Zekert

 

[VWRalf]

Peter, what exactly do they need to hear from us to make changes? Are they not being informed of cancelled events?
I think Gateway barely made budget for their weekend. Iowa got cancelled last weekend due to only 30 racers. MAM only has 7 signed up so far and Memphis only has 2 PDX drivers. Granted there is still plenty of time before MAM and Memphis but.........

 

[peterzekert]

Ralf,
I have a slight advantage being a Regional Executive of a racing Region (St. Louis) and because I have ties to REs in other areas. Regional Execs, Executive Stewards and Race Chairs get together and talk shop, but I certainly do not know what is going on all across the US. If I found out that Large and Jumbo racing regions in heavily populated divisions were also having entry problems, I would certainly be a little surprised. [I'm looking for patterns.]

Several REs and Race Chairs have been telling me about their individual Region's issues. I've asked them to copy the entire Board with the same information.

Some of the directors are not as connected to local Regions as you and I are, and therefore, they need to hear from the people running the local racing Regions. I'd like you to share your experiences with all of the Directors.

Thanks, Peter

 

[Scott Sanda]

Dayle,

I'll give you my opinion, and some rough data.

Data first: Sprints usually has about 12% of our total entries from West of the Mississippi. This year, it is effectively 1%. Kinda expected that. Also, all the closed wheel classes are at last years numbers +/- a bit. Open wheel, however, is down massively. FM and FA are off by 11 ad 12 cars, respectively. There has always been a big contingent of SRF's from the west. This year, crickets. (again, kinda to be expected).

Opinion: The various Pro series are pulling from the club side very heavily. The rules change in P1/P2 is dropping car count. T2 rules changes are hurting T2, at least locally.

People with more money from up here and out east went to Sebring and Atlanta, pumping them up. Now that they are either qualified or decidedly not going to RO, they are doing other things.

The sheer price of the majors is doing the rest. $500+ for less track time than a traditional double national (and less race time than a double regional) is making the drivers with less money do combinations of the following:

1. Sit out
2. Cut out total number of races
3. Avoid majors
4. Run with some other sanction.

Now, this all may get better next year, and will be even better in 2017, but it is a fact this year.

I'll be honest, for various reasons I'm thinking seriously about doing Trans Am next year, and just a couple of local divisionals/regionals. So, the Pro thing may even knock me out of a heavy club season.

 

[Joe Harlan]

So while we are asking, Why the extra costs associated with the majors programs? on average it seams like 150 to 200 bucks? What is that paying for?

 

[James Rogerson]

Peter,
Two weeks out from our last Houston Region race we had 32 entries. Luckily we got a huge group of people to enter late in the process. BUT we made our nut on Time Trials and DE entries. They were double what we have been getting. Our "profit" was right at $2,000.00. We can't support our Jumbo region on a margin that small. Half my board wants to abandon club race because everything we do is countered by the Board of Directors and the National Staff. Next year we are thinking about abandoning either the Majors program or divisional racing as they are counter productive to one another.

James Rogerson
Houston Region RE

ps
As for my budget, I spent last week at Indianapolis running the SVRA Vintage Invitational. As a plus I was invited to run the Pro/Am in my Mustang with Rocky Moran as my co-driver. Same price as a majors event.