Although I've gotten no suggestions on where to move the 90-minute ECR race, I HAVE gotten feedback on the entry fees for our Road Atlanta events. While I'd like to push that off on others ("it's not my decision"), as former Treasurer I've very much been involved in these decisions both in the past and this year.
We have monthly Board meetings that are open to the public (and a membership meeting on Feb. 20) where I'd rather engage in discussion/debate on our funding, but I WILL use this forum to give some background into why we charge what we do. This is all public information.
Although we're a non-for-profit corporation, Atlanta Region needs to take in more money than we spend in order to survive. Our annual budget hovers in the $500,000 range, and last year we spent over $25K more than we received, primarily due to the cancellation of the AMS event. Costs are going up in 2006 - insurance, fuel (which impacts everything), sanction fees and increased spending toward worker incentives - so it figures that entry fees will go up as well.
We've been accused in the past of being "IT-centric" because we offer so much track time for IT cars vs. the non-IT classes, so when looking at our entry fee structure I calculated a "cost per minute" of track time for each series that we run. Using an average lap time of 1:40 I came up with the following for 2006:
SARRC: 2 15-minute sessions + 15-lap race @ $200 = $3.64 / min
Pro-IT: 2 15-minute sessions + 20-lap race @ $250 = $3.95 / min
ECR (1 driver): 2 15-minute sessions + 90 min race @ $275 = $2.29 / min
ECR (2 driver); 2 15-minute sessions + 90 min race @ $350 = $2.92 / min
National: 45 minutes P&Q + 18-lap race @ $250 = $3.33 / min
Take out the series fees and/or prize money and the numbers favor the IT cars even more (half the Pro-IT entry goes back to the racers, for instance, which effectively cuts their cost/minute in half). Perhaps we ARE charging more for the ECR than other regions, but we need to provide racing opportunities for ALL our racers, not just the IT drivers. Although still favoring the IT community (and thus supporting those IT critics), our current entry fee structure is the best compromise we can afford right now.
As I said, I'd rather discuss this in a face-to-face conversation with a free interchange of ideas, but I DO welcome your thoughts.
Butch Kummer
Butch Kummer
Former SCCA Director of Club Racing (July 2012 - Sept 2014)
2006, 2007, 2010 SARRC GTA Champion
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