Proposed 2009 MARRS

[Charlie Broring]

It may be of interest to those who race in the WDC Region MARRS series that the Competition Committee voted at a recent meeting to adopt a 8 race group format for next year. This is a big change in direction from our previous efforts at providing uncrowded high quality track time with a 10 group schedule. It was argued that this change will provide "more track time", however no definitive plan for such was offered.

As it now stands the two small open wheel classes, SM, and SSM will be unchanged will be unchanged next year, but the remaining 24 classes will be compressed into 4 race groups.

I hope that this big change in the MARRS program doesn't adversely affect participation in the series next year.

Charlie Broring

[JamesB]

Sadly it comes as no suprise after seeing the 2008 participation numbers turn out lower then the previous year. So we can only wait and see what 2009 brings us in the form of an extra lap or 2 maybe for the race, and a few minutes for qualifing.

If we have the same participation levels as this past year I don't think it will effect us other then the two wings groups numbers dropping back to their nearly removed numbers of 2006. But, if numbers start to pick back up, then we will see a lot of wait listed groups leading to yet higher entry fees since they did not keep the format that allowed more cars to attend in place thus shooting the series in the foot...

[spnkzss]

From what I saw, I am rather excited about next years schedule.

[erlrich]

Just to give a little better perspective on this, here are the proposed '09 groupings for the MARRS races, with the average number of entries (based on '08 actuals) in parenthesis (the MR2 move to ITB is taken into account):

• FV / F500 (19)
• Big Wings & Things (18)
• SM (35)
• SSM (41)
• Big Bore / ITS / ITR (34)
• Small Bore / SRF (38)
• ITA / SpecRX7 / T3 (35)
• IT7 / ITB / ITC / SSB / SSC (35)

The way it was explained to us, the additional track time comes in the form of an extra race each weekend; on Saturday we will have a morning session (either practice or qualifying, not sure) and then a 10-lap qualifying race in the afternoon. The Sunday feature race would then be 18-20 laps. More time racing, less time riding.

We were also told that each committee member was asked to make up an '09 proposal for the race groups/schedule, but that very few bothered to prepare anything.

I don't think all of the groupings are perfect, but then when are they? I'm sure ITR & ITS drivers are going to be pissed at having to run in big bore; as well ITB drivers who will no longer be the fast class in their group. I do like the idea of of 8 run groups and more racing time however, and I would be surprised if any entries will be lost because these groupings. I think we will loose more entries due to the current economic situation than anything else.

[JamesB]

Eh, I am against changing the format personally. The reason MARRS is popular was because of its format. And after racing in the SARRC format and the NARRC format, I agree that the 2 qual on saturday and a race on Sunday is the way to go and will keep MARRS popular. To me the Saturday race is useless and just gives someone yet another start in the weekend to do damage to your car and leave out SOL come the race that matters on Sunday.

I am not against less groups, just I dont understand why IT7, basically an ITA car with its own class for what 2-3 cars even needs to exist after IT was realigned weight wise. I say put them back in ITA as the front runners are running comparible lap times as the upper pack of ITA. But less groups based on lower numbers does mean more time, but more time means more expense per driver. So expect entry fees to go up with this new configuration.

[Charlie Broring]

Greg brought 4 proposed race groupings. One with 8 groups, Three with 9 groups. Only one schedule, the 8 group schedule was discussed at length. The Miata guys loved it as it is in line with their objectives and argued strongly for this plan. They get a bigger piece or the smaller pie. And of course it suits ITA. A vote was taken for the 8 group schedule only. Almost no consideration was given to other schedules.

One year after we voted not to return to VIR due to the crowded race groupings with too many classes mixed together, we vote in crowded in crowded groupings of too many classes. In my mind this is a 180 degree reversal in our priorities.

We are sacrificing quality for a couple more race laps. Saturday racing can easily take place with a 9 group schedule and didn't in itself justify this 8. group schedule.

The cars that got screwed the most are the Prod cars. The SRF/Prod mix was not well received last year but will continue. ITS/ITR also received a very undesirable place to race. The SRX7/IT7 was quite content with what they had, shame they were broken up. And the quality of my race (ITb) will certainly suffer. The little open wheel groups got a bye.

I run a small business. The first rule for success is don't piss off your customers. In this schedule, Miata's and ITA were winners, but there were too many losers. Was this a good move when our racing is also facing the stress of the slow economy?

[jjjanos]

It may be of interest to those who race in the WDC Region MARRS series that the Competition Committee voted at a recent meeting to adopt a 8 race group format for next year. This is a big change in direction from our previous efforts at providing uncrowded high quality track time with a 10 group schedule. It was argued that this change will provide "more track time", however no definitive plan for such was offered.

- Discussions of the weekend format are done at the January meeting. If what the stewards will allow us doesn't justify the 8-group format, then we can change it again.
- The drivers seemed to speak loudly that they wanted more track time/more racing.

As it now stands the two small open wheel classes, SM, and SSM will be unchanged next year, but the remaining 24 classes will be compressed into 4 race groups.

Here are the car counts - based on 2008 averages and adjusting for known movements of cars between classes (MR2). This is if we get the same car counts in 2009 and we aren't going to get that.

SSM: 41
Prod/SRF: 38
I7-B-C-/SS:36
SM: 35
ITA/S7/T3: 35
Big Bore: 34
SmOW: 19
Wing/Thing: 18

The 2 Miata groups are a bit over one-third of the closed-wheel cars (30% of the total) and get 25%. The other 24 classes are a little less than two-thirds of the closed-wheel cars (56% of the total) and get 50% of the track time. OW represents 14% of the total and receives 25%.

I agree. From a numbers stand-point, the two OW groups should be combined. I will second any motion made to combine them into a single group. Let me setup my video camera first though.

So we can only wait and see what 2009 brings us in the form of an extra lap or 2 maybe for the race, and a few minutes for qualifing.

We easily could fit 20-minute qualifying in the morning with 10-lap races in the afternoon on Saturday.

But, if numbers start to pick back up, then we will see a lot of wait listed groups leading to yet higher entry fees since they did not keep the format that allowed more cars to attend in place thus shooting the series in the foot...

If we have to wait list cars, the format can be changed. We aren't going to see an increase in cars next year. I wouldn't be surprised by 20 to 30% declines based on the economy.

Eh, I am against changing the format personally. The reason MARRS is popular was because of its format......To me the Saturday race is useless and just gives someone yet another start in the weekend to do damage to your car and leave out SOL come the race that matters on Sunday.

Except at the open competition meeting, the consensus was for more racing/less qualifying. On a dry track, afternoon qualifying was just circling the track. Too hot, humid and greasy to get a good lap.

I am not against less groups, just I dont understand why IT7, basically an ITA car with its own class for what 2-3 cars even needs to exist after IT was realigned weight wise.

IT7 averaged 7 cars/race last year making 9th popular among the 47 classes that can compete on a weekend. It still exists because it's more popular than 38 other classes and because the Region has no process for delisting a region-specific class once it is listed.

We all get 25% more track time. If we lose as many as 25% of our entries because of the economy, so unless the BoD is feeling charitable, expect entry fees to increase proportionally. If that's all that happens, then you are paying less per minute of track time because you got 25% more of it but entry fees were going to increase by that 25% anyway. Unless we lose another 25% because of the format, your cost per minute of track time is still lower. (Not saying the BoD is going to raise entry fees, but we've got a certain sized nut to cover each weekend and if the economy takes out cars, the nut doesn't get smaller.)

Greg brought 4 proposed race groupings. One with 8 groups, Three with 9 groups. Only one schedule, the 8 group schedule was discussed at length. The Miata guys loved it as it is in line with their objectives and argued strongly for this plan. They get a bigger piece or the smaller pie. And of course it suits ITA. A vote was taken for the 8 group schedule only. Almost no consideration was given to other schedules.

Losing ONE group gets us about 40-45 minutes of track time. With 9 groups, that works out to an additional 5 minutes/group. Just because some of us didn't discuss a 9-group format doesn't mean we didn't consider it.

One year after we voted not to return to VIR due to the crowded race groupings with too many classes mixed together, we vote in crowded in crowded groupings of too many classes. In my mind this is a 180 degree reversal in our priorities.

Raising VIR would be more valid if you had not been among the voices demanding a return to VIR without ANY change in their format. 25 cars per mile of paving is OK if its at the end of a 5 hour tow but 17-19 cars at most is crap if its at home? AND unlike VIR where they'll start us all in one big thundering herd, we've been promised split starts/grids?

The cars that got screwed the most are the Prod cars. The SRF/Prod mix was not well received last year but will continue.

And yet, if I recall correctly, both their reps voted in favor of the new groupings.

I run a small business. The first rule for success is don't piss off your customers. In this schedule, Miata's and ITA were winners, but there were too many losers. Was this a good move when our racing is also facing the stress of the slow economy?

Well, based on the comments I received from ITC, count them as winners too.

As for the quality of the ITB race declining... We were promised split grids/starts in the sups without Steward discretion. If that's not to be the case, we can address the 8 groups in January. IT7 in the mix is a non-starter. These cars tend to run as fast, if not faster than ITB. With a split grid, they won't be part of the mix.

[erlrich]

One year after we voted not to return to VIR due to the crowded race groupings with too many classes mixed together, we vote in crowded in crowded groupings of too many classes. In my mind this is a 180 degree reversal in our priorities.

Coming from one of the three race groups that averaged 35+ cars last year, I don't really see how the proposed groups (all but SSM are < 40 cars) could possibly be considered overcrowded. As far as the quality of the racing, yes you can argue that but that was one of the major complaints of the ITA drivers last year.

Saturday racing can easily take place with a 9 group schedule and didn't in itself justify this 8. group schedule.

I won't argue that point; I don't know why the same schedule couldn't be run with 9 groups, but I was under the impression some of the race specialties thought that might be too much?

ITS/ITR also received a very undesirable place to race. The SRX7/IT7 was quite content with what they had, shame they were broken up. And the quality of my race (ITb) will certainly suffer. The little open wheel groups got a bye.

I think ITR/ITS probably got the worst of the whole deal IMO - maybe that could be taken care of with 9 groups? What I do know, is that ITS & ITA did not play well together last year. I personally had no issue with ITR running in our group; I think the problems others had with ITR were with one specific driver, and not the group in general.

I run a small business. The first rule for success is don't piss off your customers. In this schedule, Miata's and ITA were winners, but there were too many losers. Was this a good move when our racing is also facing the stress of the slow economy?

But by that philosophy wouldn't you want to please the majority of your customers? By the numbers, 3 classes (out of 41 that ran in the MARRS series) made up almost 40% of the entries last year. Those were SSM, SM, and ITA. Add in #4 (SRX7) and #5 (FV) and you're well over 50% of the entries. With the exception of maybe SRX7 I don't see where any of those would have a complaint with the new schedule. Of course, it could be that ITA was the only class that had anything to bitch about last year, so maybe this is all about us.

[jjjanos]

I won't argue that point; I don't know why the same schedule couldn't be run with 9 groups, but I was under the impression some of the race specialties thought that might be too much?

The chiefs were OK with anything that didn't make the day longer.

9 run groups with 15 minute sessions + 8 minutes "down" time = about 3.5 hours qualifying.

8 lap race = 22 minutes (including pace/cool) + 8 min down = 30minutes or 4.5 hours
Total = 8 hours and that's with a conservative time estimate on down time because we probably leave an entire run group worth of time sitting on the table.

Start: 8:15
+ 8 hours track
+ 1 hour lunch which is what the volunteers need.
= 5:15 conservative ending time.
Lost a run group, we pick up 15+8 + 22+8 or almost one hour in track time that can be tossed among the rest of the run groups.

There are two groups that aren't pulling their weight in terms of the rest of the run groups. They won't combine with anyone else and the NEDIV executive steward won't allow us to combine them. Unless and until we are willing to throw open-wheel out of the life boat, we've got to live with the idea of 37 cars spread across 2 run groups.

It was clear to me that split-starts wouldn't work for A-S-R, so they had to be divorced.

Everyone put together a 9 group weekend splitting A and S, both open-wheel groups and two Miata groups. Here are the numbers (or there about) we worked with:

SM35SSM41F5002FST0FV18CF4CSR0DSR1FA1FB0FC4FE2FF2FM0FS2S21AS4ASR0BP0GT14GT22GT30GTA4ITE3SPO2ST0T10T20DP1EP4FP4GP0GTL1GTP6HP4SPU3SRF15IT77SRX717SSB2SSC3T30ITA18ITR4ITS11ITB21ITC4