2009 MARRS Format - speak up now or live with it

[mlytle]

Here is what I came up with that I think will go to mollify those who just want to "qualify" on Sunday and did not come to race.
GSG09FormatProposal-1.pdf

competely disagree withh the points system. way too complicated. there should be no points for pole or the sat race. feature races should be equal marrs races. if there is a desire to make the saturday race count for "something"...make the sat summit races a separate washington dc series...away from marrs.

[Gregg]

competely disagree withh the points system. way too complicated. there should be no points for pole or the sat race. feature races should be equal marrs races. if there is a desire to make the saturday race count for "something"...make the sat summit races a separate washington dc series...away from marrs.

I completely agree that it's complicated and would hope that it's a conversation starter for combination with other ideas. I will be more than happy to expand on my reasons for not having a separate championship at Saturday's meeting.

As when we met in October, there were a lot of people present, not a lot of ideas. Judging by the number of proposals submitted, it's looking like that might be the case once again. Hopefully it isn't.

[Charlie Broring]

I think we need to reassess some of the plans we made made last fall. We didn't come up with this format by by evaluating the deficiencies and building on last years successful program. Rather, made some wholesale changes in a successful program that please some members but alienate others.

Think abut this. With 11 races, 3 tows out of region and almost twice the number of racing laps per weekend it is the most ambitious and expensive MARRS series ever proposed. This while we are in the worst recession in over 50 years. Yes more race laps is nice but they are also more expensive then qualifying or practice on old tires. For me personally it's just too expensive to consider running the while series this year. I am forced to race less.

I think The MARRS series will lose far more racers who are displeased by this new program then it will gain in new racers attracted by this format.

Now, I don't disagree with everything in this planned program. I think 11 races can work if MARRS allows points drops for 3 races. This would help keep competitors who cannot afford to tow to 3 expensive away races.

I also think Saturday races in the second qualifying session could work if we don't compromise the other aspects of our program to do so. I think 8 run groups is a big compromise. The Miata's and Open Wheel have it pretty good but the remaking 25 classes are squeezed into 4 race groups. Consider that 2 years ago overcrowded race groups were such an important issue that we expanded to 10 groups and stopped going to VIR. Yet now we no longer are concerned about crowded groups.

And we need to make the Saturday race meaningful.

In the mid 1990's we had qualifying races for one season. We also had longer races for one season. Neither were successful and we returned to the format used through last year. We should learn from the past mistakes.

I hope we reconsider the current plans for 2009, but I'm afraid that it's going to be hard to change these ill considered plans at this late date.

Charlie Broring

[evanwebb]

Take ITS out of the Big Bore group and put it somewhere else. ITR is more or less as fast as AS so that makes some sense, but there are a bunch of ITS cars running slower than 1:30 and they shouldn't be in with Big Bore.