Big Picture of IT - Share Your Opinions

[Bob Roth]

Say, I will give another idea for consideration. Again understand that I came from the perspective of IT being the entry brand for club racing and that without clear brand distinction between IT, Touring, and Prod, you get a muddle that dilutes all three brands. My objective is to increase car counts.

Anyway, what if we went from 5 classes to 10. The idea being that with more clases you can more accurately assemble classes around the natural car type clusters. This is how autocross is organized, do the same for IT. With more classes, the ITAC compmpetitive adjustments are smaller and a pleasent byproduct is that we spend less time arguing about whether a 5 liter mustang should be in the same class with an Integra Type R. Trophys are cheap, give them out.

Now, the one area where somebody will probably be bummed is that at the ARRC, instead of winning the 25 car ITA field they get to win the 7 car FSL field. But, who cares if the result is more drivers think they have a chance to win, and accordingly show up...... If somebody is offended by this idea, and can't stand only beating 2 to 5 cars in their class with their $15 to $20k state of the art car, SCCA has a place for them in production.

The virtue of this is it gives more people a chance to have a competitive car, it makes racing more fun because your class is inherently classed closer, and it makes it a lot easier for the ITAC to give 25 years of cars a competitive class.

Again, my goal is getting more entries and more people to build cars. If SCCA got 25% more IT cars showing up as the result of more classes, that pays for a lot of trophies. As somebody who was around when IT was created, three classes was probably right as almost all the class was 4 cyl and between 1.5 and 2.4 liter. If we look at the diversity of now 25 years of cars, a lot of classification problems would be solved, and a lot of "no chance" cars would have a place to race. Hope you give it a thought.

[JoshS]

Say, I will give another idea for consideration. Again understand that I came from the perspective of IT being the entry brand for club racing and that without clear brand distinction between IT, Touring, and Prod, you get a muddle that dilutes all three brands. My objective is to increase car counts.

Increase car counts in IT? Or increase turnouts for club races? Because all of your proposals talk about making changes to IT, and I think generally your only audience for that is existing club racers, resulting in no net change.

If you really want to increase car counts, then first, identify who the new drivers are, then build a product that will attract them. I haven't seen you try to identify where the additional people will come from. Autocrossers? NASA racers? BMWCCA racers? PCA racers? HPDE drivers? What demographic?

Then explain how your new IT classes, or an IT rule change, or whatever, will attract those drivers.

[JeffYoung]

According to Andy's numbers, car counts in IT are increasing even in a down economy.

Why would we want to spread those numbers across 10 classes instead of 5 (R,S,A,B,C)?

[seckerich]

I wouldn't even know where to start with a reply so I won't. Spec IT and we can just give participation plaques to everyone.

[Knestis]

Sorry, Bob - yuck. I'm influenced by a philosophical position on the subject but I just don't buy that more, smaller classes attracts more total entries. I felt that way when I went to my first SCCA race - a Double National at Seattle, in the summer of 1980. They were running a restricted Regional class for IT and CP cars (Conference Production, a NWRegion thing). The car count was low enough that pretty much nobody was racing anybody.

K

[RSTPerformance]

To many things going on in IT to make it a National Runoffs class however... Regions should add IT and other regional only classes to National weekends and eliminate some or all of the regional only weekends. The regional classes don't need races the same length as the National races if that is the issue or concern.

Andy is right in stressing that we have to many races and need to cut back weekends... I think he is talking about IT only, not sure. What amaizes me is that we have even more race weekends for the least popular classes in SCCA when you add in the National option! Terrible business plan IMO.

In short; Combine National and Regional weekends and make them all SCCA races and just limit what classes are eligible to be considered for Runoff eligability.

Raymond "Regional only championships still survive and car counts per weekend go up!" Blethen

[IPRESS]

Raymond,
GOOD ANSWER!

One of the reasons car counts may be on the rise in IT is a good number of SM racers are tired of the baggage that comes with being a national class. They are seeking out where SM started and it is in IT.
If a person is in need of RunOffs glory and can't find a present eligible class to compete in, they just are not trying very hard.
I bet we stay regional only (actually non RunOffs eligible) but they need our entry fees so we will get to race on the same schedule with national classes.

[Andy Bettencourt]

Like Dick points out, a total revamp of the 'requirements' for a National would have to happen for Regions like NER to combine. Too little time. If that happens, it could work.

Think about IT as a class and not SCCA as a club.

[StephenB]

FYI,

The NER National ended about 3 hrs early at NHIS with running the TeamDI Pro-IT race in the spring. granted "some" or maybe most if us all like doubles and that weekend was a single but tons of extra time to switch up the format. Maybe have a double regional for the regional cars and the current National format for the national drivers. LRP National also had a ton of extra time If unforseen accidents didn't occur and that held 2 It races that day.

Those are the only two nationals I attended this year.

Stephen

[StephenB]

Think about IT as a class and not SCCA as a club.

I think overall in the regions that I race in IT is just as healthy as ever considering the addition of both SM and SSM. In my opinion that class is our (IT community) biggest competition for attendance and growth. You can't argue that SM and SSM are great alternatives to entry level, relativly easy to maintain, and relatively inexpensive cars to race. IT and SM/SSM are realistically a less than $15K investment to run Wheel to Wheel. I can't think of many if any other sedan style classes that run for that $$ amount. (Some cars are exceptions like maybe all ITR cars )

For us to grow I think we need to encourage Double Dipping of SM cars since this pool exists and fit into our rules set. All sorts of ways to encourage double dipping that is really up to each region not the ITAC in general. However just maybe the ITAC could help! Possibly by making different weight requirements for SM legal (or SS legal) cars to run in the appropriate IT classes, and be competitive and most importantly still meet the rules of SM or SSM. From my understanding SM and SSM cars have less of a performance potential than a fully prepped IT car.

The second "pool" of applicants that I can think of is clubs like the BMW club or NASA (and probably some others that do Wheel to Wheel racing, not just time trials) I know most of these clubs "think" SCCA is carnage and crashes but if we could just get 1 or 2 in each SCCA region to visit us maybe we can change that over time! I think the ITAC could look into classifying cars that meet the requirements of the sanctioning body and assign other weights that make them more competitive and encourage them to race their already well built and prepaired racecars without modifying them. Remember they are most likely already racing at our tracks in opposite weekends, and enjoy racing at those events... they just dont have a place to race competitivly with us. I know this means enforcing additional rules that maybe we don't currently use but these are built cars racing in tracks all around us.

The Third "pool" of aplicants or potential racers has to be in HPDE and such clubs that hold these events. I know we as SCCA don't do that great and again not something the ITAC an really do that I can think if. Just somthing else to throw out their.

I Feel strogly that Improved Touring should be a stepping stone into SCCA and a way for racers to race at whatever budget they want to. IT should be used by SCCA as a way to encourage new membership into our club to help our club grow into the future. Plenty of other car clubs have started and grown all around SCCA and we need to realize all those members have the same desire most of us do... to race relativly compeitivly, get faster and better every time we go out, and to meet others that have the same interests in cars and racing that we do. Each club that has popped up has done so because we as a club missed an opportunity.

I also feel that National and Regional levels can stay and IT should stay as-is. However the elimination of National Vs. Regional weekends need to happen. We say over and over again we (IT Comunity) have two many weekends on the schedule. Almost everyother class we race at on any given weekend has twice as many as our IT comunity! Keep National structure as is with the runnoffs, classes and everything else, just add Regional classes to the schedule and have each region have their own runnoffs... AKA here in the NorthAtlantic Region re-invent and bring back the real NARRC Runnoffs. I would also argue the Fee that Regions pay towards the National Runnoffs could be added to the entry fee for those racing for National points during any of our SCCA weekends (Not SCCA National or SCCA Regional weekends since those would go away with my idea).


Stephen

[JoshS]

Regions should add IT and other regional only classes to National weekends and eliminate some or all of the regional only weekends.

Here in San Francisco Region, we have 8 regional-only weekends a year, and 1 national-only weekend. We haven't done any regional/national weekends for several years, although one regional race group was invited to the double-national weekend.

So you are saying that we should turn all of our regional weekends into national weekends? That would make people in the division, but outside the region, forced to travel to San Francisco Region a lot more (15 hours or so from the next-biggest metro area, Seattle.)

It doesn't make sense.

[StephenB]

Here in San Francisco Region, we have 8 regional-only weekends a year, and 1 national-only weekend. We haven't done any regional/national weekends for several years, although one regional race group was invited to the double-national weekend.

So you are saying that we should turn all of our regional weekends into national weekends? That would make people in the division, but outside the region, forced to travel to San Francisco Region a lot more (15 hours or so from the next-biggest metro area, Seattle.)

It doesn't make sense.

IF attendance is high and all people that qualify from the division are attending the Runnoffs and they had to travel 15Hrs then I think the problem actually lies in the size of the teratory that the division currently has. What if all people that live near San Fransico didn't want to travel 15+ hrs to other tracks in the division to qualify for the runnoffs? Why can't San Fransisco region be it's own division and encourage people to run the races and go to the National Runnoffs? Maybe then with the huge population of San Fransisco we could try to drive up membership and send SanFransisco Region members to the runnoffs. Nothing says that if the SanFransisco Region has the numbers and is 15+ hrs to other tracks that they can't submit or challenge SCCA to be it's own Division. Hear in the Northeast our Division does not range 15+ hrs away unless maybe you are traveling from 1 extreme to the other.

Stephen

[lateapex911]

One thought I'd add, and that is: Ignoring all else, I think the Runoffs NEEDS IT. Imagine a top drawer ITA or B or ITS race. Deeper fields, tighter lap times. IT would instantly have 2 of the top 5 classes I bet.

But, yea, what's good for 'the club' and the 'club racing program' (and the club needs IT) might not be good for IT.

[gran racing]

I came from the perspective of IT being the entry brand for club racing

IT is one of the best entries to racing as it offers people a broad range of competition – from a newbie, limited prepped racecar, to experienced and fast drivers, and well prepped racecars. It is a fantastic place for people to begin racing and grow.

But, who cares if the result is more drivers think they have a chance to win, and accordingly show up......

If that truly generated more interest for potential drivers and existing drivers, then it should be something to be considered. I honestly don’t think that’s the case though. When someone is getting into the racing gig, most look at car counts to determine a class where there’s plenty of entries and good racing. Adding even more classes dilutes the racing. I personally would rather race in a 20 car field than a 3 car field and believe most would feel the same way.

Again, my goal is getting more entries and more people to build cars…… If you really want to increase car counts, then first, identify who the new drivers are, then build a product that will attract them.

That’s an excellent goal and one that deserves quite a bit of additional thought. There is no quick or easy solution and this could easily be a lengthy thread in its own. Overall we have great products, Improved Touring being one of them. One of the products we need to build is our performance driving experience program. Our “ladder” system for people to get into racing sucks. We tell people it’s important to get some track time before doing Club Racing, and have to refer them to another organization then ask them to come back afterwards. Sure, there are a couple of PDXs being run but it needs to be grown. This goes right along with what was just said about us getting racers from clubs that host HPDEs. Change of format to include PDXs or a “prep” group geared to people interested in doing w2w. Membership retention – at one point we were generating about 10,000 new members but losing just as many. How to promote the club better. I don't even know how many times I've heard "I had no idea this stuff existed right in my own backyard."