Enduro length question?

[mtownneon]

So the longer the better but really anything under 3 hours isn't worth calling it an endurance race.

I ask because now that I'm chairing the Club Race program in the Indy Region I'm brainstorming with the rest of our Club Race board to come up new/better ideas for races. We had been offering a one hour "enduro" the last few seasons and participation in them has run off a cliff. I've also noticed other regions offering the same thing have been seeing similar results. My initial thought has been a 3 hour enduro as we could run it as part of a regional weekend program.

Any thoughts?

[dickita15]

Well if you prospective is that of a race organizer Dave, you have to ask yourself who you are trying to attract. A one to 3 hour can entice sprint racers to try something different. A guy can iron man a race that length or can do it with one buddy and they can use a pick up crew without a lot of prep.
With the proliferation of Miati that are easy on parts it really does not take much work to run a short endure.
There is a much smaller pool of hard core guys who like the long races but if you have the right track and the right date they will travel to participate.
We run a 3 hour at NHMS. We went to 4 hour and then to 6 but it hurt entries. NH is not a track well suited to enduros. Tough on brakes and not a good rhythm so we could not seem to make a longer race work.

[MMiskoe]

I'm brainstorming with the rest of our Club Race board to come up new/better ideas for races

What ever you do, don't have mandatory pit stops. There is/was a 4+/- hour race at WGI that I used think would be fun, but didn't go simply because they required 2 stops, 5 minutes each. That's not an enduro, that's a couple of sprints shared by a couple of drivers. If I understand it correctly them roundy round guys from down south on TV every sunday often do mandatory stops, you wanna be associated w/ them?

Enduro's have pit stops that require strategy (ie, long enough to force every car into the pits at least once and force the re-fuel/driver change to have some pre-race planning). Anything else is a sprint race w/ some interruptions.