Getting Rid of Regional/Majors Distinction?

[zchris]

I think a lot of the IT guys want the contingency monies they are not eligible for. What I believe they do not realize is that would mostly go away as the companies making those payouts would not be able to afford the huge number of regional events that take place. And it would further dilute the lesser suscribed classes. Effectively killing off most Prod, GT and Formula car classes. Can you guys now see what would be the start of the clubs death spiral. Haven't you IT guys done this club enough damage by eliminating the cheap entry point known as IT with massive rules creep. Flame away.

[Knestis]

I think a lot of the IT guys want the contingency monies they are not eligible for. What I believe they do not realize is that would mostly go away as the companies making those payouts would not be able to afford the huge number of regional events that take place. And it would further dilute the lesser suscribed classes. Effectively killing off most Prod, GT and Formula car classes. Can you guys now see what would be the start of the clubs death spiral. Haven't you IT guys done this club enough damage by eliminating the cheap entry point known as IT with massive rules creep. Flame away.

No flaming. It's just a silly argument, in terms of both the cause-effect proposition (or leaps, I should say) for which there's exactly no evidence, and your projection of an intention on some folks that so far I as can recall, I've never heard voiced. To the latter point, I pretty consistently didn't get those whoopity-do contingency awards running Majors because of participation numbers low enough to prevent them from kicking in.

You also completely don't really understand the dynamic of the "cheap entry point" and "rules creep" in IT. Budgets went up ONLY because people were willing to spend more to be competitive. Rules creep had some TINY impact on that, and new allowances NEVER forced anyone to spend more money than they would have otherwise been likely to spend. A newb can absolutely still use IT as an "entry point" for a very, VERY modest amount of money. He can't WIN, maybe, but we have no obligation to give everyone a first place trophy.

I do like the fear mongering strategy of invoking the inevitable outcome of a change KILLING OFF entire categories, though. That's some good web argument hyperbole right there.

K

[TomL]

Kirk, I'll plead guilty to looking at this from a personal perspective. I agree that SCCA needs to think strategically, but part of thinking strategically is providing racing programs that are attractive to members - which is the agglomeration of a bunch of personal perspectives. If you don't "stroke the egos" of the Majors racers who like the program, and tell them just run "races", maybe they will. Or maybe they'll just leave. Market forces might generate an informal replacement of high demand races, but I have my doubts. If the Majors racers like the program, why take it away from them? Again, who actually benefits by doing so? I see it as a negative for the Majors racers, and don't see what good it would do the current regional racers. What is that "sound theory with the potential to be more healthy in the long run"?

I don't see why we need to push everyone into the big pond. Almost all amateur sporting organizations have multiple levels of competition. The NCAA doesn't tell North Dakota State or Wisconsin-Whitewater to play the Alabamas of the world. They have their own championships for the lower level teams to fight for. Why should SCCA be any different?
Not everyone has the skill, commitment and ,yes, money to compete at the National/Majors level. Your "It's called competition. Get some." comment is far more condescending to regional racers than anything I've seen from the PTB in SCCA.

And if you think that lots of racers will be running for a long time with SCCA if they are put in a position where they have essentially no chance of being competitive, I think you are wrong. The closest example I can think of is what occurred in drag racing several decades ago. As I remember it, stock class drag racing was seriously ill because many classes had one or two racers who had developed their killer cars that no one else could match without the expenditure of a lot of time, effort and money. Many racers just gave up trying. That was the genesis of bracket racing. A few road racing organizations have tried it, but I doubt that's really the way we want to go.

I agree that you can't limit what racers are willing to spend, but I think it's silly to say that the club shouldn't factor racer's spending into designing their programs. As I've said many times before on this subject, you can't limit what racers can spend, but you can certainly limit how much benefit they get from that spending. The two most popular classes in SCCA are SM and SRF, and they are also probably the classes where the speed differential from fastest to slowest car in class is the least. The two are related. Anything that can be done to lessen the benefit of spending money will make racing more appealing. And so is reducing the amount of money you need to spend to run and run competitively. The biggest obstacle that SCCA has to expanding the pool of racers is that: a) it costs so much to run at all, and b) it costs a whole lot more to run competitively. Providing a "small pond" helps address b).

I'm with you that class consolidation would be beneficial, although I also agree that inertia and history will make it difficult. But I really don't see why there couldn't be a goodly number of classes combined that have the same type or cars (or even the same cars, i.e., Miatas) and run similar lap times. For example, FC, FE and FM all run similar lap times and with some judicious weight adjustments could easily run competitively with each other. Same for EP, STU and maybe GT3, or for STL, GTL and FP. I know everyone wants to run their current car unchanged, but if the only change that is required is to add 50-100 pounds to the faster class, I don't think that should be an insurmountable obstacle. As long as the class rules are otherwise unchanged, what's the problem? However, if the PTB want to start changing the class rules to make them the same for the combined classes, I don't see that ever flying.

[disquek]

As a majors participant, I thought I'd offer my perspective.

Some back ground. I ran NESCCA regional SM for many years going back well before SM went "national". I switched to "National" GTL in 2008 because I got tired of the contact in SM and also wanted the opportunity to engineer and stay legal.

Why do I run Majors?

I like the idea of a touring series. I don't want to race the same track every weekend, or really more than once a season. I enjoy the travel and I keep my travel costs minimal (open trailer, sleep in the pickup truck).

I also like the run group I run in. The cars are all fairly similar and for the most part we have a like minded group that travels with the series that gives you the chance to know who you can trust wheel-2-wheel.

The contingencies are a big help. And as it's been mentioned before, I think that selling vendors on a larger schedule would be impossible.

Realistically, the two sides (regional vs majors) run different classes with some overlap (SM and SRF). The other classes, although they can race in the other series, generally don't. IMHO, this is the primary difference between the two side. Which classes are heavily subscribed.

If you were to merge them (and doing so would certainly result in fewer overall entries), you'd have seriously mixed up run groups with little opportunity to race with folks in your own class.

"Integrating" or "Merging" regional and national is impossible. All races become regional at that point.

Honestly, I don't understand why folks want to eliminate one side of the racing coin. How would you feel if I wanted to eliminate your side?

I think my side is great fun. So do hundreds of other guys racing with me.

Why do you feel compelled to screw that up for us? Do you hope to see some gain from that?

-Kyle