My Question: What are participation rates in Nationals vs. Regionals and how many more participants would we actually have if we combined the two.

The reasons behind my question:

I agree that we should do away with national/ regional races. Instead I think that there should be a series much like the NAARC in our regioanl series here in the NE that qualifies you for the valvoline runnoffs. The only problem I see is that in some of the classes/ groups we would be over classified. If this is the case then we need to race to qualify and those that don't qualify for the race get there money back so there is no loss in trying to qualify (Much liek circle track). This will definetly make the classes more competitive and increase numbers. And if we have all fully subscribed races then the "event" surely made money so there isn't really a loss by returning some of the entry if they do not qualify to race. I also think that if we did do this keeping only certain race weekends eligable as points to get to the valvoline runnoffs we would keep the feilds lower on those other weekends so that the regional dates will still effectively be the same. In the end we just increase participation and we gain race dates as well!

Stephen