Proposed 2009 MARRS

[Gregg]

Although I'm a little surpised that this ended up here, Charlie, I'm going to post in its entirety what sent to my ITA drivers immediately after the meeting on October 23rd. You'll notice that it contains quite a bit more detail than what you sent to your drivers and what you provided here. I might add, that for a person who was/is so concerned about the quality of racing for all MARRS drivers, you worked awfully hard this summer to protect the ITB/ITC average of < 20 cars rather than helping to alleviate some of the overcrowding in other run groups.

In addition, while you make it seem as though the SM and SSM reps and I drove this down everybody's throats, the fact of the matter is that SSM averaged over 40 cars this past year and SSM was very close. They were already running at the '09 target density. In fact, the SSM rep was actually one of those to abstain from the vote on groupings.

Remember that two years ago that rather than contracting and removing large formula cars and Sports Racers from the MARRS series so that we could go to eight run groups, we instead expanded to 10. The stated density goal when going to 10 groups was 32-35 cars for the closed-wheel groups. The advantage of going to 10 run groups was that we would have the freedom to juggle combinations to acheive those goals without overly burdening a limited number of drivers.

If you feel that there is something factually incorrect in my description and recollection below, please feel free to correct me.

Originally sent to all MARRS ITA Drivers @ 11pm 10/23/08
Rather than attack run groupings in January as we normally do, we decided to get things done now. Each representative on the Committee was asked to bring their proposed run groups, printed, and would be given three minutes to present their reasoning. Come next season, you all are either going to love me or really hate me. The Committee accepted my plan.

Here's the good news....we're not running with ITS next year.

We're going to have a radical change in the format of the series next year. We've been talking off and on over the past few years about changing the format of the MARRS weekends. We've all discussed qualifying races and many of you heard a proposal at the Open Comp meeting (and here) to make each weekend a Double (w/ qualifying and race each day). Well, in order to do that there's no way we could continue to have 10 run groups, and nine run groups wasn't going to cut it either. My plan was to go to eight run groups. A move to eight run groups allows us to recover a minimum of an hour each day and reallocate that time to the remaining groups, giving us longer on-track sessions. If we go to a qualifying race on Saturday we can make it long enough (approx. 10 laps) to alleviate the fears of carnage as people bash and bang to get a better starting position for the Sunday feature. We can also go to a longer feature race on Sunday (18-20 laps). If we go to double weekends, The same applies--more track time each day.

So what's the downsides? More cars on track across the board. Whereas this year we had some groups (like ours) that averaged about 40 cars, there were closed-wheel groups that barely managed 20 cars. No need to rehash that and our attempts to realign groups mid-season. If we use 2008's participation numbers, most of the run groups would average 35 cars with my plan. Of course, this year we saw a falloff in registrations as the year went on (probably gas price-related) and a lot of us are betting we'll see a 10-20% dropoff due to our economic troubles so we'll probably really be seeing 30-32 car densities at best.

So how'd this play out? I proposed going to eight run groups to facilitate modifying the MARRS weekend format. This was approved 13-7. Once that was done, I presented my proposed run groups. Believe me when I say that contracting to eight run groups gives you a very limited number of options. Some of the combinations aren't exactly optimal, but this time around the pain will be spread across more groups instead of just ITA taking the brunt of it once again. The CRC will be working this winter with our stewards and the N.E. Division Chief Steward to add language to our Supps, calling for either "split starts" or "split grids" for many of our run groups to make some combos more palatable.

There was one other 8-group combination presented on the fly but the framers couldn't make the numbers work. The committee approved my groupings 13-4 with three abstentions. So here's the rundown. 2008 Averages are in parenthesis with the MR2 move to ITB taken into account.

FV / F500 (19)
Big Wings & Things (18)
SM (35)
SSM (41)
Big Bore / ITS / ITR (34)
Small Bore / SRF (38)
ITA / SpecRX7 / T3 (35)
IT7 / ITB / ITC / SSB / SSC (35)

There are some classes that aren't very happy, but I know that since Yip likes using RX7's for brake pads that ITA will do just fine. I think we had one T3 car show up all year, so if we do a split start w/ the Spec7's we'll probably be able to coexist quite well.

We are, of course, going to have a huge task ahead of us come January to create a race format that gives our racers the most value for their ever more hard-to-come-by dollar. A point that has been made by one of our Board members is that '09 may be the first year that we may have to fight other organizations for entries. That means making the MARRS series more amenable to racers we have, racers we've lost, and racers who haven't raced with us previously. It means being less exclusive and more inclusive, and it means making sacrifices for the greater good--that means more track time for the $$, that means more racing and less time qualifying or sitting around, that means making things more exciting for our volunteers that come to the track to watch racing (and not qualifying), and maybe even getting everyone home to a family dinner a little earlier on Sunday nights. This new plan means that everybody shares in that burden and not just a few. With everyone working towards this goal, I am confident that we can make a stronger MARRS series.