I've got an odd perspective since I grew up with my Dad working at Riverside, so I'm like a legacy worker. Worker parties at the Shakey's on Iowa. Nothing funnier than some drunk flagger in a white cowboy hat from SFR blowing his whistle and yelling "Everybody out of the pool."

Then I ran road rallies for years where the group was small and we traded off working thru the year. I moved to Solo and Rallycross where everyone works. Now I'm racing and the split between workers and drivers reminds me of a junior high dance. Ewww, they have cooties. I just wasn't prepared for such an us and them feeling at my first race. Hey, I'm one of you, really.

I agree that the race schedule doesn't help. Take a look at the NASA Great Lakes schedule, they run once a month pretty much the 2nd weekend of the month. Compare that to SCCA schedule. We've got a bunch of races jammed up a the beginning of the year and again at the end of the year. Nothing in the summer.

So as a driver who might want to work I'm having trouble making it work. I'd have to be gone two weekends in a row if I wanted to run one weekend and work another. That's simply not going to happen. Like someone else said, if I am going to take that kind of heat at home I'm damn well going to be driving.

Crap, that gives me an idea, I should work the NASA races in June, July and Aug when SCCA doesn't have jack on the schedule.

One problem with volunteering on a weekend when I race is that while I do tend to have a lot of down time I can't be sure. If I commit to work and the car breaks, what happens then? I realize that any time people can spare to work helps but is it really any help if you can't be sure they will show up? I suppose if 10 people volunteered and 6 showed up it all works out, but what if only 2 show up? In the long run is it worth the hassle for a couple of workers?

I take my hat off to anyone who has the energy to be Superman on a race weekend. But that's not me. It takes me most of a week to recover from a race weekend as it is. You can insult me if it makes you feel better but it's not going to change my situation.

Long story short, we're barking up the wrong tree if we think drivers are going to provide a big pool of workers. If they had extra time or money they'd spend on the race car. Let's face it, most of us are idiots who would spend every second and dime on the car if we didn't have someone with self control stopping us.

One idea might be to contact drivers whose license is expiring and see if they want to stay involved. Those are people who want to be involved but maybe just don't quite have the time or money to dump into a car.