2014 Great Lakes schedule?

[Racerlinn]

Wow. That sucks.

[jumbojimbo]

Wow. That sucks.

Which parts?
The back to back weekends in Oct
No events in April
Only one race before nearly the end of June
Both early races in MI

It's not as bad when you combine it with the NEDIV Nelson and PIRC events. the downside is convincing ITC to do Gingerman and/or Grattan. That's been a hard sell in years past.

[Racerlinn]

Yes to all those things.

On a personal level, I live on the west side of the division. And I've made my once in a lifetime trek to Nelson, and PIRC is even farther away.
Great to see the group effort at Gingerman (fun track), but can't make that weekend (Mother's Day, Indy race).
MidOhio is nice and all, but that's not the only place I want to race. So I'll likely make August and October. Labor day weekend is for family.
So with Gratten in June, that's three weekends at two tracks for me.
Can't wait for that Bowling Green Vette track to open - closer to me than Mid Ohio is...

[jumbojimbo]

Too far to got to Blackhawk?

Corvetteville won't help my group, too many of them are concentrated up north, BG will be a 5 hour tow for them. Bluegrass might have been possible, too bad that didn't work out.

[tom91ita]

I thought the distinction between regional and nationals was going away.....

[jumbojimbo]

I thought the distinction between regional and nationals was going away.....

Assuming you aren't be sarcastic...The distinction did go away. But then again it didn't.

For licensing purposes, it did go away. You no longer have a regional license, you have a license. You can jump in any car included in any event (regional, divisional or major) and drive.

But the concept of runoffs eligible classes and runoffs qualifying events has not quite gone away yet. And it will be interesting to see if it goes away or just reforms itself over time like one of those liquid metal terminators.

One way for drivers to qualify for the runoffs is thru Major events. Major events cross divisions and are not controlled by the division. Only certain classes are invited to Majors. Divisions have the power to decide an alternate path to the runoffs.

In GLD there is simply a schedule of non-major races which are probably still labelled as "regional" races but are better thought of as divisional races which are used to determine the divisional championship. I don't know the details on how runoffs eligibility will be determined. Maybe it will just be top x in the divisional championships. Assuming all races count toward this. One astrick is that there is a quad weekend race scheduled but I'm betting only two of those races count. And it's possible other races may not count.

In NEDiv they seem to have split the "divisional" races into championship races which count to runoffs eligibility and races that don't. So depending on how you look at it, there are now three levels of races in NEDiv: regionals, divisionals and majors. is this progress? Well, we'll see. It will be interesting to see the effect on entries at each type of race (assuming drivers even notice the distinctions).

[Joe Camilleri]

With the Runoffs on the west coast this year, it will be interesting to see where people choose to race.