Getting Rid of Regional/Majors Distinction?

[gran racing]

Where is the Majors website? Went to the SCCA site and can't figure it out. Or is that section of the SCCA website considered the Majors website?

THIS is one of SCCA's big issues (not saying the majors website specifically).

[Butch Kummer]

Yes, the "Majors website" can be reached by clicking the "Majors" tab on SCCA.com.

[Greg Amy]

Where is the Majors website?

...the "Majors website" can be reached by clicking the "Majors" tab on SCCA.com.

In case you're still cornfuzed...

http://www.scca.com/majors

[Butch Kummer]

And given your lack of familiarity with the program, I should also probably ask the guys that are ready to drop the distinction between the Majors and Regionals:

"Have you ever been to a Majors event?"

[gran racing]

That's where I went, but based on Butch's comments I was somewhat expecting a separate site linked from SCCA's.

[Knestis]

And given your lack of familiarity with the program, I should also probably ask the guys that are ready to drop the distinction between the Majors and Regionals:

"Have you ever been to a Majors event?"

<raises hand>

In my opinion the quality of events varies more region-to-region than it does majors-vs-regionals (or national-vs-regional before that).

Majors trophies were nicer than most regionals, but I was frankly a little annoyed by the number of national office staff that seemed to be just sitting around or socializing while the region ran the race. (Nothing personal, Butch.) The longer races were offset (for me anyway) but less competition. I didn't race for a position in four Majors (two doubles in the STU Jetta TDI) in 2013, but had a good race or two last year in STL. Fields were still thin, although less than the least-subscribed ITB regionals in recent years and much more than the best of those B brawls (e.g., pretty much anything at Summit). The paddocks at the Majors events I did were typically more packed but with fewer racers if that makes sense; more big rigs with less hanging out at the track. It was nice to have some consistency in the day's schedule major-to-major but some variability won't kill anyone and can be managed by standards to apply to ALL club events.

At the end of the day, if, say, we went to a model where all of the current GCR classes were available at all events, and points were accumulated for regional and divisional championships, and some combination of points from those results served as a qualifying process to the RubOffs, competition would allow the cream to rise to the top - in terms of driver/car entrants. Let only the best-subscribed classes from 2014 go to the 2015 big dance, and the same would happen for classes. The market would decide.

The distinctions are all manufactured and artificial. If they went away, some of the people at any given "Club Championship Race" would be all SRS BSNS and some would simply be glad to participate. It would take a little while for folks to shed their biases and preconceived notions - most of which are flawed - but with the kind of turnover we have, it wouldn't take long for the culture to change. To be clear, this whole issue has bamfoozled me since i went to my first SCCA race in 1979. Nothing has changed my opinion on that.

K

EDIT - if we think there's value in having a small number of "showcase" events, just do the above but with one double-points "festival" or "super" event in each region.

[StephenB]

OMG kirk gets it!!

Butch, with all due respect why did you strrt this thread? Let's flip sides...

To me it's obvious your emotionally attached to the majors program. Why? What is so great about it that all you insiders see? Sell it to those 25yr members like me that still don't get it. You were on the inside, spill the secrets!

Maybe it's a north east thing but the bigger fields and deeper competition have been in IT, FV, SRF and then recently in the last 10yrs you can add SM. Nothing but expense, travel, and a chance at the Runoffs were the only advantages to nationals aka majors.

Thanks, Stephen

[TomL]

"Nothing but expense, travel, and a chance at the Runoffs were the only advantages to nationals aka majors."

Stephen, there's a solution to your problem -- don't run majors. You in the NEDiv have a goodly selection of regional races to run, just like us here in the SE. We (and you) have more races than we can reasonably hope to attend already. I'm truly perplexed at what would be gained by making everything just "races". If your local track has a Majors, that might be one more race you can run cheap (no travel). But there's nothing stopping you from running them now. Even if you are in IT or some other regional-only class, there is almost always an ST or Prod class you can run in. I've done it before. I was hopelessly uncompetitive using an IT car in STU, but I got to race. But unless you have a really strong regional-level car, you're always going to be uncompetitive at a National/Majors anyway.

My impression is that a lot of the serious Majors racers like the new program. It concentrates the really serious racers at a few events with a very high level of competition (or at least the highest level that you can get if you run in a lightly subscribed class or in a weaker division). I think the people shooting for the Runoffs generally liked the change from running a dozen or so Nationals with usually weaker fields to running four weekends with bigger fields. If we make everything "races" and they all count for towards the Runoffs, I don't see that being well received by the Majors racers. Remember, in SEDiv, you're talking 71 regional races, plus this year 12 Majors races. At that point, qualifying for the Runoffs is essentially meaningless, unless SCCA just decides to forget about "qualifying" and just lets everyone who has run, say, four races go.

I think the serious Majors racers like things as they are. And before anyone takes offense that lots of regional racers are pretty serious, too, I agree. However, there is a difference between serious majors racers and serious regional racers. And it mostly relates to money. Regardless of how serious a regional racer you are, it's very unlikely that you're spending the amount of money that it takes to run an comparably competitive Majors effort. That is the main virtue I see to the Majors/Regional distinction. It allows the serious racers who aren't willing (or in many cases even able) to spend the money it takes to be competitive in the big pond of Majors. A lot of us realize we're always going to be small fish in that big pond. But we can still be big fish in the small pond of regionals. And you're proposing that we all get pushed into the big pond.

I still get the impression that the underlying reason that people keep proposing making everything "races", is that they want IT to be just like the National classes. Kirk's discussion above is effectively arguing for that - the top X number of classes would likely include most IT classes. But as tGA has said many times, it ain't gonna happen. And I seem to remember that the idea that the less attended classes didn't get to go to the Runoffs was proposed just a few years ago - and withdrawn due to the firestorm from the membership.

I agree with Butch that somebody needs to explain again what benefit we would get from eliminating the Majors/regional distinction. We've had one for a long time. This doesn't mean it's good, but it does't mean it's automatically bad, either. If we're going to make such a change, I'd like to see a good reason to do so. I haven't seen a good one yet, and I've mentioned some reasons why I think it wouldn't be such a good idea. Again, why do we want t do this?

[Butch Kummer]

Butch, with all due respect why did you strrt this thread?

Why did I start this thread? Because a bunch (or at least some) of you guys say you want change!

In various discussions on the Concorde Agreement (or whatever it's called today), current members have asked the BoD to explain why getting down to 14-16 classes will make racing better. That explanation has yet to be advanced as far as I've seen, and to me that's the biggest reason to NOT force class consolidation (let nature take it's course)

In a similar vein, some of you guys insist that inviting every class to every event will make your racing better. Why?