Getting Rid of Regional/Majors Distinction?

[jumbojimbo]

I've seen mention of track time, the implication is that national...er...majors give more track time. True, they give longer races, but not necessarily more track time.

One advantage of the current split is that for regional races we have flexibility in the weekend schedule. We're not stuck with the majors format. We can run a 15min qualify, 10 lap race, 12 lap race both days if we think that will draw more cars than the traditional Qual-Race, Qual-Race. We can run a 1 hour race. We can run a handicap race. We aren't required to run one painfully long race a day.

One issue is that the only reason many people run majors is to qualify for the runoffs. If you allowed people to run the runoffs by simply finishing one major race, a lot of people would run just that one race. So in order to force people to run enough races to make the majors viable, you have to create an artificial barrier to the runoffs.

Which means that you can't just do away with the distinction or you've lost your ability to force people to run races they don't want to run in the first place. Because if every race weekend had the same value in qualification for the runoffs, people would run the bare minimum. That's the cancer of national racing and the runoffs. The marginalization of the actual race weekends into something you're required to do in order to qualify.

For me, that's the part where the tail wags the dog. My group of friends and I run MORE races than most "national" drivers because we enjoy the racing. Each race weekend is what matters, it's not just something we check off so we can run the runoffs. I don't want to skip a weekend because I'll miss that weekend's experience.

But, it seems from my perspective that every decision made is made with the runoffs in mind. Does this hurt regional racing? Who cares, it helps the runoffs. To me, the idea that we can build our club racing system from the top down is wrong. The idea that if we have a prestigious national championship that takes effort and commitment to win will trickle down and draw people into regional racing is wrong. The idea that having SportsCar focus on drivers who can spend $100k a year on their "program" and who see club racing as a stepping stone in their "career" will draw people to regional racing is wrong. What will draw people to regional racing is affordable classes with stable rulesets and good schedules that don't have 12 week gaps in them.

The reason NASA, Lemons and Chump grew so fast was that they concentrated at the base of the pyramid, not the top. They drew away the people we've been ignoring, the people who want to get started at a reasonable cost. Meanwhile SCCA has concentrated on the 18 year old kid whose daddy can afford a $75k car and a $250k annual budget. Of course, then those other groups reached a saturation point, lost focus and started to concentrate on the top 5%, just like SCCA does, and look were it got them...