Have you ever watched the chaos in SCCA Spec Miata or SCCA Pro Mx5 cup, and wonder how flipping each other cars constitutes for a race? Or how about the top 6 during the runoffs being DQ’ed one year. Anytime there is a added layer doesn’t necessarily make things better, whether you are talking pro or amateur. Scca has a aging volunteering group, other organizations like Champcar, Lemons, AER, WRL, they are taking members away with a small handbook, easy access, and less paperwork. I think the conversation should have started as a way to cheapen the insurance cost and to make it safer. Instead of adding a secret handshake with lots of paperwork and confusion.
Great idea. I will bring this to the attention of the guys at the Southwest Regional Cup Series. What is the plan for the first race with no points - use points from the previous year? Newcomers to the back regardless of practice times?
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Bringing up Wednesday practice at Orlando, and practice in general; do you or does @tjkoyen or @TimKoyen have any info on drivers being penalized for excessively rough driving in the practice sessions. Not as much carnage in those sessions normally, but plenty of bad incidents that are completely avoidable are happening.
A certain Scott Kopp got a black flag in practice several years ago, so it does happen. Not sure if the RDs are watching with the same vigilance in practice but they probably should be.
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Point based qualy groups suck. That would 100% discourage me from running the closer big races like I plan to this year. I normally agree with stuff you say, this not so much.
Why do they suck?
20 frickin characters
I guess it wouldn’t suck for a regular?
As a non-regular it’s basically a penalty for coming to one or two races. You get stuck with the slower guys and the bad drivers.
When we go visit a more local track with point standings based qualifying, you gotta fight to get around people impeding your speed. You can normally give a really big gap and still catch them before you can lay your heater. Then you’re stuck in the middle of that mess in the heats. 
Ah gotcha okay I get that. Yes, that does indeed suck.
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Sorry if I’m talking out of turn, but I think it’s pretty rare. The only occurrences that come to mind, from events I’ve directed:
- A Micro swerving at another driver in qualifying (club race)
- A Senior cutting the track in pre-qualifying (regional race)
- Two Seniors beating on each other after the checkered flag in warmup (club race)
Usually if I have an issue with a driver in practice, a verbal beatdown will get the message across. The third instance in particular, I couldn’t black flag those drivers, so I cut them off in the scale line to handle it. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen something as overt as a competitor punting another competitor off/out of the session during practice before. Stupid moves, for sure, but nothing worth pulling someone off the race track.
- Warmup
- club race
- beating on each other
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I wonder if that was Liberator with the first Stars day a few years back. What a shitshow that was.
Why anyone would try to punch someone’s helmet is beyond me.
I meant using their karts as weapons, so no, not that race
But you remembered it tho! Was a memorable weekend.
Don’t forget USPKS Orlando last year in KA on Thursday. Full swerve at another driver on the back straight. It’s not a common occurrence but I think it happens more often than people realize, we just aren’t paying attention.
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Yep, I think Thursday was “unofficial” practice? I don’t even remember myself (or any staff) being on track that day, pretty sure I only found out from Instagram stories later that night.
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I have been involved in Motorsport my entire life in one form or another. Motorsport has the highest cost to entry and running cost than any other sport out there. If I were to add up all of the expenses of running versus repairing damage from on track incidents, it would equate to 25% or more of the operating budget. These expenses affect privateers and teams differently. Not much rings truer than the old saying, “How do you make a small fortune in Racing? Start with a Big One!”
A team is not only spending money, but they are also generating revenue to offset those expenses. Often turning a profit for the year. The privateer, with sponsorship or the Smaller Teams will be more penalized for the added cost of fixing damage from poor driving. If you truly want to grow the sport, you have to control the unnecessary cost barriers which will allow more drivers to earn the way into racing on merit rather than the Big Budgets backing them.
For as long as I can remember, Automotive Motorsport has required a License of some sort or another. The cost of these Licenses was never a Barrier of Entry, but rather the price of having a higher cost to Administer Officiating of that level of Competition. Someone brought up the SCCA Club Series Fee versus SCCA Pro Series Fee, NASA or IMSA back in the day. The biggest difference in Cost was Relative to how many people were on the Payroll to run these events. At the SCCA Club level, No One is truly paid to work these events. At best they might get a discount on lodging or few bucks to offset the expense of food and board. As you move into the Pro Series, the Key Staff Members are employees and get paid not only to work them, but food and lodging is provided.
The issue is if you were banned in one Series, you could just go race in another Series with no Real Consequence.
This sounds like what NAKL is actually trying to prevent. If you want some accountability between series, you also need some sort of oversight. That doesn’t come free. That is not currently happening in either US Auto Racing or Karting.
Whether you as the license holder pays it directly or the cost is added onto your entry fee doesn’t really matter. If you are running 6 or more Pro Races a year, that works out to $25 or less per event. Racers spend that after dropping a tire and bending a sprocket. Compare that to getting shoved into a barrier and jacking your chassis, because some mid-field mediocre driver cares more about moving up one spot than the cost of replacing their chassis or taking you out due to lack of a larger consequence.
This effects everyone in the sport from the Pro Level all the way down to the Club Level. In an ideal world it should be the responsibility of the Clubs to Police poor Driving Standards early in a Driver’s Experience, but it all starts from the Top Down. That is where the most Public Exposure in our sport occurs. Where the Examples are Set for those who aspire to move up. If you can’t police poor driving standards at the Highest Levels, how do you expect to police it at the Lowest?
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In my opinion, I don’t think a lot of clubs are doing a ‘bad’ job policing bad driving. Rather, they aren’t all on the same page for standards. So when guys come to a bigger race and the standards and etiquette aren’t the same, they end up lost on what is okay and what isn’t.
The one benefit of finally aligning the big series is that maybe we can make some push downward to unify the race directing that goes on at club and regional events. Less of a right or wrong debate, and more of, the majority of officials and drivers want to call races this way, so let’s get in line and call them all the way down as well.
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Newcomers to the back, but ranked by practice times amongst the other newcomers.
Yeah, it may discourage one-off guys a bit, but as a handful of drivers proved last week at SKUSA, you can still pole it from the slow group.
The other alternative is still using Happy Hour to split groups, but instead do it A-B-A-B instead of top half and bottom half. Then use the European formula to balance times if the track conditions are different. 2nd in your group would mean 3rd or 4th overall. In theory, it wouldn’t be a big deal if you were slow in final practice, and you wouldn’t need to put on new tires.
Both of these are ‘against the grain’ ideas that challenge the status quo, so any series doing this would probably feel a bit of pushback from people used to doing it the way we do it now. But I think as a whole it’d be a better solution than what we’ve currently got, and over time the nay-sayers would assimilate and like the solution.
USPKS and Route 66 switched to 1 main event this year from 2. I like it better for both. Makes the days shorter at Route and eliminates a second set of tires, and at USPKS it spreads the weekend out and makes the main event win mean more. But, you do lose that fresh start feeling on Sunday if you have a bad Saturday, and there have been a few parents already that have voiced their disappointment on that front. Luckily, the series are sticking to their guns and riding it out for the year to give time for the initial ‘shock value’ to dissipate and real opinions and feedback to form.
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This is huge. Just ask 3 club level race directors what the blue/yellow flag means. You will get 3 different variations of “move over”, “hold your line”, “point around”, etc.
Same with overtake, being over taken. Is outside guy allowed to hang? Is it inside guys exit? Does he have to give room?
Getting a uniform view/decision on this at the top and letting it trickle down would be great for the sport.
100%. And then nothing is worse to a relatively new to the sport driver or family being told to throw everything they know and learned out of the window.
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