vintage wrap up

Free help has not been offered and no changes have been suggested that will not lose us money. If you're seeing something like that then it's in another thread...

 

online registration! (?)

that would be kick ass. 2 other clubs im in do it. no more faxing. no more pdfing. no more sending files. just a thought.

 

I have read this entire post and find that there is precious little here that helps improve the WERA vintage racing scene. Very few recommendations about positive changes, just bitching about perceived wrongs. Then acrimonious rebutals to those comments. Let's face it, WERA Roadracing Incorporated, is a for-profit business and they get to run it anyway they like. If they want to keep vintage racing they will, if not they won't. A couple of years ago, maybe three, I figured that we had approximately 200 licensed vintage racers. At that time a license was $100. That is $20,000 spread over a year's period. Now Sean says we have only 100 licensed racers. That's a pretty big reduction, but still a fairly substantial contribution to operating expenses. At two races I attended this year there were more vintage entries than there were solo riders. One race at T'dega had 44 solo entries and 59 individual vintage entries. (There were 3 vintage DNS.) At one Jennings race I think the number was even or one more vintage racer. As the idea of closing vintage racing and having Saturday modern bike practice and Solo races, one of the Jennings Friday practice days (normally well attended by modern riders) was delayed until they got enough people to be able to afford to rent the track, and one practice day was cancelled. This raises the question if Saturday practice would raise the revenues that vintage racing does?

I have never had a problem with any WERA employee. Not Evelynne or Sean. The ladies in the office are the most accomodating, helpful, customer oriented people you could ask for. I don't like Sean's attitude in this thread, but that is his problem not mine. I have asked him for help in the past and he has always responded in a fairly timely manner. I can't say I always agree with him, but that's life.
Lyn Garland
WERA #1594

 

Wow. This entire thread has me dumbfounded. Granted, I'm a newbie and have only been racing for two years but I've never had a single problem with any of the WERA staff or with the way events are run. I've always been treated with respect and some of our more, shall we say, irregular evening activities are kindly tolerated.

Seems like some folks are taking things a bit too seriously. I'm just thankful that I've got a place where I can race my 40 year old bike and enjoy competing with my friends.

 

phantom 309, please stop for the sake of the rest of us. Please go race some where else if you are that unhapy and don't ruin what so so so many of us enjoy.

these forums can destroy a club, I've seen it happen before, to many people want to get on them and complain and argue and run it into the ground.

one thing I've loved about the V7 and V6 guys is how we all get along joke and have fun ( that is what this is supposed to be about) some people want to take this way way to serious. none of us are making a living doing this, this is a hobby, lets try and keep it fun.

one last thing, Sean and Evelyne, please keep us around, please, please.

 

+11tymillion

 

On multiple occasions help has been offered and proposed by long time and respected vintage participants to proof read and manage the rules proposals, format and submit them to you for review and approval at no cost to WERA.

As for the rules that were thrown out when the change was made, they had ZERO cost to WERA, they were rules with respect to finish points as well as the double points rounds. I am not aware that any vintage racer had an issue with how the system worked and I don't believe an attempt was made to understand why they were in place or how they helped with participation. With respect to the finish/non-finish points, they certainly do not make sense for modern classes they are specific to Vintage.

A proposal was made for a fully funded Vintage specific long-term support and promotion program in the complete control of WERA, it was ignored.

There are people willing to help and contribute with out charging WERA, If you believe the success of the Barber event is solely related to the $ that Jim puts up you don't see the whole picture. A portion of the participation is due to the promotional efforts of a significant number of the Vintage participants.

This approach and view of this is that it is an all or nothing only situation, that you are somehow being asked to give up control, I don’t see that as the case there is middle ground but it would involve working with some of the vintage group.

Given a slight change in the environment Vintage can and will help promote Vintage.

 

As I see it,that's the whole intent of the first poster ,he thought he could start himself another "Putnam" thread and get Sean and Ev to drop Vintage and take over whats left. Not too hard to figure out. Also if phantom309 didn't start this thread he knows who did. It's hard to hide that much hate.

 

Man, I did not wanna get long here, sorry, I believe it dilutes the points, but....

Jim said a mouthfull here......I agree and was just trying to add something constructive.

Scotts rulebook proposal stuff read well also. I believe most everyone knows where I stand on rules and that structure.

Lyn's data approach is interesting.....I dont pay attention that well, interesting.

Sean and Evelyn, I respect your business approach to this. it is a gamble.

For the record, one the 2 day topic, I should have said to run the standard WERA saturday schedule on sunday as well....include the Solo 20's. Personally, I would travel elsewhere, but mentioned Tally for 2 reasons.

1. Since this is a risk for WERA, Tally is close to home base and is a known.

2. In an effort to attract more riders, fill the void left by AHRMA there by dropping their 2 day tally event......maybe get some fresh crossover....I do realize it may have been dropped for a reason, anyone know for sure?

If it would make it less of a risk for WERA to try 2 days somewhere else as Tex stated, I would try to support that.

Do you, Sean or Evelyn, have any suggestions to improve grid size?...or is it a Hunker down?

I agree with Tex about the #1 plates, no plates in 2007 either, nice trophys tho, but a plate is something treasured, and cheap....I treasure my trophy, but you have to READ it, a plate says it all, especially when you cant read....I'd buy a plate.

We usually have an excellent awards ceromony every race down here, and I enjoy them....Jeff does a great job not only there, but announcing as a whole...grid calls, etc....:up: Lyn's gathering is a great time once or twice a year as well.

I'm not sure I like the 2 region concept either, altho that would save WERA some discount cards.....I agree the National set-up is great the way it is.

JoeC, your efforts to add to grids is commendable. :up: What would it take for you to take those guys elsewhere than Summit?...spread out alittle?....I know VIR, but what about like CMP or somewhere?....I've added several as well, and most of them travel to 6 different tracks (or so)....not being negative, do you see what I'm saying? I plan on venturing out some in 2010.

On line reg would be good....and I believe would help with Scotts memo All-in-all I think the current regestrition process is better than some others.

 

Vintage Rules Committee

For the record. When WERA allowed the members to organize as the VRC we were given a percentage of the Vintage entry fees from each race as our budget.

NO ONE was paid to be a member of the VRC (indeed some of ya'll are still here). From this money we paid all trophy expenses, published a newsletter and did some advertising. Any money we had at the end of the year was spent on the Vintage awards banquet at the GNF. WERA would advance us money at the beginning of each year until we made our entry percentage.

The VRC was in constant contact via e-mails. We had an annual meeting at the GNF to discuss rule changes that had been submitted to us in the manner described in the WERA rule book. These rule change proposals were also published in the Vintage newsletter. The VRC then proposed these rule changes to WERA. I/we made the effort to keep in contact with WERA to make sure our agenda was heard, indeed we were allowed by WERA to overhaul the entire Vintage portion of the rule book.

One of my main interests was to increase grids by shaping our class structure so AHRMA and USCRA members could more easily race with us. I wanted vintage racing to be more inclusive than exclusive. And we made it happen. There are not enough of us to be at war with each other.
We even had two combined events with AHRMA and USCRA.

I'm not really sure why we were disbanded. I felt we had good relations with WERA. In my mind I thought we were on the same page, however I guess we were going off on our own too much.

Perhaps it's time to propose a similar committee. Get together a group of impassioned Vintage riders to "work with" WERA on the issues facing us now. As I recall, Sean was "just being Sean" back then - but we, for a time, developed a working relationship, and had a great ride while it lasted!

Mark Mitchell

 

guys who drive from portland maine arent real willing to go much further than vir. most of those guys are not in the points so to speak, so they do it to get away form nhis, and hang with some of the wera crowd and race another track. once vir is over, the uscra season's is right around the corner. plus a ton of the guys who come down to race with wera are also racing minis with nemm on a regular basis. plus vir is about 2 mos before the first round at nhis. i know guys like steve d, craig, kenny, etc do some other tracks. but portland is already a 12hr drive to summit. vir is 16 hrs or more. it starts getting time consuming and expensive. the ny guys its not too bad. mid o, nelson, and beaver are just a few hours. njmp would be the perfect spot for a mid atlantic round. a good percentage of the new england crew would show for that, as well as a bunch of the guys from the south id imagine too. i only went to nelson the first time this season but plan on going back. i really liked the track. old school super cool layout. for nyc guys, summit is as close as nhis. put it this way, i went to mosport this year and that was only a 10 hour drive if you can manage to miss toronto traffic. much more than that and it gets pretty intense as far as drives go.

 

seems to me thats the opinion of everyone ive talked to from that time period. i came into wera at the very end of the vrc. i think a lot of great people were really pushed aside and stepped on when the vrc got squashed. i actually have a hard time believing someone couldnt get along with you, mark. that sexton guy, though, what a pain in the ass he is. i do think the rulebook allows many of the uscra bikes to run competitively with wera. at least the more popular ones. ahrma bikes dont seem to fit well with either club. the disk brake rule for v1 bikes helped a lot allowing cb's to run in v1 instead of v2 and v3.

thanks for chiming in here mark. its about time someone who really knew what was going on then spoke up. bucky dosnt read the board, and chris stays out of it.

 

No Rich , I think the first poster tried to help and got shut down.I only have a guess who it is. Didn't know he knew that much about sean though.I only want a good place to race and would never get on my knees and beg for a place to spend my money like lance. I just see it as sean is to wera as jeff smith is to ahrma.

 

Traveling south gets tough for some of us Charlie, mostly because of scheduling. We're kind of lucky being in Baltimore. We've got a lot of tracks within 8-10 hours. Last season I went to 9 events - VIR, BeaverRun (2) Mid-0, NJMP and Mosport as well as Summit (3). If I read the 2010 schedule info correctly, vintage will be running at CycleJam so that's another trip to VIR and I want to do CMP too.

The main reason I didn't got the GNF this year was the 12 hour drive. I want to do that next year but even that will take some fancy footwork to get done.

Just saying, we're not all home bodies.

 

bill, schedule louden for next season. skip cmp and go to louden. im in for that, as well as the rest of the wera regulars. id love to do mosport again, but man, what a adventure. by the way, i might have a job before the end of the week!

 

Every region has 8-10 race weekends. Some combined. Some stand alone. All held at the same venues usually twice. That's common knowledge.

Maybe it's a matter of WERA looking at the 2009 vintage class entries for each region, each weekend. From that make the vintage rounds held at half of the respective regional events (either stand alone or combined).

Example: North Central has 8 rounds; Grattan, Cycle Jam, Nelson Ledges, Beaver Run, Gingerman (sometimes), Bluegrass (maybe). Vintage would held at 4 events (or half the regional schedule), with the standard weekend schedule applied.

Non-vintage weekends would be held at the remaining events. These weekend's Saturday races would see a Solo 20's become Solo 30 or 40's, a mini-endurance where no tire changes or re-fuels are needed. Maybe a 2 rider team, maybe a Iron Butt solo, all under existing Solo 20 rules and classes. Entry fees for that event would be charged accordingly, and all extended solo races would be money paying. Saturday's non-vintage schedule could see some of Sunday's races moved up a day to fill the day, increase the race laps (8-10, 10-12).

Vintage as a stand alone event without any modern classes will not work. Even AHRMA needs a mix of twins classes to survive their 2 day event. And those non-vintage classes are tolerated, no embraced. If WERA looks at the data, they can see when and where Vintage is working, and build upon the strengths of those events. For weekends where vintage is not working, drop the dates and use the above formula. Or maybe try some of the 'new class' ideas.

For those that say there should be payouts at vintage weekends, modern classes don't even get that (well.. Solo 20's are). If Barber was a payout event, well, that's nice. Try sustaining that over 5 regions with 8-10 races per region. And given the economic climate, well... good luck on getting that to happen.

 

I started after the VRC days....but have heard good things.

10-4 Joe and Bj.....I was more talking like you Baltimore guys, I can understand maine, thats an extreme like a southern boy from Miami. How far is CMP from Baltimore?

I planned on Mid-O, but hurt a motor right before CMP......I'll make them both this year. I was at Mid-O, but bikeless. CMP is about 6 hrs for me.

Another one I plan to make is VIR, but probably not the first one, due to conflicts with Daytona, mostly vac and dollars wise....cant do both.....summit as well, thats over 10 hrs for me, but plan on it sometime.....I would go to NJMP, lots of friends and family up there.

Road Atl and Barber are worth your drive fellas, honest....especially if you can do both in the same week like this year.

 

Some good points.

I clarified my 2 day proposal as a double running of the standard WERA saturday schedule, include the Solo's.

The pay outs at Barber were from a sponsor and Vintage racer, Fast From The Past and Jim Hinshaw. I dont believe WERA paid anything.

Sounds like a good way to gather some data for sure.

Not sure about your suggestions for the "alternative saturday schedule", I'm just uninformed.

 

all of the tracks you mention charlie are within a days drive for the baltimore crew. we have 3 new guys racing now....so....i forsee more ambition to get new places. i know joe will race pretty much anyplace. i know he also has a score to settle with the back straight at mosport. really, i think we're pretty busy with the schedule. at one point i did a mileage check for tracks within a days drive of baltimore and there are like 10.

road atlanta 12 hours.
cmp 9 hours.
nelson 6.
mid o 6.5.
beaver 5.
njmp 3.
nhis 9.
summit 1.5.
vir 5.5.
mosport 10-11.
barber 13.
tally 13.
roebling 10.5

 

Pete makes good suggestions in post 176. :up: But, I may be tempted to buy an SV650 to race those cool 30 or 40 lap races on Saturday of non-vintage rounds.