When I buy WERA... Or, my thoughts on how to get the grids full again...

I know this is going to sound stupid, but the idea has been thrown around in the vintage section.
Why not less rounds?
Does the southeast really need 15 rounds of mediocre turnout?
Why not 10 rounds of great turn outs.
visit Tally, Roebling, Nashville, Barber, Road A, Jennings, CMP, and VIR. Double up on 2 of the tracks (roebling, tally, or barber since they will hold nationals that will exclude saturday vintage if we double up a round).

 

This might be dumb, but as I get older it might be a valid observation. I don't think the economy is so much to blame for things like declining grids. I think it's that we live in an increasingly ephemeral society.

Nobody is willing to invest time and effort into anything anymore. Especially if they can't automatically be the best at it. If you can't win a race on your first try then it's off to something else. And why bother with buying a bike and gear? Just buy MotoGP for your xbox. Hell, don't even buy the game, get it from redbox. See - there's no sense of permanence. It's a new generation of instant gratification and zero attention span. Squirrel!

Another thought is one of Murphy's Laws: better to be thought a fool than open your mouth and prove it. Well better to be a badass biker boy on the street than to grid up and go slow. Bikes are ego boosters. Nobody wants to get showed up.

 

I can't tell if thats a serious post or not.

 

WERA should close the BBS, raise the rates, and make the requirements more difficult to race. Make the ORG somewhat elitist and folks will come. You bastiges with money HATE to be told you can't do something.

 

Who were you guys Normally with at Buttonwillow, or did you guys not have others Hosting Practice days ? Reason i ask is Fastrack are Exclusive ACS, also seen Lets Ride on Friday before the Event's.

 

Buck for WERA Overlord!

 

Was that directed at me? If so, then yes. You know how many street guys think riding the track would be cool but "it's too much work?" Throw in the need to attend a racing school and most guys give up before they start. It's not like SCCA or NASA where you kinda show up and run what you brung.

Does it actually surprise you that the majority of riders don't buy race replicas to actually race?

 

SCCA and NASA are absolutely not "show up and run what ya brung". In the case of NASA you have to progress through beginner, intermediate, then advanced track day groups before you try out for your competition license. In all three track day groups there's classroom instruction. In SCCA you have to do a full weekend race school before you get your license. In both cases it is more difficult to get a race license than the typical motorcycle racing org.

On top of that you need to equip your car with a roll cage and race seat at the very least before you can race.

The barrier to go racing with bikes is so much lower it's crazy. Buy a track bike for $3-5 grand, do a 1 day race school, get provisional license.

I think the major problem with bikes is that so many guys doing track days do so with little or no instruction. They end up crashing their street bike and that's the end of it. So you're getting a decent proportion of your potential racers getting dissuaded at the first step of the ladder.

I think motorcycle track days are a major thing that needs to be improved in order to get more racers on the grid. There needs to be more instruction at motorcycle track days so less people crash and leave the track game entirely. So maybe get with NESBA and STT and the like and get them to do more classroom instruction. Or any classroom instruction at all.

 

STT has actually started to have optional classes for Intermediates and Mandatory Meetings with the Advanced group and I group before the day. Novice has ALWAYS had classroom time during the day after their sessions.. :up:

 

"Run what you brung" in the SCCA!? Are you kidding me!

I looked into the SCCA a few years ago. I was actually going to sell a majority of my bike stuff to buy a Formula Ford. Then I looked into the licensing requirements. OK, I'll admit I didn't dig real hard, but what I came up with was that you have to attend 2 sanctioned track schools (like Barber, Bondurant or Russell) at a cost of about $2500 per before you could even get on track. Add that to the Formula Ford, the cheapest of which I found for about $15 grand (I realize there are cheaper classes; that's what I wanted to run). I calculated $20 grand just to be eligible.

Somebody tell me I'm wrong. I've always wanted to do this, but at that cost forget it.

 

If Nashville happens you sir ROCK...:up:

 

You can do one of the SCCA supercomp schools which is a lot cheaper (somewhere around $600 entry fee) than doing one of the commercial race schools. You'll have to either bring a car or rent a car, which adds to the cost but it's still cheaper than doing something like Bondurant or Skip Barber. Problem with the supercomp schools is that they only do them a few times a year.

 

Let me qualify my statement a bit. That was based on getting your feet wet in solo events. I did it many moons ago in HS and you basically showed up at the mall parking lot in whatever your daily driver was. As long as you had an SCCA membership you could run around the cones fro about $20. There was a provision to get your comp license (running with other cars on track) based on your finishes.

NASA spec Focus or spec Miata is my retirement dream. I thought NASA was trying to cut a lot of the red tape that the SCCA had introduced over the years. Specifically to get more people into grass roots racing.

 

I get what you are saying. I went to a solo and kind of compaired it to a track day. Don't get me wrong..looked like fun just not my thing.

 

After I 'retired' from MC roadracing I tried Autocross/SOLO II for a couple of years.

If you're serious about it, you can spend crazy money on suspension and your tire bill is hellacious. And ya gotta buy `em four at a time!

Sound familiar?

 

Yeah, you said you didn't think the economy was the reason for declining grids. You really think its because street guys are lazy? The grids have declined because the guys that aren't lazy, just can't allocate the funds for an expensive hobby. The only thing the guys who buy the replicas (which is just a sticker kit) would do, is expand the grids,because the guys that could afford to race, would already be there.

Screw it, FEE-SEM-BO. Damn I'm channeling a lot of John today.

 

I did TrackTime (I think it was called when I was younger). Could do a weekend for $500-600. Might have went up a little by now. But I used that to get my car racing license.

Edit: Found it