American Road Racing

Nothing wrong with track days at all, its all mindset. If you are doing what they were doing you need to look at sector times, not lap times as you rarely, if not ever get a clean lap. You just have to look at sectors when trying stuff. Track days can mess you up if not in that mindset as to me at least, your perception of speed seems to change and it messed me up racing.

 

Well Halloween is coming up

 

I use to win them all the time. It was glorious.

 

- You need young blood in the WERA management that will help push WERA into adapting more into the current club racing scene and get away from the WERA 90's management mentality.
- WERA needs to come to some kind of vintage agreement with ARHMA or something and vintage racers can do all their racing through that specific org. These classes where there's never more than 3 or 4 guys on the grid...seriously. Gone. Wasting valuable track time for the other classes that actually have routinely decent numbers. Plus that gives the vintage guys one schedule they can follow and race.
- There needs to be more articles submitted to RRW from the WERA staff, while the exposure isn't nation wide (as only racers really read RRW), every little bit of exposure helps those racers that worked hard to get the little help they need.
- WERA needs an easy to enter race class for the growing popularity of those track day riders that want to try a one off race or two, with laxed safety wiring standards for the sake of getting fresh blood in the WERA ranks.
- WERA needs to offer an incentive to pay for race entries or credits at the start of the year to help commit racers to a schedule. I buy my tires in bulk every winter because it's cheaper. I would do the same for my race entries, given the chance.

Scenario 1: You cut out one vintage class from the day (Total revenue lost: $200, assuming $100/entry with these classes with 2 people 'racing' in it). Instead, you offer up a one off prize-purse race of some sort for the 300, 600 or 1000 class. End of season purse: $500 or whatever. 1st place gets a free entry for the next race in that class. 2nd gets $50 credit, 3rd $25. This doesn't cost WERA anything out of pocket since it's not a cash payout (except for the end of year purse). What's the average C-Superstock grid size? 8-10? Say 10 for easy math, you're still $800 more profit running that than running the two entry vintage class.

At the end of the day, WERA needs to facilitate the process to bring in new racers. Some of the track day orgs are capitalizing on this opportunity, and WERA is not.

 

Good idea, I vote we let them race in t-shirts too because leathers are expensive. GTFOH.

 

There are more skateboard parks and more mountain bike parks than ever. Hell I wish we'd those when I was a kid! Closest thing was Mt Trashmore in Va. Now every city has a skateboard park. X-Games summer and winter doesn't seem to be going away. Redbull TV has about a hundred years worth of footage of all sorts of competitions kids are into.

Hell, even break dancing is a worldwide competition and bigger than it has ever been. Social media plays a huge role in all these activities spreading events and competitions and has helped grow these far more than magazines and television did. It's easier than it has ever been for kids who aren't into stick and ball sports to find something they like.

 

I was there. Mat is extremely fast.

 

How do kids get casually started riding anymore? Used to be you could ride your dirty bike to the nearest stretch of woods or farm, and toy around a bit. Farms and woodland are disappearing to build the next strip mall or cookie cutter development. Now the neighbors will call the fuzz on you. And parents of this generation are working longer and are busier than ever. Maybe they can load a bike up and drive somewhere a few times a year. Factor in that motorcycling is typically a passion that gets passed down from parent to child, although not always the case. If the child loses interest than it stops there when they have kids. Bottom line is that it's a lot of work to get your kids into riding... More than it ever used to be.

 

Sounds like someone forgot to safety wire their butt hole, cause you got a lot of butt hurt oozing out.

 

Giving track day riders an opportunity to “race” appears to be a good idea.
I would think you could certainly appeal to a number of these folks by offering a very structured race event showing them everything they would learn in a road racing school.
Not every weekend, but 2-4 times a year to assess interest.

they may be intimidated by participating in an actual race weekend.
At the end of the weekend they will have raced and learned , but would still need to go through the racers school to get a license.
The idea has potential.

 

A lot of my ideas and proposals would change and adjust as needed if I knew the numbers, which obviously is none of my business. But the wave top things that would interest me in formulating a thought out plan to try would be based on the numbers to make it more profitable.

CCS lets a racer buy the entries up front every year - how's that working out for them? Rhetorical question.

In the last 5 years:
- Which classes consistently had the biggest turn out for each given region
- Which classes consistently had the lowest turn out
- How many active WERA racers are there on average for each region
- What's the average number of racers an active racer does
- Given the above info, what's the most common classes ran together from the racers in the various classes? Example - a 600 owner probably runs C Superstock, SB, and maybe B-SS.

If you are as willing to work with a new rider as you say (letting them use RTV in lieu of safety wire), you are indeed already are laxing the standard and agree with me on making it easier for a new guy to start racing. The two things I wouldn't budge on is safety wiring the drain plug and the no coolant rule, which is typical track day Advanced group rules.

No, it is not the racer's job to write race summary articles to RRW. That's WERA's responsibility. To say otherwise is just laziness. If a team wants to write a one-off article about a rider, yes I agree, they need to do that. But a summary of a race weekend? Yeah, that's all WERA. Hell, a 3 sentence paragraph with a copy/paste of the finishes in classes would be more exposure than what there currently is.

Road Atlanta (September), Saturday:

V4 - 1 entry.
V3 - 1 entry.
F SS Expert - 1 entry.
500GP - Zero.
V7 MW - 2.
V7 HW - 2.

Sunday:

V4 - Zero (DNS).
V3 - 1.
500GP - Zero.
F SS Expert - 1.
V7 MW - 2.
V7 HW - 2 (Same people as MW, understandably).

You say vintage guys don't want that. That's all fine and dandy, but they are clearly not paying the bills for the weekend. Cater to the classes that are.

 

Classes that routinely have 5+ riders on the grid are your customers, those that average 3 or less are not your customers. Those classes need consolidated, abolished, or some shit.

I know, I know - where else are they going to go race? Well, if WERA goes belly up, it sure isn't going to be WERA.

 

I don't know what the exact winning idea is, but I do know that doing the same shit year in and year out without changing anything and expecting something to change is the definition of insanity...

 

I 100% agree with this.

I was heavily involved in track days, 2006-2009. Mainly, it was a specific bike (Daytona 675) and forum that pulled me in. The forum members involved in track days were awesome people, with us having 23 675’s at an STT-Barber event. Monte gave us early, event purchase dates and the front, paddock row, so we’d all be together. Triumph even brought a demo truck over from ATL, for us to ride anything we wanted. We had the same get togethers at Mid-Ohio and did these events for two years. We had a handful of current racers, some that went onto racing, but, the majority were people who just enjoyed getting together and riding on the track, with friends. For me, these events epitomized what motorcycling, friendships, organizers, and the industry are all about.

In 2005, I met a group of people (hobo/vagabonds really) that traveled together in clapped RV’s, had ragged bikes, well-worn gear, and so forth. These people spent their summers at the track, all over the country, whether racing (more like horsing around) or track days. They were the kindest, most gracious group of people. They sat around BS’ing, grilling food, and generally enjoying life to its fullest. I think, they had it right.