Endurance Points by Class?

Michel, I have explained what is going on and I'm sorry if this like your complaint about the whole Katra thing wasn't handled to your personal satisfaction.

I'm not a golf pro and I don't suck up to people just to keep then running a series we lose money at and do for the love of Endurance racing. Have fun racing CCS or on the links.

I do take the Endurance series seriously and I do take care of our teams. However I also have the racers who pay the bills so we can run the endurance series to take care of. I am sorry but for the overall good of the Endurance series, those riders have to take precedence because if it weren't for them we wouldn't be able to afford to lose money putting on the races for you.

Quite simply if you want to be treated like a pampered golfer, the racetrack isn't for you. If you want to be treated like a partner who we work with to put on races because we love the sport then by all means, keep coming out because that is what we do. There is no money in this, neither Evelyne or I could even come close to affording to pay to do what we do for a living.

 

I haven't said you want to be pampered, Michel absolutely said in his post that he did - hence my response about his post to his post.

I do get out of the tower - when I can. I was at Talladega but you were at Summit so you didn't see me. You didn't see me at Road Atlanta where I would have been in the paddock because I had to go work another race (missing a WERA Road Atlanta round for the first time since 1988).

The Endurance series is not financially viable for the teams. There are not enough people out there with the money to do the travel and afford all of the expenses. That is why is has been cut to 4 rounds. There are enough people who can afford to go sprint racing for it to be viable and at least 4 times a year (looking at 5 next year) pay for the teams who do wish to go Endurance racing. There is no one seeing a huge jump in Endurance grids right now sorry. WERA is absolutely seeing an increase in Sprint turnouts due to the changes we've made this year and the economy picking up. Every other organization we've talked to is seeing the same general increase. You want to know why CCS is doing better at Summit? Simple - they have NJMP paying the bills so they can afford to race there and that makes them more attractive to the riders in the Mid Atlantic. It's not really a difficult thing to understand. With NJMP being a partner of theirs and wanting to charge us full track rental there is no way for WERA to compete in that region right now. However, as usual, the riders will go back to preferring how we run things and will come back to our races, same as every other time we've gone through these things over the years all over the country. There is a reason why Evelyne is the one single person who has consistently run a successful sanctioning body for longer than anyone else in this country.

What exactly do you want to meet about? You have talked to Evelyne repeatedly about your ideas and thoughts and while in some respects you are absolutely correct, in others you're not. She has taken steps to try and put some of your ideas into practice.

As for walking the paddock and talking to racers, I do that on a regular basis. I'm sorry if they aren't events you're at but WERA really does run a lot more than you attend. We don't have enough income to pay for a lot of officials to come to races so I don't always have that luxury during the races as I have to work. I am not just sitting in the tower with my thumb up my ass, all you have to do is come up and see for yourself as many racers do over the weekend. Once I have worked 12 hours and go get dinner and take care of the dogs I don't always have the energy to go hang out in the paddock but I still do so as often as I can. But you'll have to forgive me on those days where I want to get some rest for the 12 hour plus day that will be happening again tomorrow.

I'm also very confused about the whole depressed paddock thing. I see lot of people who do go hide out in their rvs which wasn't possible before we had so many of them in the paddock but there are plenty of people hanging out having cookouts and partying all over WERA paddocks all over the country. I'm honestly not sure which races you're going to that this isn't happening.

My responses to our customers on here are not in any way treating them as if they are a hassle or the like - except when I have someone like Michel who has been bitching for months about different things and is not happy because I have been busy with other things that take priority over what he wants me to do on his schedule. I have been nothing but polite until this latest bitching on here - and yes, there is a point where I get tired of it and I start responding as people treat me. If you actually look at how I respond - not how the people who treat me like shit and get a response in kind but the actual customers who merely ask questions or have complaints - those people get treated like the valued customers they are. When you start treating me like shit on here or in person then I will respond the same way.

Finally on the doing you a favor. If you're an Endurance team then we are. It is a horrible business decision for WERA and has been for almost a decade. True Endurance racing in this country cannot support itself at a National level. The ONLY way it can be run is if you have someone like Evelyne who is willing to take money from a profitable part of her business and use it to fund a losing part. Endurance racing is good for the sport but it is bad for the business. It absolutely is a favor she is doing and if it hadn't been for her listening to me for years it would have been cut back or possibly even shut down totally years ago. I have been pushing for it for as long as I've been racing and yeah, when I have teams bitching at me it gets me a little pissed off because I have been there supporting you all along even if you're not paying enough attention to realize it. Same thing as Vintage, I have people bitching to Evelyne that I am killing Vintage racing when the only reason it exists is because I keep fighting with her for it.

This isn't some customer service business where we put on events, go home, and just show up another day to put in our hours and move on to the next customer. This is our life, our passion, our entire world. You're not just customers who need to be sucked up to because the customer is always right. You're our friends, our family, our partners in putting on these events. So I do apologize if you don't want to be treated like friends and family - the good parts and bad - but if this just becomes a customer service job to me then I'll go do that where I can actually make some money and let someone else deal with the bullshit bits.

I guess what it all comes down to is I cannot treat our customers as merely customers. If that isn't going to work for you I truly am sorry but that will not change.

 

I totally agree, they are incorrect - on the website. As I have said and I guess I will say again, originally it was an error on our end not making Katra a new team at Road Atlanta. I am sorry I wasn't there but I had to be at another event. I did get that fixed in the main computer prior to Talladega so the grid and everything else was correct. It wasn't fixed on the site as there was then and still is an issue. We have put a new server in the office to get some of the items fixed which led of course to other things being slightly buggy and we are working on the problems - including the Endurance points. Tuesday the 3rd of September I got sick and have missed the majority of the last two weeks in the office. I have gotten done the bare minimum to keep the events we had to run going but that was all I could manage. I apologize for being sick, it was not something I chose willingly I assure you and I will do my damnedest to keep it from happening again so that I can get the Endurance Points fixed on the website for you.

 

That makes sense, once I get caught up here I'll try that - right now I'm installing updated versions of sql onto 3 different computers so we have points/grids/sscoring for the events this weekend.

We needed the new server badly but good lord is this getting annoying and I've lost the two weeks I had set aside to get it handled.

 

The angry mob I can handle, today is my day to join in any mob into computer hate.