More riders?

Why hasn't WERA started to do their own TDs?

 

They did to some extent.Fridays,and Ed had his school,and we all rode.
Sometimes they even let everyone on the track at the end of the day together,but just racers,and riders school.
I'm old enough to remember when there wasn't open track days.
You had to go race if you wanted on the track.
My personal opinion w/o going in depth,is track day orgs have hurt grids more than anything. Most guys don't wanna peel off into turn one banging bars for a sprint race.
I also believe word of mouth can,and has brought tons of guys out to race. I've personally brought in my fair share of mountain hooligans over the yrs to race wera.
Several were very successful from N GA.
It's definitely not what it use to be. I don't believe there's one magical answer. As stated before, racers race Anything else is track days,and cloud talk.

 

"Sometimes"

When was this? I've been racing with WERA for 10 years and have never seen, or heard of this during my time.

The rest of your statement is a commonly seen antiquated response by others about this very topic.

Yet again, round and round the discussion goes, year after year, with the same replies, just different original poster.

> Post up about getting more riders
> "Back in my day..." responses with little/no meaningful contribution to the solution
> Some will post up ideas
> "Been tried, doesn't work"

Thread dies off, new post 6-12 months later. Rinse, repeat.

 

If there were more than one endurance race less than a 10 hour drive from me that would be a great argument. I did Motoseries and LeanTD endurance racing for many years because I could do more than one event a year without driving 10+ hours. Since Lean folded, I only did WERA endurance at Pitt Race last year...next year likely the same. I might consider Summit Point (6.5 hours away) if I can get two or three of my teamates to commit.

 

Most of the rounds are about 10 hours away from me. I guess I could just do TD's at Putnam and MidOH....nahhh.

 

The sometimes he was referring to was back in the early 90's. A group of racers would rent TGPR or Roebling early or before the season started. I don't even remember how we found out about them. Poorly organized would be an understatement.
He's spot on about there not being one magical answer, though.

 

Crazy thought: WERA cares more about racing and racers than making money

 

Well son, I guess it was before your time. Are you related to Broome, so things that happened in racing before your time didn't exist? Back when I started....

 

Check Beeb Bucks or Panther Award? The purpose of creating this thread....

 

Going off the replies in this thread, you're just not a racer.

/sarcasm

I would agree that there is not one magical answer. But can you tell me how sharing a sea story from 30 years ago contributes to finding a meaningful resolution to the topic at hand?

 

Somebody asked about WERA doing trackdays and Paul mentioned that there was a time when open practice days were a thing.

 

I can already anticipate the response. "Tried it, doesn't work."

Clearly we're better off to bitch about track day orgs 'stealing' business rather than come up with a hybrid business model to try and...I don't know...strive to achieve to be more than stagnant business model?

 

Well, trackdays are a profitable business, so maybe you're jn the right track with a hybrid solution (pun intended). What if there was a WERA TD subsidiary with the intent purpose of trying to steer as many people as possible into racing?

Everyone else continues to frequent WERA TDs and feeding the business.

 

Man, I hadn't realized that WERA was asking for advice on their "stagnatbusiness model"? I thought that this thread was started by parties interested in getting bigger grids, so they could have better racing. I haven't seen or heard anything which indicates, to me, that WERA is unprofitable overall and I hadn't heard that they were looking for new business ventures, i.e. running track days in addition to their current business.
What about if "Tried it, doesn't work" is a true statement, perhaps even a universal truth? Just because you don't like it doesn't make it wrong. Perhaps these aren't "sea stories" but actual recountings of things from before your time, which have some relvence and purpose within the context of today's racing environment, but that would leave you out because since you weren't there, it didn't happen.

Remind me again of what worthwhile contribution you have made to this discussion?

 

Well I'm glad someone finally caught on to what I've been saying for years every time Sean bitches about TD's stealing their business.

The vintage classes fucking kill me. Take a look at the number of unique riders in some of these classes. This is the total unique riders for the entire year.

http://www.wera.com/points/vintage/?x=1098

500GP: 1 rider. Literally 1 person.
V2. 6 people.
V3. 7.
V4. 3.
V5. 6.
V6. 5.

The only respectable ones are the V8 classes, with 51 (!!!) and 23 riders.

How much of the day is carved out for these classes and not replaced with a more profitable class/system...why again?

 

Gee, I dunno, perhaps the list of entries I've signed up for in the last 10 years? I'm putting my money where my mouth is, what about everyone else here?

Perhaps it's time to put soft feelings aside and recognize that someone can be critical of a business they're actually supporting as well, because I dunno, maybe they'd actually like to see it continue to be around? Wild idea, I know.

 

NEMRR (LRRS) runs 3 programs to get racers in... penguin trackdays, racer school, and superstreet ("racing" non prepped bikes). All 3 work as good as you could expect given the facts of the current racing environment.

 

Here's my view: mid 30's, race or have raced pretty much everything on 2 wheels. Supermoto, MX, JDAY, Minimoto, flatrack, ICE, DH (mountain bikes) probably some I'm forgetting

Going from trackday rider to racer for me was easier than most because of friends/connections/experience from other racing but I'll list what I found held me back from making the jump sooner. (some of these will be the usual suspects)

1. Risk of injury- possibly missing work (even though I race many other forms, this seemed to be of higher risk, partly because Loudon is my home track and is famously dangerous)
2.Bike prep
3.Costs
4. Complicated- license, transponders, classses, schedule, tech etc. (honestly this is still a PITA as things are always a mess which is typical of all racing orgs but NEMRR is one of the worst but doesn't admit it to themselves)
5. Gatekeeping- even though everyone says they want new racers there's an undertone that's hard to ignore. Makes sense given its a high risk/high ego sport.

All the motorsports I race are stagnant or dying while DH mountain bikes are growing quickly. From my perspective a lot of that difference is in the culture. Part of it is in how easy it is to throw your DH bike in your car and go race, no trucks/trailer/fuel/parts etc

 

Here is another dumb idea. WERA do their own track days the day before race day. I'm sure this is not a new idea.[/QUOTE]

I had mentioned this a few pages back. My thought was it would get track day riders around WERA racers and get a good vibe. Some might stay and race the next day or decide to do it next time around. The reason being to attract more racers.

There is no doubt in my mind that WERA folks have already thought of this.