Pan American Racing Series

It works because as far as I know they are able to rent pbir very cheap due to a close relationship.

 

You and your darn facts and such…

 

I'm curious. How many sidecars show up?

 

Doesn't an official timed practice session do the same thing?

 

This is the old FMRRA which was born due to a dispute with Henry DeGouw and PBIR. The former road course manager of PBIR is a partner of the series. They started as a track day org. As @moto316 says, they do a lot of things right. They leverage technology for registration and tech, they are almost on a par with MotoAmerica in this respect. They have a large social media presence.

90% of the series is at PBIR. PBIR is officially sold and will be closing at some point in 2022. They usually have 1 or 2 rounds at Homestead, however with PBIR closing, Homestead has increased their rates dramatically now that it's the only track south of Daytona.

This has caused the series to want to expand and they are trying to get into all kinds of places. I even heard Sebring is on the table, although it's some kind of modified course. Having raced Sebring in a car I can't see how it's feasible, but there's probably a way to do the layout that I don't know about.

Florida Trackdays is huge and thus they have alot of crossover, getting riders to race the series.

At the risk of sounding like an old fart, racing is on life support down here in South Florida. Daytona is the only event that has a real turnout- CCS is struggling and is down to a couple of weekends a year, mostly due to aggressive competition with FMRRA / Pan American and a lack of marketing, lack of viable registration options, etc. FMRRA just has them beat in those areas.

Old Man Complaint- it wasn't all that long ago that CCS Homestead rounds in December and February were packed to the point where you couldn't get a garage unless you pre-entered. Now we're lucky to have 1/3 of the garages occupied and that's with people pulling their whole truck in and setting up camp. If it wasn't for the New England contingent coming down with Penguin, it would have been dead.

Having grown up and lived down here my whole life, it's a strange market. One season the football stadium is sold out, the next they're going bankrupt. People are very fickle and also pretty transient. No idea if the success they have had at Homestead and PBIR will follow them to tracks further north. I hope it does, only because we need some form of racing to survive down here!

Don't get me started on the younger generation of racers, track day riders, TikTokers, etc.

Back in My day.....

You Kids don't know how it is....

Now, get off my grass!

 

The qualifying is kind of neat and adds a little excitement to Saturday practice. I think the only reason it works for them is they don't have massive turnout. It's basically a practice session where they record the times.

They have a flexible registration process- you can enter a race 15 min before if you just walk into registration with your credit card. So for Saturday qualifying, anyone can go out in any session they think they *might* enter a race in for Sunday. IF you wanted to be sneaky (I.e. cheat) you could go out with your 1000 for the 600 session and set a fast time. Unless someone complains, they don't police it too much. The problem is sometimes you have 300's going out in the twins sessions, which makes getting a fast lap difficult (15 min session is maybe 4 hot laps.) But as I said, it's very popular despite it's pitfalls. IF you don't go out for qualifying, you'll be starting behind amateurs- something that has been argued and lost a few times.

 

My original point was that if you want to set grids by fastest times it's easy to that with a timed practice session.

In regards, to a true "qualifying" session it can be really cool for a series that has these two important factors to support it. 1) A large group of spectators at the track or on TV to get excited about it. 2) And to support these you need great commentors both at the track and or on TV to fired up the intended crowd.

For instance, when we did "Superbike Superpole" for the CSBK Nationals the lack of spectators at the track (the economy caused low rider and fan turnouts) didn't help it create excitement and many racers saw it as just another reason to buy one more rear.

I would imagine for a club series like PBIR there's not a large group of spectators there on Saturday so these people really don't care about a stand-alone Q session? But yes, in the proper circumstance a "Superpole Qualifying Session" can be real cool.

 

i agree, as a participant of both series I don’t care whether there’s a dedicated qualifying session or if a timed practice session determines the grid, but there has to be something. Gridding based on points or how early you registered is BS.

 

Looks like they've been cut for this season fortunately but from what I recall last season or the season prior it was mostly a 3 maybe 4 bike grid I think

 

About the same numbers we get at Loudon. AHRMA seems to be siphoning off the entries with a multi track series.

 

Even they don't have that many at each event

 

I think there's a reason for that.

 

"issues they have been having with rider satisfaction".. ummkay. Record turnouts at Summit point, njmp, etc.. As you said, the pan am series is just a renamed fmrra show, that pushed FL region ccs out, when the manager of Palm beach raceway was a part owner of fmrra series, and pushed ccs OUT of palm beach raceway, by doubling the track rental fee for ccs. Also, fmrra was "allegedly" scamming for track insurance, by calling their events track day "mock races", i know at least at Roebling road this was true, as Jack, the track manager told me this.. he told them they had 5 days to get actual race insurance or they lose the day. they did get race insurance and that event was held (couple years back).

 

I have a couple of friends that race FMRRA they like it, its just a little to far for me to go try it out.
I am all for other series to pop up, especially if they bring new and or better things, it may force existing organizations to innovate as well.

As far as the name, I thought there were a series that raced in central/south america with that name.

 

That is interesting about CCS, this was the first year I raced with them outside of the midwest, NJMP was awesome. Over here in the midwest I know some people are not super happy, but with no other options they will keep showing up.

 

Personally, I'm okay with the point basis and/or last year's standings for the first round. It's an incentive to make more rounds if you don't want a shit grid position. But gridding based upon when you registered is 100% lame.

 

Kevin Elliott is way better at killing road racing than mongo will ever be

 

Well couple things could play into the record turn out, were they last year or this year?
Also the riders not being satisfied was after the season but probably won't turn into anything and they were just whining on Facebook etc

 

people will bitch about any thing.. any time.. any where.. Nothing new