Sad to see endurance series fail

Mongo since Charlotte was brought up I have a question about that track. I know ama raced there once upon a time as well as WERA. What happened with that? I'm assuming its crazy high to rent and unsafe to ride but I was just curious about it

 

24hr Grom Endurance.



Only 1 set of tires. Maybe a rear change halfway through. And considering they get about 90mpg, there wouldn't be much to the fuel bill.

 

"Run until you have to go to reserve"

Later that day

"he got tired after his 2.5 hour stint and passed out."

 

:up:

 

I hate that the endurance stuff is gone. I never got to do it. I'd like to. I don't know if this helps at all but, I'd be willing to put up $100 out of my pocket for an endurance race at Road Atlanta. I know it ain't much but, hell, I figure if I start the ball rollin now, maybe we could make this happen. Hell, look at what Russell did at VIR. That was a badass sprint race. Surely we could cover some costs and make an endurance race happen.

Anyone want in?


I'm game.



Road Atlanta 2016. BAM!

 

Buy-in for an endurance race is pretty hefty. It used to be $125 / hour for the race fees, so a 4 hour endurance cost $500. You're going to wear out at least one set of tires depending on what you're racing, so toss in another $400. If you just run pump gas you can generally get away with about $100 in fuel. If you're lucky and nobody wads the bike up your only other costs for the race are going to be routine maintenance, wear and tear on the machine, etc. And of course beer.

Of course most teams would split the $1000 we just ciphered evenly, so depending on how many riders you had you might end up (per person) splitting roughly the cost of a race weekend.

The problem is that endurance doesn't generate near the revenue for WERA that sprint races do. It sucks but that's the reality. If WERA can put 3 races / 16 bikes per hour on the track, each rider paying ~80 to race they generate $15,360 in revenue in 4 hours. If they put 16 endurance bikes out there for 4 hours, each bike paying $125/hour they generate $8,000 in revenue. Huge difference.

And if they have a fiasco like Roebling last go around where there were 4 bikes for 4 hours, well ... huge loss.

 

Welp, my idea sucked. I'm out.

 

Didn't suck, I liked it. Just wanted to point out the magnitude of the problem. In order to make it viable against sprints WERA would nearly have to double the per-hour entry fee and get attendance up.

10 to 13 entries had become commonplace during the last couple of years, and as I mentioned Roebling's 4 entry weekend pretty much sealed the fate of the series.

Making it more expensive while enticing more folks to buy is a hard sell.

 

Very well written! just to add to this, there are tracks where rentals are a lot less, where the smaller endurance grids would hurt less if they happened. but people don't want to just race there they want road A, barber, vir, etc. which are very expensive to rent.

 

I'd go to CMP for a XR/CRF/Grom enduro.

 

bring 30 of your friends at 100$ and pick a date!

 

Our heavyweight series is still kicking but is declining slightly...but our lightweight series has exploded.

There is certainly a cost difference between the two to run, but it's not huge...maybe $50 a rider? Could be more on a litre bike (almost no team runs them).

Endurance is huge fun and a great value. Many guys/gals in our club endurance exclusively.