Is club racing going to die?

Agian...my opinion from my limited experiance is this...

1.) If I am going to travel to a race track during the weekend, then I am staying both days. It's not worth it for me to go fro only one day....

This is what sucks about track days...one day events that most of the time are held during the begining of the work week. Race weekends are easier to schedual for me....

2.) Trackdays are great. You can go out and run a bunch of laps with zero pressure and run at your own pace. But it's not racing.....and cannot replace racing. It's just not the same thing..

3.) Schedual.....Ideally....I would love to see longer practices in the moring for Saturday and Sunday and less Classes all together.

I think it would be cool as hell to be able to get a good hour of practice (actual time to make changes to a bike and the test that change) in the morning while running two groups (B and C Groups) or 30 minutes running 1 group ( C group)

Then ditch the 16-20 lap Solos and run 8-10 lap Sprint races on Saturday....

How cool would that be.....1 hour of practice on Saturday morning and the B and C Superbike on Saturday and the another hour of practice on Sunday then Run B and C Superstock on Sunday...


It just seems to me that Solos are too long and Sprints are too short. Especially if it is 180 degrees outside on Saturday and the on Sunday there is a incident and the races get shortened to 4 laps...

 

I feel that if you can squeeze in 3 rounds of practice on sat and 2 rounds on sunday, get ride of the solo/GT's and move some races to sat you may see an increase in entries. Maybe. But it sure would make better and safer racing. There are more chances to get our bikes right before actually going racing. People can remember which way the track went, etc... A lot of people do the mini endurance races as a supplement practice because practice time is scant and a lot of times we can't get enough time off to come to friday practices.

 

But racing is not for everyone. we had a debate on a street rider board on what is better, TD or racing. And a lot of people expressed no desire to race. Mongo is right, in the short term a lot of "racers" dropped out to do track days because they just want to have fun on a track. But in the long run, the easy accessability of trackdays do bring out more racers who otherwise would not have gotten involved.

 

Sunzzy, have you raced with WERA?

Just curious because WERA has 2 rounds of practice on both Saturday and Sunday and they are usually about 18 minutes each.

 

Why

But why, its a 95 916....hell its 10 years old...an still kickin, stop by next time i let ya take er for a spin....

aaron
#916

 

Just run 600 Novice class on Saturday, or as the last race on Sunday. That way they could red-flag and restart until it gets dark.

 

Yes I am certainly in this camp. I can't see myself racing against other people because it's expensive and risky (as a parent of small children, both of these are real problems!). I do like to "race against myself" in a controlled environment like track days. This is less expensive and less risky hence more attractive for me.

Maybe when my kids are older I'll want to graduate from the track day sandbox to the world of racing but at that point I'll probably head for vintage or the class formerly known as CORC...

 

What happens if one of those fast growing trackday clubs decides to leverage its customer base to start a new club racing series? What if the organizers outperfrom WERA operationally? What if they focus more on customer retention and customer service? If I were running a trackday club as a business and had 2k+ members, I'd look into doing it.

 

bag of worms spilled all over the ground......

 

I have never raced so I can't speak from experience on that but I have done a lot of track days and like others have said I don't think you can compare the two. Track days you give and take, if someone shows you a wheel most of the time you let them go. Racing, I would think that if someone shows you a wheel you are going to stuff them, well maybe not stuff them but you are going to try your hardest to not let them pass you. I would think that the intensity of racing is so much more than track days. The mentallity and the determination that you guys have is probably 10 times more than 90% of the guys doing track days. The 10% that have that mentallity that are doing track days are probably racers wanting track time. I think that's why you see more guys get hurt and sorry to say lose their life racing. You can't compare the two. Hopefully next year (if the $$$ is there) I will be racing. Just my .02.

 

I sometimes wonder since bikes are more powerful now than ever it seems we have more accidents.(im not sure but it feels that way) Could the effect of self preservation be a cause? Thats why more people seem content with trackdays only?

 

I've had more close calls during track days than I've ever had racing.

 

I have only seen 3 deaths at a track. 2 in practice (one moring and one Friday) and 1 in a race (and this was Tim Francis which I think could be considered a freak accident by anyone's account). also I have seen as many airlifts from trackdays as races, about 2 each. I don't have enough time in to have good stats, but those are my 2 years woth. To me it is about the same from a risk perspective.

 

Everything being equal (more on that in a minute) racing is probably more dangerous than a track day. Usually more bikes on the track and as was stated before people are trying to beat you. Even in the race group on a TD, you show someone a wheel in more than one corner they will almost always let you by.

HOWEVER (here is the "equal" part) many (most?) of the folks at a TD do not have anywhere near the experience of riding that close to other bikes at speed as the racers. There is also often a huge difference in the bikes abilities and closing speeds. Add that with the inexperience and it can get scary out there (in the "Sport" groups). So at the end of the day, it is probably pretty close to equal.

I do feel "safer" at track days that at races but it is because I ride in the racer group with that give and take.

 

As the owner of "one of those track day" clubs I beleive that I may have a bit of perspective for you.

In the year 2001 more Sportbikes went "on track" for non-racing than for racing. This trend is continuing a very strong upward trend. Riders now have access to the track without all of teh added expense of a racing program. Lets face it , for many $75 bucks for a 8 lap sprint race isn't nearly as appealing as $110 - $195 for 150+ MILES of track time on tracks like Barber, Mid-Ohio, Road America, Road Atlanta, Grattan, etc......

Lots of racers "retire" to track days. We've been doing this long enough to see many riders turn into racers, win championships and then turn back into track day riders. It's a cycle that seems to be on the rise.

For our members who want to go racing (and there are MANY) Sportbike Track Time could (and would like to) funnel many, many new racers into a racing program but I'm not going to chase after WERA, CCS, Fastrax etc.. If they want to grow the sport and their clubs, they should be approaching the major track day orgs and working with us collectively. This is the single best pool of prospective new racers around, period.


(Sean are you listening??)