New Sunday Schedule

[DelanieC]

Even worse than last year. How is ONE twenty minute session considered acceptable?

"0800 Group 4 Saturday Race followed by Group 5 Saturday Race (9 laps or 20 min)
TA + TTC 20 minutes
TTB - 20 minutes
Qualifying #3, Groups 1 - 5 consecutively. Groups may run before or after lunch.

1100 - 1200 Lunch

1201 Qualifying Resumes, if necessary
SECS/SARRC Feature Races (15 laps or 30 min) Groups 1 thru 5 consecutively."

[DelanieC]

For comparison, here's last year's Sunday schedule where they had to fit in three extra races and still finished by about 3pm....

"The storm this afternoon has forced us to adjust the schedule for Sunday.
At 0800 the 9 lap SARRC/SECS races for Saturday, Run Groups 4 5 and 6 will occur.

Next will be 15 minute sessions for TTA, TTB, and TTC. The afternoon TT sessions
are cancelled.

Sunday qualifying sessions for SARRC/SECS will be 10 minutes each.

Sunday SARRC/SECS races will remain at 15 laps or 30 minutes at this time.

Schedule will be re-evaluated during the 1100-1200 quiet hour.

Rick Mitchell,Chief Steward
Nick Voigt, Chair SOM"

[farrout]

Last year TT got one 15 minute session. This year it is a 20 minute session. The option was to have 2 10 min sessions. I made the decision. Yes TT lost some time but so did everyone

[DelanieC]

Last year everything was done well before 4pm without combining TT groups. How is there not time this year to combine and give us our second session? I really don't get it.

[rodhx]

Delanie, noticed you didn't run this morning. did something happen to your car?

[DelanieC]

Several Time-Trial-only drivers and I changed to a one day time trial and didn't run this morning.

All track activity was done by 4:15 even with lengthy gaps between races and a red flag in the middle of one race. Just like last year, there was plenty of time for two more time trial sessions.

[rodhx]

Of course, also like last year, that is an easy call to make in hindsight.

I'm sorry you guys felt the need to withdraw after losing 10 minutes of track time. I was in the group impacted last year, so I understand your decision.

Thank you for coming back and working a corner in the rain with us all afternoon.

[FVee90]

Sunday had storms in the area. All it took is one to be within a close proximity with lightening the tram would have been sent out and a ??? delay would have put us in a bind. Could anyone have predicted that the race delay was because of a broken D ring cable that had the formula car drop off the wrecker (in all my years never seen that happen)?
Schedule timing is a crap shoot you either have too much time left over or not enough (with Barber you pay $$ for going over).
The worst that ever happened to me running was I paid a large entry fee for a hillclimb in the early nineties and I got one 2 minute run, stuff happens not saying it doesn't feel any better but the intent when any of this is planned is not to screw someone.
Thanks for your work

[JohnW8]

There's been a lot of talk about NASA is better, NASA is awesome. I crewed for 2 race teams that ran NASA and saw that the large TT or HPDE groups would go out and a few laps into a session there would be an incident and cause a black-flag-all. Boom. Your session is over, due to the schedule and having to get XX number of cars on the track in a certain number of hours, there were no restarts, no refunds. Perhaps that has changed but it made me see that NASA might not be as awesome as everyone is led to believe.

This isn't meant to disparage NASA. They are good people and I like their events but I wanted to illustrate the point that everyone has schedules and sometimes schedules can be adjusted and at times they cannot. Please know this Delanie, Craig and I were working to get the most equitable outcome for all parties involved. It's not easy and I have no clue how Craig does it. I blame sorcery.

Last year was a different Chief Steward and a different outcome/solution. My friend Tom Neel missed his Saturday race when it was run on Sunday morning because he didn't know the schedule changed. He was without access to email to get the schedule change. I called him and he was 30 miles away eating pancakes. Schedule changes can bite everyone in the a$$.

[JohnW8]

Rod, you need to change your avatar. Every time I see that photo, I think it's Clay.

[FVee90]

John...you could change yours to a green TR8 (inside joke).

[rodhx]

Rod, you need to change your avatar. Every time I see that photo, I think it's Clay.

I don't own a race car (at the moment) so the limit of my prep for Solo Nats was setting my avatar to that pic of me from 2 years ago

John...you could change yours to a green TR8 (inside joke).

That's funny. Wish that car had made it this weekend. I have never met that driver.

[farrout]

Scheduling is a bit of a black art. When weather and other factors (wrecks, cars off track, etc) happen, then the schedule gets modified. A battle plan is only good until the first shot is fired. As a Racer, I understand that just like anyone who has ever entered a track event does that most schedules get modified in real life.

How about some facts:

The overall schedule had 80 minutes of TT time with Saturday front loaded at 50 minutes. That was for a couple of reasons. First is that most TT'ers leave around noon on Sunday. Second is that 60% of the TT entries were for Saturday only (TT'ers and Road Racers both). TT got a $370 weekend rate which was $4.63 per minute. The one day TT rate was $250 or $5 per minute for Saturday.

Road Racers had 90 minutes of track time at $470 or $5.22 per minute. If they ran one day at $370 their rate was $9.25 (Sat) or $7.40 (Sun).

The Sunday schedule changes changed the weekend rate for TT to $5.29 and the Road Race rate to $5.53.

TT people can complain about losing some track time but look at it in the larger picture rather than in the myopic view. I would argue that the TT drivers got the better deal.

TT does not even come close to generating enough drivers to make a stand alone TT event at Barber feasible. Even at triple our SEDIV TT average, it would take a much larger TT entry fee. At 100 TT entries the fee would be $600 minimum. At our usual 40, it would be >$1400.

This year, there were 138 SARRC/SECS entered and 52 TT pre-race. At that level of SARRC/SECS entries, our Regions could about make the event work financially without a TT and just add in practice time for the Road Racers. Do I want to do that - NO! I have run TT for >10 years and am a leader in keeping the SEDIV TT Program alive. I incorporated TT into Barber because I wanted the SEDIV TT community to have the opportunity to race at Barber.


But, let me put the challenge out there for everyone. Come forward and step up to being involved with the planning and execution of the Barber or TGPR events. It is not as simple as paying your entry fee and showing up with your car. Months of effort take place well before the weekend itself.

[DelanieC]

None of that changes that there were 45 minutes of wasted track time that we (ALSCCA and TVR/TAC) paid for, even after a freak tow truck malfunction and conditions that required cars to be hauled out of the gravel after every race.

The thing I take issue with is "most TTers leave around noon on Sunday". Of course most people leave TGPR at noon on Sunday. It's TGPR. Yesterday, In less than five minutes I had a decent group of TTers with me begging for a session at the end of the day. The races still would've happened the same way and if another freak thunderstorm comes up, oh well. We don't get those runs at the end of the day because of weather, not scheduling.

Let me be clear that I am very grateful for all the work put in to these events and I'm always willing to help.

[farrout]

Simply out - Quit your bitching and become part of the solution, not part of the problem