Hi,
One of the DUFFUS (Da Unofficial Formula F United States) championship weekends has been arranged, so we want to give you who, what, where and how and see how you all feel about it. Please bear in mind that we are doing this just for the fun of racing in larger fields; no points; dubiously prestigious poorly crafted plastic trophies; and with the hope that you will find this appealing and decide to come and join us.
This event has caused us to break one of the promises that we made in our original post. Please keep reading if you are still interested.
The "far" (for us East Coasters) DUFFUS race is going to take place on Fourth of July weekend at Mid Ohio. Mike Rand of Formula Promotions (the organizers of the Pro F1600/F2000/Pro Atlantic series) has invited us to join them at Mid Ohio that weekend. Hence, the broken promise.............however; Mike is planning on racing with us that weekend. He has some very capable minions (my description, not his) who will look after the pro series drivers while he is out kicking our butts in between the pro series on track sessions.
This promises to be a very interesting weekend as Mike's group is planning on having an all "purpose built" race car weekend. In addition to the three pro series events and DUFFUS; there are races being planned for Formula Vee and for sport racing cars. This event will look very much like the 25th Anniversary of Formula Ford that Mike organized at Lime Rock in 1994.
We will get two sessions of on track time each day of the three day weekend. The format is for us to decide. At the moment we are looking at having one practice and one qualifying session on Friday; another qualifying session and a race on Saturday and two races on Sunday. We are considering that format so that those of us who have never been to Mid Ohio get a good amount of time to familiarize ourselves with the race course.
Formula Promotions will take care of timing and scoring and will be providing us with results sheets for our on track sessions. We will be responsible for our own tech inspection. As we mentioned previously, DUFFUS races will run under the SCCA Formula F rules package and the MARRS Club Ford rules will be used for those entering as Club Fords. The MARRS CF rules are essentially identical to the NARRC CF rules; hard tire compounds, one end outboard and Honda engines are eligible.
The entire weekend will run under an SCCA sanction, so it will count for license renewals. Any level of SCCA license is permissible unless you are planning on also running in one of the pro series events. In that case, you will have to have an SCCA Pro License. Mike has said that we are welcome to run in the pro series and would be willing to do something accommodating in terms of entry fee for those that wish to do that. You would however, have to run the pro series tires in the pro series sessions.
The entry fee for the weekend is going to be $495. For some perspective, a normal MARRS regional race is $275. A MARRS weekend consists of a qualifying session, a qualifying race and a feature race. Viewed through this lens; this seems like a very reasonable charge for the three day weekend.
The four of us have some concerns and legitimate reservations. We have concerns regarding how you might respond to or feel about the entry fee; about the three day weekend; about sharing in the Pro weekend rather than it being a regular SCCA regional race; about the number of on track sessions. We also very much like this idea and we hope you do as well.
We have some opportunities for additional events like this, but we really need to know how you feel about this. We are trying to adhere to our low key, very informal, "flash mob" intent, but I suspect that most flash mob type things do require some amount of organization and planning. Please bear in mind that we (Doug, Dave, Phil & I) do not receive any portion of the proceeds. We are doing this to try and see if there are more drivers like us who would like to race in larger fields reminiscent of the "old days". In order to do this there are still some i's the need dotting and t's that need crossing.
We four will be at Mid Ohio on the Fourth of July; can we expect some company?
Thanks,
Joe Marcinski
Club Ford #04