My suspicion is that the low entry for the '23 Runoffs in FA was at least in part due to the location. VIR's great, but it's a looong way from half the country and not really a "bucket list" track. I think we'll see a rebound next year when the '24 Runoffs are at Elkhart.
Also might be useful to note that in terms of average-entries-per-event, FA was still in the upper half of all classes in 2023. These classes has lower average entries than FA (which had an average of 3.5 entries per event):
- STU (3.4)
- FC (3.2)
- T2 (3.1)
- T1 (2.8)
- GT1 (2.7)
- P1 (2.4)
- AS (2.3)
- GTL (2.2)
- P2 (2.1)
- FX (2.1)
- F600 (1.9)
- GT3 (1.8)
- GTX (1.3)
Formula classes with higher average participation than FA were FF (4.3), FV (5.4), and FE2 (5.7).
Regarding F1000s specifically, almost all of the Colorado F1000s were temporarily down for various reasons after the June Sprints (but are being repaired!).
Jeff