Criteria for becoming a Majors/National class

[rave motorsports]

I guess I live in too much of a black and white world. My entire background comes from manufacturing. We found that if no daily or hourly goal was established numbers fell. If we had clear goals more often then not they were reached. The analogy I was given as a new manager 35 years ago was: would you go play a football game for eight hours a day with no scoreboard and not knowing the score. Told to just keep playing away and if we want you to know the score we will tell you. It causes frustration and rarely results in a successful result.

[Daryl DeArman]

I agree.

Just stating that history suggests there is no concrete number.

When they have assigned a number to it, it was short lived as they didn't wish to enforce it. So they change it.

[Phil Creighton]

Daryl

"Look at how long all the IT classes were regional only despite their huge numbers.....for years any request for National status was met with a response such as "not within class philosophy".

I was on the CRB when IT was introduced and made perpetually regional to save it from what had happened with Prod etc over the years. We left safety valves for those cars to progress into the National program via Prod / GT and more recently ST classes. It was supposed to stay a regional class to keep budgets and car prep within reach and achieved its goals. I still hold the view that the quickest way to kill IT will be to make it Runoffs eligible or whatever they call National classes now.

[Matt King]

It was supposed to stay a regional class to keep budgets and car prep within reach and achieved its goals. I still hold the view that the quickest way to kill IT will be to make it Runoffs eligible or whatever they call National classes now.

An even quicker way to kill it will be when all the regional races they are eligible to race at go away!

[MDRacing]

2) If all of these Majors drivers are supporting the majors available class why was there only 5 FVs at the Majors at Hallett? The President of SCCA is in my division and owns an FV. I don't know the reason but she was not listed as running at that event. Fact look at the results on the Mid Div web site. We will have more FST in this area than that next year.

Lisa was at Hallett, with her arm in a sling. Last weekend at the Barber Majors, she was still concerned about the rate of recovery but driving, pretty well, it seemed to me. And there were 12 vees at Barber on less than thirty days notice.

I'm just as frustrated as you about some of the ways the SCCA class structure works. What was the last class dropped for low participation - ASR before 1990? I see the Runoffs online coverage and six or eight classes can only gather ten or twelve cars for the Runoffs and two-thirds of those are from two divisions, meaning seven divisions can only send four or five cars. Lately S2 fell into reorganization with CSR/DSR into P1/2. Before that it was F-G-H/P into two classes and limited-prep rules.

The BoD has waived the requirement to make numbers for several classes to be made national because they met the right demographic (or the right people made a return) or whatever. Spec Miata made the numbers but was going to be kept regional. They got in because another class that couldn't make the numbers was waived in and the BoD was shamed into letting SM in also. The other class is still struggling at the bottom of the list and SM is the most popular class in SCCA.

You have to go back in the archives to find out what the old path was to make national. The BoD was no better able to follow that guideline than it was at following the 2.5 Rule so now both are gone. To make Majors work, you need eight to twelve national classes that can be fit into four to six run groups. We have twenty-eight, there is still a lot of whittling that needs to be done before we need new classes.

The fact that SCCA missed the opportunity to upgrade FV to 1600 cc engines and later chassis components is very well documented. The Aussies, the Irish and a lot of others made the change, but the boat may have truly sailed for the US now that disc brakes are dead. I understand you want to run an updated car and FV has a lot of other issues but when there are over twenty classes going to the Runoffs, many with only a fraction of the participation of FV, I'm sorry, just can't give you much hope.

[butch deer]

Lisa was at Hallett, with her arm in a sling. Last weekend at the Barber Majors, she was still concerned about the rate of recovery but driving, pretty well, it seemed to me. And there were 12 vees at Barber on less than thirty days notice.

I'm just as frustrated as you about some of the ways the SCCA class structure works. What was the last class dropped for low participation - ASR before 1990? I see the Runoffs online coverage and six or eight classes can only gather ten or twelve cars for the Runoffs and two-thirds of those are from two divisions, meaning seven divisions can only send four or five cars. Lately S2 fell into reorganization with CSR/DSR into P1/2. Before that it was F-G-H/P into two classes and limited-prep rules.

The BoD has waived the requirement to make numbers for several classes to be made national because they met the right demographic (or the right people made a return) or whatever. Spec Miata made the numbers but was going to be kept regional. They got in because another class that couldn't make the numbers was waived in and the BoD was shamed into letting SM in also. The other class is still struggling at the bottom of the list and SM is the most popular class in SCCA.

You have to go back in the archives to find out what the old path was to make national. The BoD was no better able to follow that guideline than it was at following the 2.5 Rule so now both are gone. To make Majors work, you need eight to twelve national classes that can be fit into four to six run groups. We have twenty-eight, there is still a lot of whittling that needs to be done before we need new classes.

The fact that SCCA missed the opportunity to upgrade FV to 1600 cc engines and later chassis components is very well documented. The Aussies, the Irish and a lot of others made the change, but the boat may have truly sailed for the US now that disc brakes are dead. I understand you want to run an updated car and FV has a lot of other issues but when there are over twenty classes going to the Runoffs, many with only a fraction of the participation of FV, I'm sorry, just can't give you much hope.

twenty one cars on the grid for the FF,F500,FV majors at Hallett. Plenty of room for a few FST cars that would fall into that group nicely. There is no minors(divisional race at Hallett this year. People who live near there just want a place to race. Tracks shouldn't be allowed to hold a Majors unless they also hold a divisional. Most regional classes can race at majors by making minor changes(some as easy as changing the class letters on there cars) The few wear that's not possible are lost entries and possibly lost members to SCCA. I'm a 50 year member with hundreds of race with SCCA but will race most of next year with MWCSCC because they hold races and welcome me there.

[Daryl DeArman]

I was on the CRB when IT was introduced and made perpetually regional to save it from what had happened with Prod etc over the years. We left safety valves for those cars to progress into the National program via Prod / GT and more recently ST classes. It was supposed to stay a regional class to keep budgets and car prep within reach and achieved its goals. I still hold the view that the quickest way to kill IT will be to make it Runoffs eligible or whatever they call National classes now.

Phil, I was just illustrating that numbers don't get you National/Majors status.

There were some very expensive ITS cars out there at one time. Slapping a Regional label on them did nothing to keep costs down when the desire to win is high enough.

An even quicker way to kill it will be when all the regional races they are eligible to race at go away!

That won't kill the class, they'll just go somewhere else. NASA is pretty healthy.

I'm a 50 year member with hundreds of race with SCCA but will race most of next year with MWCSCC because they hold races and welcome me there.

There you go.