Duffus 2014
Hi,
Anything that follows that makes absolutely no sense should not be attributed in any way to any of my three accomplices. However, many people know that Mike Rand has had an influence upon me (I will leave it to you to decide how that has gone!) so some of this is explainable. Those of you in the Northeast who have participated in or heard of the "Fools Weekend" outings will understand the spirit in which this is offered.
Based upon the success of the Summit Point Formula Fest, we are proposing to organize a very short series of "flash mob" (perhaps plague of locusts might be a more appropriate description?) events called Da Unofficial Formula F United States championship or DUFFUS in 2014.
We have but one legitimate, serious goal; to have as much fun as we did at the recent Summit Point Formula Fest. The DUFFUS will be two, three, but no more than four weekends and we are thinking that three would be the best number. The races will be held in the Eastern half of the US, mostly because I am getting older, more feeble and might not make it to the Mississippi River let alone go beyond it.
My three co-conspirators are Doug Fisher, Dave Harmison and Phil Kingham. Doug is going to help me organize the race(s) in the Northeast and Dave & Phil are going to organize the race(s) in the Central Division. Our initial thought was to have races at Mid Ohio, Summit Point and Pittsburgh International Raceway (formerly Beaver Run). We are open to suggestions for other venues, but those tracks should give you some idea of the geography and travel distances we are considering.
We met with all of the drivers who attended Formula Fest and the consensus was that everyone would be willing to do a "local" race, one race that required a longer tow and one race that was somewhere in the middle for everyone.
SCCA Formula F rules and Club Ford (Hondas allowed) on hard tires. We will use the MARRS Club Ford rules as our basis.
This is the point in time when SCCA regions are beginning to organize their upcoming schedules. When they are finalized sometime in January we are going to take a look and then begin our approaches to the various regions for the tracks that we will select.
Here is what we are going to promise:
1. We four will do everything we possibly can to ensure that we have as good a time as we did at Summit Point, if not a better one.
2. We will NOT have a DUFFUS event that conflicts with one of the ProF1600/F2000 events. We very much want Mike Rand to attend (and we will pay his entry fee(s), REALLY!) as a way to pay him back for all the superb events he has organized for us in the past.
That's it for promises....................
Here is what we are going to try to do:
1. No less than 4 to 6 weeks between DUFFUS races.
2. No conflicts with SCCA Major Majors ???
3. Three, but no less than two races per weekend. At Formula Fest we had one qualifying session and three races.
4. We will try and entice our friends Angela Slocum & Dave Gernert to develop a DUFFUS poster like the one that they created for Formula Fest so that we have a little gift for the participants.
5. A friend of mine once told me that somewhere there is an unfinished Remington sculpture (you know, the cowboy ones.......) that was simply the back half of a horse. We were thinking that something like that might be an appropriate trophy for a DUFFUS, so we will look into that.
Here is what you can or have to do:
1. Just show up. If you have some interest in joining us, please let us know by posting here. Having a firm car count really helps when you are negotiating with the regions.
2. If you are running for some type of championship; you may have to skip one of your regular races because we will undoubtedly wind up with some schedule conflicts. We don't understand why anyone would choose to run for points when they could run for a poorly molded horse's hind end, but that is up to you!
3. Take what you have read here and come to the races in that spirit; we just want to have fun racing in what we think is the best racing class ever...............
Please stay tuned, we will update this post as things develop and we will make sure we keep this in the 30 day window here on ApexSpeed. This race proposal is REAL, the rest is just to make it more fun!
Thanks,
Joe Marcinski
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I guess we (Angela and I) can take a stab at a DUFFUS logo that is oriented to to the tail end of a horse. We'll try to keep it tasteful enough so Mom doesn't have to cover Jr's eyes in the paddock. Once we have an approved logo we can have DUFFUS Stickers made up for the "series" (they go on the back end of the car of course).
Runoffs 1 Gold 3 Silver 3 bronze, 8 Divisional , 6 Regional Champs , 3x Drivers of the year awards
