Racers ! Just got an update from our WDCR SCCA (DC Region) Comp Committee and am posting it as an FYI !
More than likely other Regions will be addressing these same issues in timely fashion, the DC region is maybe the first out of the box ! Gil Before you hear it somewhere else, I have some breaking news to relay to all of you.... Last night we had a Competition Committee meeting and the agenda was that age old question of car counts and car groupings. Given how meetings with that agenda went in the past I sort of figured that this was going to be a looooong meeting and it was...... The first order of business was allowing a new class to compete within ITE and that class is going to be called "Street Prepared". Those of you that are like me and race Solo as well as Club Racing will immediately recognize that class as an existing Solo classification and that is exactly what it will be in Club Racing as well. What this means is that a car that is prepped to the Solo "Street Prepared" rules WITH full safety equipment will now be able to run with the ITE race group in MARRS races. This will give those people racing Solo events in Street Prepared an avenue to take their cars straight to the track without having to modify them again to a pre-existing Club Racing classification and hopefully will create some more cross over between the two groups allowing someone to race their car all year in both Solo and Club Racing. This new class will compete this coming year.... Full details will be forthcoming soon. The second order of business was revisiting car counts and this is where the meeting became very acrimonious..... That age old question of what to do about the Open Wheel dwindling car counts and Race Groups that for the last several years have had only 12 or so race cars participating. We all know that in many of the Wings and Things race group there were only a few cars in each class competing with some classes often having only one competitor while some of the closed wheel race groups are packed to the gills with typically 40 to 45 cars, specifically the IT groups. The topic that was revisited was combining all open wheel cars into one class which would free up another race group slot allowing for recombining the existing race groups which in turn would allow all groups to be at a more manageable 30 to 35 car race group. Needless to say there were some very heated moments between the open wheel class reps and the closed wheel class reps. Their were a few times I thought it was going to end up in an old fashioned bar brawl but luckily it didn't. After much heated discussion (I won't go into the details of the almost two hour discussion and who held what position in the discussion as it was far too complicated to relate into words tonight) a proposal was offered to the committee to combine all open wheeled cars and to "regionally restrict" the classes of Formula Atlantic, Formula Continental, FSCCA, Formula Mazda, and the new Formula 1000 meaning this new open wheel race group would consist of only Fomula Vee, Formula Ford, Club Ford, and F500. A vote using a show of hands came out 10 to 10 with several abstentions. A roll call vote was then instituted with each representitive citing Yay, Nay, or Abstaining and this vote came out 12 to 9 in favor of creating this new race group with some of the reps changing their vote and therefore the proposal was adopted. For the record, I voted Nay hoping we would give open wheel one more year to increase their numbers and revisit the topic next winter because, although the car counts are low, I enjoy seeing these cars on the track. Also for the record, and interesting to me at least, the vote was Yay for all of the closed wheel drivers reps while most of the specialty chiefs voted Nay. After a break the FC rep Chas Shaeffer walked out of the meeting as did the FV rep Bob Tupper. This left only John Nesbitt the FF rep as the only open wheel driver rep remaining at the meeting. Honestly I don't feel good about what happened and I don't think anyone did or very few at least. As a driver who races in one of the largest race groups I was willing to go another year in a large race group and give open wheel another year to increase their numbers but realistically that additional year probably wouldn't have made much of a difference. The cars that are now restricted are very expensive to own and race so a flood of new cars probably wouldn't have been something that would happen.... I'm very sad to see these cars leave the MARRS series though and I for one will miss them. What this now means is that the race groups have once again been reshuffled and remixed. These are the new unofficial (cuz I may have goofed writing them down) race groups: 1) Spec Miata 2) SS Miata 3) ITB/ITC 4) ITS/ITA/ITR (I'm gonna get creamed....) 5) SRX7/IT7/SSB/SSC 6) Small Bore/T4 (new class) 7) Big Bore/T1/T2/P1/P2 (the last two are the two new classes for World Challenge cars) 8) SRF/CSR/DSR 9) FV/FF/CF/F500 (all open wheel) All car counts for each race group "should" be in the 30's..... The meeting was then adjourned..... 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