Why are numbers for racing LOWER??
04-01-2024, 11:05 AM
#31
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Great to see you as well. We will be back for sure.
04-01-2024, 11:47 AM
#32
Great idea on the Q&A session with POC racers - I suspect John Momeyer (POC Club President at AZ resident) could pull together a group of experienced and new POC racers during normal bench racing hour on Friday or Saturday evening. A couple of us in attendance also teach the POC Racers Clinic and can offer that perspective as well. John and the DE lead for PCA likely know each other, so if you put a bug in the DE leads ear I will do the same with John.
Last edited by Krokodil; 04-01-2024 at 11:49 AM.
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04-01-2024, 12:23 PM
#33
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As someone who has been DE’ing for several years and wants to at least dip a toe into racing, I’ll second the comments on their not being a clear link from PCA DEs to club racing. PCA Club Racing rules for noob racers requires a minimum number of DEs and chief instructor sign off, but I’ve never been to a PCA DE where there was ANYTHING said about stepping up to W2W racing. Maybe it’s because of the very clear “DE isn’t racing” messaging, but it’s basically up to you to find the right people in the paddock to give you the right coaching and info. I don’t have a problem with that, I’ve made tons of friends at the track and know who can help me, but it’s definitely not a well defined process with any kind of encouragement from the organization. At a minimum that leaves some number potential racers uninspired to pursue it.
04-01-2024, 12:25 PM
#34
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I have been Club Racing for some 20 years and have a few observations, first the posts here are a great start at identifying the reasons for this deduction in attendees. I would add a suggestion I have supported for years which is a better job of introducing DE drivers to Club Racing. The “Rookie School” in PCA is a joke, basically show up and don’t screw up is not a school😀. I am aware of the reluctance of PCA to mix a DE event with anything related to racing but a one full day school on a DE weekend that focuses on what is needed to go wheel to wheel racing in PCA with on track instruction from folks who do race with the interested student and classroom meetings to discuss what to expect, what is required and to answer any Club Race questions. I completely agree with previous comments in this thread about the marketing focus needs for PCA, I would start with a driver survey as to what got them into racing and what they find attractive and what is not a positive feature of Club Racing also I would question Spec Boxster drivers as their numbers seem to be holding well, pick their brains and harvest that gray matter knowledge 😀
Rich
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I took my newbie driver class, which I think was a couple of hours, and than it was off to the fun races. I know the fun races are discontinued, which another thing I don't understand, but does PCA still do the newbie driver class?
Don't forget that an important part of becoming a new driver is listening to our race registrar read you a script, for about an hour, about what it is like to race. That really helps!
If someone shows up at our DE and says "I am interested in racing" they get paired with me, or a few others who still do PCA DE and also race. The amount of times this happens is few and far between so I am not sure if DE is a great feeder for racing, or maybe it is just the way we position it with PCA.
Some people see no distinction between modding cars in video games and in real life. There are plenty of people happy to win DE. Ever been to a Ferrari Club DE? Those guys spend 99% of the time sitting around talking.
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04-01-2024, 02:21 PM
#35
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I spend all the resources I have available DE'ing retired 993 race cars. If I hit the Powerball, you bet I'd go club race them. Unfortunately, the cost of rebuilding a 993 motor is about the same as the cost of a spec Boxster. Racing a spec Boxster isn't much more appealing to me than a Miata/e36/etc that's 1/2 the cost. I hope I have the resources to get into racing one day, but after 5 years of PCA track days I really have no clue what path I'd want to take when ready.
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04-01-2024, 02:32 PM
#36
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The ratio of folks that DE compared to club race across all marques and all events is tremendous. Only a small fraction of the DE numbers ever club race. Which is fine.
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Leedlast (04-03-2024)
04-01-2024, 03:39 PM
#37
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That is true, but that bottom end figure is climbing rapidly as well. Events for non-instructors with many PCA regions at lets call them club level tracks are now heading north of $700 for 3 days. If you take the average guy that buys a $50k used boxster S, we are talking $700 entry, $450 for hotel or more, $250 for gas, $300 for track insurance, whatever work is needed on the car, plus tires, brakes etc, and you are into a typical weekend for probably close to $2,500. Now DE has never been cheap and there are certainly ways to lower cost of entry, but when you have competing priorities for bills, family (money and time), and work, it can be really difficult to justify a weekend. This is for average (well in the porsche world) younger types, now the daddy warbucks 992 CUP types with 40ft stacker trailers.
Convert that to probably double for a race weekend and its really hard. Doing an AER or WRL race with your buddies seems like a better and much cheaper way to go.
Convert that to probably double for a race weekend and its really hard. Doing an AER or WRL race with your buddies seems like a better and much cheaper way to go.
04-01-2024, 03:43 PM
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That is true, but that bottom end figure is climbing rapidly as well. Events for non-instructors with many PCA regions at lets call them club level tracks are now heading north of $700 for 3 days. If you take the average guy that buys a $50k used boxster S, we are talking $700 entry, $450 for hotel or more, $250 for gas, $300 for track insurance, whatever work is needed on the car, plus tires, brakes etc, and you are into a typical weekend for probably close to $2,500. Now DE has never been cheap and there are certainly ways to lower cost of entry, but when you have competing priorities for bills, family (money and time), and work, it can be really difficult to justify a weekend. This is for average (well in the porsche world) younger types, now the daddy warbucks 992 CUP types with 40ft stacker trailers.
Convert that to probably double for a race weekend and its really hard. Doing an AER or WRL race with your buddies seems like a better and much cheaper way to go.
Convert that to probably double for a race weekend and its really hard. Doing an AER or WRL race with your buddies seems like a better and much cheaper way to go.
Compare the Zone 2 Club Race with ~95-105 racers and ~15-20 DE cars at VIR two weeks ago with the current entry for Potomac DE at VIR that doesn't happen for two weeks at 170+. That number will surely grow. I would estimate 190-210, as in years past.
The Regions can pay the bills on the latter entry, but not on the former.
04-01-2024, 03:47 PM
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You know, I was talking to a couple of fellow coaches and IMSA teams now running WRL. They shared freely that WRL could become a victim of it's own success. The type of car required to excel, and the resources required in people/team/expense to support each of those entries, is now much closer to SRO and IMSA levels than where they were just a year or two ago.
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04-01-2024, 04:07 PM
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You know, I was talking to a couple of fellow coaches and IMSA teams now running WRL. They shared freely that WRL could become a victim of it's own success. The type of car required to excel, and the resources required in people/team/expense to support each of those entries, is now much closer to SRO and IMSA levels than where they were just a year or two ago.
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04-01-2024, 04:32 PM
#41
Bingo! I’ve argued about this same exact issue with multiple fellow racers discussing the topic. The fact that it’s different regions doing the races and DEs is mind boggling to me. How can there be a cohesive strategy to grow the brand and Club Racing if each region does it differently. They do the DEs differently. The track costs are different. Even a simple scheduling conflict such as having a DE event ran by one region on the same day that a different region ran a signature club race (VIR with its own DE) is an issue.
If club racing was run as a national, or maybe even major regional club, they’d have major benefits. They can focus resources on maybe less events but much better attended ones. This in my opinion is a must for PCA Club Racing to survive in this new environment.
this also ensures to what Jason was saying earlier about having a clear path from DE to Racing, combining events, mentorships, advertising, keeping costs down etc. All of this in a national scale.
If club racing was run as a national, or maybe even major regional club, they’d have major benefits. They can focus resources on maybe less events but much better attended ones. This in my opinion is a must for PCA Club Racing to survive in this new environment.
this also ensures to what Jason was saying earlier about having a clear path from DE to Racing, combining events, mentorships, advertising, keeping costs down etc. All of this in a national scale.
Here is the rub: Both, PCA DE events and PCA Club Racing events are organized by individual PCA Regions or PCA Zones, and they take the financial risk of organizing those events. Not every PCA Region or Zone hosts a PCA Club Race. Maybe some PCA regions are outright afraid of losing customers from DE to PCA Club Racing? It's complicated because of who takes the financial risk for these events.
04-01-2024, 04:37 PM
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From 2 stroke karts to cars, that’s probably the case with all forms or series of Motorsport and if you’ve been in the game a while, you’ve all seen certain levels of spend that wasn’t the case some years ago.
04-01-2024, 04:48 PM
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At the VIR race I was told that technically Zones do not have the authority to hold a race, only regions. If that is true, and that is PCA's excuse, it is easy enough to ammend the PCA bylaws to correct this issue.
04-01-2024, 04:48 PM
#45
I agree with all of this, but you already knew that.
You also know my “radical” opinion that we only need 5 classes in PCA (give or take 1). Way too many classes. Why is there 25 different GT classes?
1. 911CUP and spec aircooled cars
2. SPB
3. SPC and ME
4. GT
5. Letter classes
Some will argue that some cars
don't fit in the categories well and that’s ok. Not every car has to have its own class but it certainly fit into a class with some weight, aero, power adjustment. BOP can make it work. Look at WRL. You have all sorts of cars fit in GTO including a 944 Turbo. Who wants to race in a class on 2-3 cars? Its pointless
You also know my “radical” opinion that we only need 5 classes in PCA (give or take 1). Way too many classes. Why is there 25 different GT classes?
1. 911CUP and spec aircooled cars
2. SPB
3. SPC and ME
4. GT
5. Letter classes
Some will argue that some cars
don't fit in the categories well and that’s ok. Not every car has to have its own class but it certainly fit into a class with some weight, aero, power adjustment. BOP can make it work. Look at WRL. You have all sorts of cars fit in GTO including a 944 Turbo. Who wants to race in a class on 2-3 cars? Its pointless
I think a lot of it comes down to a distinct lack of (1) marketing message and (2) pipeline.
There seems to be an odd assumption that historical numbers are sufficient to guarantee future numbers. But that's clearly not panning out. And we're not changing our approach at all! I haven't seen a single example in the last few years of a PCA race trying to actively bring in racers by providing more value ...
From a marketing perspective, PCA should be self-aware that they're up against these newer endurance series. But the reality is that endurance racing and sprint racing are NOT the same! (I say this as someone with 3k+ laps in AER and WRL).
If I was running marketing for PCA National, I would focus on the idea that PCA offers more racing than any other sprint series - and better, closer racing than any any endurance series.!
The other side of the equation is the pipeline. I can't remember the last time I met a genuinely "new" racer. It's not simply an age issue - or a platform age issue. (I'm a 40 year old driving a 46 year old car).
PCA has a terrific potential feeder system - but there's no real connection/path between DE and Club Racing. In my opinion, there should be an advanced DE at EVERY race - and we should actively try to make connection between a those Advanced drivers and Racers (think "mentors"). Make them a part of the show; make them feel like they belong here! And offer a half step toward racing in the form of Time Trials. Get them hooked through an option that doesn't require as big a commitment as a log booked race car!
(I also think the class structure needs a revision, but that's a lot to talk about in one post).
There seems to be an odd assumption that historical numbers are sufficient to guarantee future numbers. But that's clearly not panning out. And we're not changing our approach at all! I haven't seen a single example in the last few years of a PCA race trying to actively bring in racers by providing more value ...
From a marketing perspective, PCA should be self-aware that they're up against these newer endurance series. But the reality is that endurance racing and sprint racing are NOT the same! (I say this as someone with 3k+ laps in AER and WRL).
If I was running marketing for PCA National, I would focus on the idea that PCA offers more racing than any other sprint series - and better, closer racing than any any endurance series.!
The other side of the equation is the pipeline. I can't remember the last time I met a genuinely "new" racer. It's not simply an age issue - or a platform age issue. (I'm a 40 year old driving a 46 year old car).
PCA has a terrific potential feeder system - but there's no real connection/path between DE and Club Racing. In my opinion, there should be an advanced DE at EVERY race - and we should actively try to make connection between a those Advanced drivers and Racers (think "mentors"). Make them a part of the show; make them feel like they belong here! And offer a half step toward racing in the form of Time Trials. Get them hooked through an option that doesn't require as big a commitment as a log booked race car!
(I also think the class structure needs a revision, but that's a lot to talk about in one post).
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