Request to consider some options for the Autocross program.

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 10:03 am

FYI L'burg has essentially no similarity to national level autocrossing except for some parts of the "P". It is simply a whole different "thing" . . . more like rallying on variable pavement. To each our own. :lol:

If this link works it is a link to the site I learned on in California. I don't think they use it now for various reasons relating to neighbor noise complaints and a cheap seal coat on the asphalt after we moved here in 1986. Pluse it may be used for parking more than in the old days.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 2&t=h&z=17

If link no work. Google Map Alameda County Fairgrounds Pleasonton California or something similar.

Look for the lot along Bernal Ave. The "zooms" appear to be on different dates since the cars "disappear" near the building the closer I zoomed.

The courses were on the left. Grid and parking was on the right nearer the building. You can scale the size of the lot. Parking was tight for big events with more out of town trailers but we could park outside the fence on the north of the course.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 10:06 am

Link doesn't work. Use the embed link and edit.

Ah, see you got it now.

TomFreeman · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 10:11 am

<<No dog in this fight, but commenting nonetheless

Since moving up to MD in '04, I've autox'd with a few different clubs in the area - Mazda Club, Capital Drivers Club, and National Road Rally. I've also run with VMSC once or twice. Still, even 6+ years after leaving RDU, most of my autox experience is still with THSCC.

- THSCC courses are generally NOT that complex. Do not confuse complex with long. They are totally separate in my mind. The courses I've run with CDC and Mazda were hopelessly and unnecessarily complex. This was driven mainly by the site limitations, but they were horribly difficult to follow. I stopped running with these groups because the driving aspect was no fun. I may be slow, but as long as I'm finishing the course and seeing my times drop, I'm having fun. If I'm dnf-ing, I'm not having fun.

- I LOVE autoxing with NRR because they have SUPER nice staff, they make open, easy to follow courses, and they cultivate the social and the competitive aspects of the sport. They also run in only 1 location, the Cumberland MD airport, but they manage to pack almost every event to capacity. They have a strong local crowd, but regularly get competitors from 2-4 hours away. It helps that they're in the mountains in a beautiful area, and Cumberland is a great little town. Les has run there with me several times, I'm sure he'd be glad to chime in with a more relevant opinion on their events.

- THSCC courses are VERY long compared to this area. Sanford and Laurinburg courses are many times longer than most anything you'll find in this area. When I speak of "long", I'm not really referring to length of time to complete the course. I'm more referring to the distance from farthest points. That creates a logistic challenge that most organizations don't have to plan around.

-I've yet to run a 1/2 day event with DC Region SCCA, but I've run a multitude of different full day formats. Each has it's ups and downs, but nobody seems to do the "2 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon" run groups that THSCC does. Everyone I've run with here does the "all at once" plan. Logistics seem easier to manage with that method.

Ryan Holton · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 10:11 am

DickRasmussen wrote:

FYI L'burg has essentially no similarity to national level autocrossing except for some parts of the "P". It is simply a whole different "thing" . . . more like rallying on variable pavement. To each our own. :lol:

But see, that's it, the P is dead. We aren't allowed on that part of the site any longer.

Gwen Habenicht · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 10:11 am

steve remchak wrote:

let me share some personal experience as a "customer" of THSCC.

i hit the ground running. trailered BMW with no excuses. licensed driver for 30 years or so. no clue how to drive at speed, but i didn't know that at the time.

L'Burg 2005, acres of flat concrete with cones abundant. 2nd to last finish, 2.5+ hours at a worker station at the end of the day. brutal experience.

i came back in spite of this initial experience only to end up in G-Vegas with a double fold back interior spiral un-godly brutal configuration of cones on a postage stamp sized parking lot. thanks Art & Patrice.

ya'lls course set-ups are NOT novice friendly. but i met a bunch of people. Lupella told me he could teach me how to autoX, Whitney told me i needed a new clutch. (that and i needed to get my foot off the clutch pedal).

i could go on for ever with this, but it is and has been my considered opinion for many years that we as a club don't really always look at growth and new membership when we go out and do what we like to do on the weekends.

it is tough i suppose to be "The" premier autoX club in the state and still accept the dregs of autoX such as myself who either thru genetics or too much chemical abuse just don't catch the science in the first or 40th time on one of these over-analyzed, deeply vindictive course designs that we were so famous for from 2005 - 2007.

ya'll want to keep the people that show up, make it enjoyable to everyone. but realistically, how do we attract new people? are we actively advertising our presence yet? and where are we looking for new members?

Aaaahhh, my poor, dear, inebriated, once part of the magnificent seven friend. Let's be honest. How hard can 3 elements really be? I mean, we've got slaloms, offset gates, and sweepers in some variety or other. Oh yeah, there's that pesky pivot, but that's pretty much self explanatory. The bottom line is that you really just didn't like autox all that much. Don't blame it on unfriendly courses. You knew what you needed to do to get it right. Really. You just didn't want to bother. :wink:

You were fun to hang with though, back in the day. :twisted:

You're right about one thing though. People can't join a club that they don't know exists. I've always wondered (what Ryan said) why people wanted to keep things such a secret. There are lots of ways to get free, good advertising, media included. We just don't use them.

steve remchak · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 10:36 am

Gwen Baake wrote:

steve remchak wrote:

let me share some personal experience as a "customer" of THSCC.

i hit the ground running. trailered BMW with no excuses. licensed driver for 30 years or so. no clue how to drive at speed, but i didn't know that at the time.

L'Burg 2005, acres of flat concrete with cones abundant. 2nd to last finish, 2.5+ hours at a worker station at the end of the day. brutal experience.

i came back in spite of this initial experience only to end up in G-Vegas with a double fold back interior spiral un-godly brutal configuration of cones on a postage stamp sized parking lot. thanks Art & Patrice.

ya'lls course set-ups are NOT novice friendly. but i met a bunch of people. Lupella told me he could teach me how to autoX, Whitney told me i needed a new clutch. (that and i needed to get my foot off the clutch pedal).

i could go on for ever with this, but it is and has been my considered opinion for many years that we as a club don't really always look at growth and new membership when we go out and do what we like to do on the weekends.

it is tough i suppose to be "The" premier autoX club in the state and still accept the dregs of autoX such as myself who either thru genetics or too much chemical abuse just don't catch the science in the first or 40th time on one of these over-analyzed, deeply vindictive course designs that we were so famous for from 2005 - 2007.

ya'll want to keep the people that show up, make it enjoyable to everyone. but realistically, how do we attract new people? are we actively advertising our presence yet? and where are we looking for new members?

Aaaahhh, my poor, dear, inebriated, once part of the magnificent seven friend. Let's be honest. How hard can 3 elements really be? I mean, we've got slaloms, offset gates, and sweepers in some variety or other. Oh yeah, there's that pesky pivot, but that's pretty much self explanatory. The bottom line is that you really just didn't like autox all that much. Don't blame it on unfriendly courses. You knew what you needed to do to get it right. Really. You just didn't want to bother. :wink:

You were fun to hang with though, back in the day. :twisted:

You're right about one thing though. People can't join a club that they don't know exists. I've always wondered (what Ryan said) why people wanted to keep things such a secret. There are lots of ways to get free, good advertising, media included. We just don't use them.

Quote:

You knew what you needed to do to get it right. Really. You just didn't want to bother
geez Gwen, do you mean "buy a Miata?" :twisted:

after countless hours on track my autocrossing skills have improved maybe 10% from the day i started. OK, so maybe i could look ahead a little better. but you have to admit that for awhile there people were designing courses in the spirit of "harrass & confuse"

Ryan Holton · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 10:51 am

steve remchak wrote:

but you have to admit that for awhile there people were designing courses in the spirit of "harrass & confuse"

Quoted for truth and the reason why my wife doesn't want to do another one.

A course does not need to be difficult to drive, just difficult to drive fast.

JamesShort · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 11:02 am

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

I think there is a sea-change occurring with many people where they are actually looking at their finances, figuring out they need to be saving far more than in the past, etc. Just look at any of the stats, stuff like 44M people on foodstamps now to double digit true unemployment, underemployment, and couple that with one of the slowest recoveries in history -- heck, autox programs will be lucky to just not have further losses this year one would think.

Well in my case, I've become passionate enough about autox that I've refactored my finances to make it work. Given I want to drop 30 lbs or so AND save some money, I've committed to reducing my food obsession expenditures (ie less frequent trips to $30+ entree restaurants, less special orders to charcuterie and cheese shops, cooking more with the $1000 of cookware I've bought over the last few years etc). Also drinking less and appreciating it more (craftbeer has got WICKED expensive in the last 5 yrs....and well I drank a lot of it

). Hell with these few changes I've easily found an extra $2k - $2500 a year to play with (that's 2 sets of r comps and gas money for every event I go to)

. I understand some people might not be able to do this to the same extent, but given how broke my parents, my brother, AND in laws are right now, I've seen three very different examples of finances where immense amount of waste can be found and I'm pretty sure this applies with a lot of people. But then the next question is finding people who become passionate enough about it that they are willing to shift their finances around to make it work and this is obviously the biggest issue at hand from a 'economy is hurting our attendance' standpoint.

So to address that part, we need to make sure that people are having the most fun possible. I personally haven't felt like the courses are really complex and DNFs are abundant, but then again I haven't been around long enough to comment on any trends. But I agree with a lot of people's sentiment that a Triangle location would be worth it's weight in gold for the program.

Jim P. Despite what Les said in the autox report, I have not been around for a while

. My first autox ever was in September 2009. As a novice and brand new to autox I was apprehensive about what the 'crowd' would be like. In my experience up until that point, car clubs/meets etc were laden with anti-social cliques. There was no pro-activity in meeting the new folks. Was not my thing. Anyway, I had not even taken my first run and Rob Lupella attacked me (in a good way

) and was asking if I'd like a ride along/advice. Then he let me ride along with him. Then he got Charlie Monroe to ride along with me. I had a lot of good conversations in the pits before and during the event. It was 100% opposite of my expectations. So I really don't think THSCC can necessarily be classified as unfriendly and I don't think that novices are necessarily dissuaded from coming back because of the clubs 'personality'. Do you know of people who feel significantly otherwise in these regards?

steve remchak · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 11:08 am

JamesShort wrote:

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

I think there is a sea-change occurring with many people where they are actually looking at their finances, figuring out they need to be saving far more than in the past, etc. Just look at any of the stats, stuff like 44M people on foodstamps now to double digit true unemployment, underemployment, and couple that with one of the slowest recoveries in history -- heck, autox programs will be lucky to just not have further losses this year one would think.

Well in my case, I've become passionate enough about autox that I've refactored my finances to make it work. Given I want to drop 30 lbs or so AND save some money, I've committed to reducing my food obsession expenditures (ie less frequent trips to $30+ entree restaurants, less special orders to charcuterie and cheese shops, cooking more with the $1000 of cookware I've bought over the last few years etc). Also drinking less and appreciating it more (craftbeer has got WICKED expensive in the last 5 yrs....and well I drank a lot of it

). Hell with these few changes I've easily found an extra $2k - $2500 a year to play with (that's 2 sets of r comps and gas money for every event I go to)

. I understand some people might not be able to do this to the same extent, but given how broke my parents, my brother, AND in laws are right now, I've seen two examples of finances where immense amount of waste can be found and I'm pretty sure this applies with a lot of people. But then the next question is finding people who become passionate enough about it that they are willing to shift their finances around to make it work and this is obviously the biggest issue at hand from a 'economy is hurting our attendance' standpoint.

So to address that part, we need to make sure that people are having the most fun possible. I personally haven't felt like the courses are really complex and DNFs are abundant, but then again I haven't been around long enough to comment on any trends. But I agree with a lot of people's sentiment that a Triangle location would be worth it's weight in gold for the program.

Jim P. Despite what Les said in the autox report, I have not been around for a while

. My first autox ever was in September 2009. As a novice and brand new to autox I was apprehensive about what the 'crowd' would be like. In my experience up until that point, car clubs/meets etc were laden with anti-social cliques. There was no pro-activity in meeting the new folks. Was not my thing. Anyway, I had not even taken my first run and Rob Lupella attacked me (in a good way

) and was asking if I'd like a ride along/advice. Then he let me ride along with him. Then he got Charlie Monroe to ride along with me. I had a lot of good conversations in the pits before and during the event. It was 100% opposite of my expectations. So I really don't think THSCC can necessarily be classified as unfriendly and I don't think that novices are necessarily dissuaded from coming back because of the clubs 'personality'. Do you know of people who feel significantly otherwise in these regards?

as with anything James, over time the embellishment of certain situations makes them more colorful than they may have actually been in the first place.

but i do remember a blow-up or two over my brief time here. :lol:

i just want to know what happened to the kid with the neon green wheels on his honda. he was actually pretty good if memory serves me.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 11:30 am

This is all good stuff. One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is membership retention and pro-active communication to the membership as a whole.

I think that there is a core group of people who year after year renew even if they don’t participate that much (myself included). Time issues and other Motorsports related distractions is a common theme for people like me and I think that there is probably little that the club can do to get us to participate more than they already are. In general I think for us the problem is not the club or how it operates, but their own life getting in the way!

I think there is also a second group and that is the casual or novice participants who are on the fringe. These are the ones who may attend one or a handful of events in a year but don’t quite dive into the deep end. As mentioned above, they also have a lot of other things fighting for their attention and we loose out. Some of these may even become a member, but when it comes time to renew, there is no reminder to so do, so they forget and they drift away.

I think that for years we have used a “if you build it, they will come” strategy. It has worked in the past. I am one of those who before I was a member was looking at the pre-registration list to see if enough people would un-register we would drop below the event cap and I might be able to show up on Sunday morning and get into the event! But now we don’t have the luxury of turning people away.

I think we need to do more to convert these people from being casual to regular participants. Instead of letting these people drift away without any effort on our end to keep them I think that the following might help…

* Be more proactive with respect to membership renewals. I think the first thing to do is to create a method for notification. Give people a reminder in advance vs. letting them remember to do it on their own. Even regular year to year members who want to remain with the club forget to renew (note to self, I need to send in my 2011 dues!)
* Make it easier to renew. I know this is a hot potato, but allowing renewal via electronic means needs to happen. Be it bank drafts, credit/debit cards or PayPal, we need something that can be done online and maybe even automatically (Opt in for auto renewal)
* Event notification and promotion. This could be via email updates to members. You could have mailing lists for events in general, or even mailing lists specific to certain types of events (Autocross, Rallycross, Track). I think as long as you don’t spam people that they would welcome these types of notifications. We should however still allow people to choose what notifications they get.
* As mentioned above, do we try to promote the club in general? I know that in years past that any type of promotion was frowned upon. For example if a newspaper might contact the club to do an article, that there was a general attitude of “we don’t want or need the publicity”. I think (?) part of that was fear out of being portrayed badly and it hurting potential or current relationships with site managers.

Richard

JamesShort · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 11:31 am

And Jim, I agree with your point about Jon Felton and Nasa.....communication is incredible. Just with the event I'm doing on Sunday with NASA, I've got about 6 emails from Jon with updates/FYIs/rule changes/schedules etc. We can definitely improve our communication in multiple regards.

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 11:40 am

Richard Casto wrote:

I know that in years past that any type of promotion was frowned upon. For example if a newspaper might contact the club to do an article, that there was a general attitude of “we don’t want or need the publicity”. I think (?) part of that was fear out of being portrayed badly and it hurting potential or current relationships with site managers.

This was the attitude when I joined way back in 1999. I wondered why we didn't want any "press" and when I asked the officers at the time explained it to me just as you stated. Of course back then if you didn't pre-register ASAP you were wait-listed, but times have changed.

Like it or not there is still a stigma against what we do, which is why sites are getting almost impossible to find. We all know this perception by outsiders is 100% wrong, but perception is very hard to change.

jimpastorius · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 11:49 am

JamesShort wrote:

And Jim, I agree with your point about Jon Felton and Nasa.....communication is incredible. Just with the event I'm doing on Sunday with NASA, I've got about 6 emails from Jon with updates/FYIs/rule changes/schedules etc. We can definitely improve our communication in multiple regards.

It will be interesting to hear your take on the event next weekend. I was almost tempted to go (if the car was ready I might have).

Fond memories of the winter series at VMP...sigh

Matt McGrain · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 12:09 pm

Ryan Holton wrote:

A course does not need to be difficult to drive, just difficult to drive fast.

Truer words have not been spoken. This was pretty much the mantra for the Zoombies event Marcus and I did late last year that everyone seemed to enjoy. Good flow, quick launch intervals, low cone counts and DNF's, and get out of there at a reasonable hour after a fun day.

I don't really mind pivot cones or overlaps in general course area but there's no doubt about the fact that they make for a longer day. An extra 15 second launch interval (may be a little dramatic - not sure) with just four runs and 120 racers equates to 2 hours. This is just something to think about on the super hot days in July and August.

Also, I think we'll make a quick emphasis on how to use the radio as I think a lot of the timing holdups can be prevented with a little bit better communication from the course. Soundwise, some cars you just have to let pass before you call in their cones.

As far as getting folks out, I can remember my first event and being terrified and very humbled with a sweet 137/150 finish. I so frustrated and disappointed after my last run that I couldn't figure out what the heck I was doing and couldn't find the course to save my life. Then Shawn (club prez at the time IIRC) pulled up to my car (as I was packing up my stuff and had decided that autocross wasn't my thing) and said 'jump in' and I think this was his last run of the day, usually the run that you don't really want a passenger, at least if you're in a torqueless wonder of a Honda.

As a noob, having someone just say 'ride along' made all the difference in my attitude plus I saw that driving point to point on the course was not the quick way. :oops:

-Matt

steve remchak · **Posted:** Fri Jan 21, 2011 12:41 pm

Vincent Keene wrote:

Richard Casto wrote:

I know that in years past that any type of promotion was frowned upon. For example if a newspaper might contact the club to do an article, that there was a general attitude of “we don’t want or need the publicity”. I think (?) part of that was fear out of being portrayed badly and it hurting potential or current relationships with site managers.

This was the attitude when I joined way back in 1999. I wondered why we didn't want any "press" and when I asked the officers at the time explained it to me just as you stated. Of course back then if you didn't pre-register ASAP you were wait-listed, but times have changed.

Like it or not there is still a stigma against what we do, which is why sites are getting almost impossible to find. We all know this perception by outsiders is 100% wrong, but perception is very hard to change.

i dunno, i think i looked pretty good on the front page of the N&O. :poke:

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Request to consider some options for the Autocross program.

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