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kinda expanding on Donnie's post in regards to the novice program. sunday's novice meeting had a lighter turnout than saturday's. no idea why. anyway, very few novices asked for a mentor. i just want to say, please do not allow an apparent low or lack of interest deter the efforts and benefits of this program. i got the feeling Miles may have been dissapointed by the response of the group. personally i welcome the help, but as i have also heard from others, some mornings i just want to go it alone. shake out the cobwebs from the day and night before.

but with the mentor program i know when i need help it will be offered in spades. i would like to thank the numerous people who take time in an already hectic enviroment to help seemingly ungrateful newbies. we all benefit from the efforts of those involved.

I think that the Novice Mentor program is a great idea. I think that what it could use is a bit of "get the news" out to those that might take advantage of it. I also sometimes wonder if when in a group at the novice meeting that some might not want to raise their hands and say "Yes I need help". As if maybe saying this is some sign of weakness or something. I think working with an experience driver is going to be the fastest way to go faster.

I had many more "ah ha, thats how to do it" moments either at a school, or while having somene in the car with me giving me pointers or feedback.

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Richard Casto
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I'd suggest a small change in the program...I'd like to see mentors (at least when enough are available) be assigned to novices whether they "want" one or not. Then let the mentor and the novice get together briefly after the meeting and they can introduce themselves and let the novice know where to find the mentor. Then the novice can decide if they want further help at any point during the day(s) and go ask for it.

More novices ended up wanting ride-a-longs than originally took mentors, that's for sure.


--Donnie

I had one of those when I rode with Jim F. on Sunday. The "ah ha" was you just drive with your foot to the floor until you cross the finish. Easier said than done!

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Vincent Keene
'06 Ford Mustang GT (track rat)
'15 Dodge Charger R/T (yeah, it's got a HEMI!)
'07 Ford Fusion SE (205,000 miles and counting)
'98 Chevy Z-24 (retired)
'93 Acura Integra (Team SWB 24HOL Car)

another thing that might be good as part of or seperate from the mentor program is a "ride along" type program. If a someone is a mentor then they may be focused helping one novice. But some novices may just want help by seeing what experience people do. So it might be good to have a list of people not wanting to be mentors but would be willing to let people ride along. Maybe a sign up sheet in the morning that willing people could put their names down and which runs they would be willing to have riders. And then Novices could sign up for specific ride alongs with people. Either that or have some sort of sticker to put on the windshield of the car that tells that the person is willing to take riders, and then the novices would know who is willing and might be more comfortable walking up and asking if they could ride along.

i might suggest maybe opening the gates a tad earlier, as invariably the novice meeting is rushed due to the upcoming drivers meeting. on a long course the walk can get hectic.

maybe mandate novice registration times to get them in earlier.

Steve, not counting yourself...Novices and early don't seem to go together in the same sentence. I announced MANY times when the meeting was and most were still late. Heaven help the field (not just noobs) if we ran our events like Mark V runs his. Miss the classroom session, miss the heat.

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Vincent Keene
'06 Ford Mustang GT (track rat)
'15 Dodge Charger R/T (yeah, it's got a HEMI!)
'07 Ford Fusion SE (205,000 miles and counting)
'98 Chevy Z-24 (retired)
'93 Acura Integra (Team SWB 24HOL Car)

well when you can't manage to pull your pants up far enough to cover your a** i guess getting somewhere on time is a stretch. it might take some drastic action. BTW that statement does not constitute or imply any volunteering on my part.

Now that's funny! Sooooo True!

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Vincent Keene
'06 Ford Mustang GT (track rat)
'15 Dodge Charger R/T (yeah, it's got a HEMI!)
'07 Ford Fusion SE (205,000 miles and counting)
'98 Chevy Z-24 (retired)
'93 Acura Integra (Team SWB 24HOL Car)

It might (should?) be pointed out to the novices that a ride along mentor is THE best way to becoming competitive and that most of the fastest drivers still take instructors/observers along with them regularly, you're never too good to not benefit from someone besides your friend or SO riding shotgun. I don't know how many times I've heard a novice say when asked if he wanted someone to ride with them: "I had help on the AM runs (or the last event or took the novice school) so I'm ready to run on my own." I just think "WOW! that's great that you're so good, then why do you still have NOV on the side of your car?"
I do think the mentors should be at the novice meeting so we show the novices that we really believe in the value of the program, be assigned to a novice and do a coursewalk with them.

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there's no glory for going slow.

I believe this is definitely the case most of the time. I remember my first couple events as a novice. It is somewhat intimidating asking someone you don't know for help. Especially when you realize that they are a serious competitor, and may think that they don't want to be bothered.



I think this is a wonderful solution to the problem. Even though I am not a great driver, I still think that I could give novices some fundamental pointers. I will try to volunteer next event to be a mentor.

Charlie

I think there is value in pre-assigning a mentor to each new novice before the event. Given the novice's name and car description the mentor could then find the novice, introduce themselves and offer to do a course woalk with them before the novice meeting. This would eliminate the stated concern about the novice being reluctant to ask for help and would make the first communication one-on-one instead in front of everyone at the drivers meeting.

As a novice i do appreciate all the help that is offered. I have gotten A LOT of advice since joining the club and it takes a while to sink in. Thats one of the great things about this club is that everyone is very friendly. L'burg was a long but fun weekend. I had a hard time getting all the elements into my head and i think my times showed that.
I will admit that I heard Vincent on the PA announcing the meeting on sunday, I was in the middle of my course walk and needed all the time I could get out there. I DO usually come early, but sometimes the NOV meeting is the first thing to be cut. I havent been participating in the mentor program, mainly because i like to take my first run slow and see what the course is like. But I DO make sure to ride with someone before my run, that seems to help a lot. I do appreciate that the experienced drivers volunteer to do this, even if I dont always participate

I did get some useful advice and learned a lot this weekend
1) Vincent's advice- "if you squeal on street tires you are doing something wrong" - I am trying to work on that
2)Brian H.-"drive like there are gas and brake buttons"
3)Sweeper+Chicago box+Rain=agricultural experience

PJ, as you attend more events, and get more advice, you will find that much of it conflicts, and that some of it just doesn't work for you. Eventually, you will develop an "advice filter". As part of that process, you will ask yourself about the experience level and the car driven by the source of that advice. For example, if I drove my car like there were on and off buttons for the gas and brake, I would be backwards more often than not. While that may work for Brian, it does not work with a rwd car with 350 ft lbs of torque. That's not a criticism of Brian, it's just an example of something that works for one car/driver combo but not for all.

So far, I agree with two concepts very strongly that have already been mentioned by Rick and Donnie:

1) all novices should have a mentor in the morning, but with emphasis placed on making sure the first time folks and less experienced get one first if there's not enough to go around.

2) To assign each novice a mentor prior to the event (and possibly let them communicate via e-mail with questions in advance).

and I'll add one more:

3) We may need to coordinate the heat the novice and mentor are in somehow to do what works for the mentor. Some mentors may want to work with a novice that runs in the same heat as they do, but has a different work assignment. Some mentors may only want to work with novices that are running in different heats than they are... It can be done either way, but if the heats the novices work in is considered when the assignments are made, there is a good chance that most mentors can be kept happy with the arrangement.

Chuck, I made the point very strongly with the novices that attended the novice meeting on Sunday how important a mentor is, the best way to improve etc... and after a pretty good sales speech, the number of novices who wanted a mentor went from 1 to 2. So, I do think that making it mandatory will get people on track quicker, and probably greatly help our novice retention rate.

By the way, if a novice meeting is truly mandatory, we should take attendance and determine the penalty for being absent, and for showing up 2 minutes before the meeting is over.

Miles

Good feedback Mentors and Novices. Please keep it coming. I would like to address some things so you can see where we were coming from. Also what parameters we were given by the AX VPs and Pres.

First off Rob and I agreed that we would be Novice Coordintators with the understanding that we wanted the Mentor Program to start this year. That was our biggest concern. As I have mentioned in another thread. Members have been doing this randomly for years. The attempt here is to formalize many good ideas, test them, adjust as needed, and document. This is a "pilot program" and the success will be measured at the end of the year and how or if we move it forward. I think interest and support by both Novice and Mentor will tell a lot of that.

Some confines we were given by the officers was to not delay or extend the drivers meeting. Do not mess with T&S as they are trying to move to AX Ware. So no messing with driver shifts or other things. This basically meant move the Novice Meeting up. Try and change some of the focus of what it entails since it is only 20 minutes.

Some of our rules were to not publicly chase after Mentors or single them out in meetings. Do not have the Mentors assigned to a Novice all day long. The Mentors are here to have fun also. They also want to focus on their driving. So there needs to be a balance of peoples time.

We have not publicly posted the proposal we sent to the Pres and VPs to approve. There were parts that had some debate and adjustments were made. It is the start, not the end. Below is pretty much what we covered and agreed on.

Using email as a communication is part of that program. Carl and Emmie or working on providing us some ways to generate information on the regular website. We already have a list of folks we communicated with about being Mentors. We are not going to publicly display that list of who we asked. If agreed upon we display the list of those who have said Yes. We want to respect peoples privacy and that they have the right to say No Thanks.

We will work on getting an axmentor list and names of volunteers so mentors can communicate off forum. We're also talking about a Novice section instead of a thread.

I've built a few spreadsheets with Novices and Mentors. We started with it at Sanford. We tried to matchup the Novices we thought needed the most help based on the previous events times. For L'burg this weekend we generated a similar list for our Novice Coordinator substitutes to use as a starting point. I'm also keeping a running list of every Novice. Events they showed up to. Their times, standings, etc.. Rob has one that tracks Mentors who volunteered their time etc...

Doing a morning role call and sign off with who attended the meeting is much like the same issue with the drivers meeting. If it takes us 5 minutes to do it and we only have 20 minutes with the Novices then we just lost 25% of our time. It's tight. I'm not against it but let's understand that we only have typically 20 minutes. 30 minutes max if we get everyone there on time.

Mandatory Mentor/Novice and signoff. We had that in our original proposal as an option. That was debated and tabled. So we decided for this year the whole program would be voluntary for both Novice nad Mentor alike. We want to see what the real interest is with Novices. So that got put on the back burner for possibly next year.

So we have done this for 2 events now. We have a long way to go. One other issue is that the program also needs to be streamlined. Being a Novice Coordinator doesn't mean a 40 hour a week job. The club won't get far in the future trying to get Novice Coordinators. We've already converted it to be a fair bit more demanding with what is on our plate now.

We also talked about Mentor Buttons or something that would let Novices know that they can come up and talk to you. This simplifies the matter. It is on hold for the moment.

Now we have a year long Novice Points you will see a large NOV entry list at registration. Since we are tracking every event we know how many events these folks have under their belts. The focus is obviously to get the ones with the least experience based either on events or placing at previous events.

And btw, thanks folks for covering for us as Novice Coordinators and Thanks to those of you who are volunteering. I know it takes time out of your event day. I hope the Novices understand and appreciate that. I also hope we can get past the "macho" or "intimidation" thing about a Novice being afraid to ask for help.

So there you have it. Please keep this thread rolling. Also PM or email us if you have ideas but don't want to post them on the forum. That goes for Mentor and Novices.

Thanks Everyone who is helping us get this launched!

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