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Kevin... I'm sorry you had such a poor experience Saturday.
Obviously, it sounds like we had you in the wrong run group to start, so I'll explain a little about that first:
All I can go on in making the run group assignments is the info I have at hand when I do it. You haven't run an event with us since 2004 or 2005, before we really started using MotorsportReg.com. The only info I had was your autocross experience, and more recent registrations for tech days over the last three years, but no events. I'm 99% certain your listing of the three events you ran in 2004/2005 were NOT on your MSR account when I did the pairings. We used to keep files on all our participants with all their event registrations and feedback forms filed. The files had ballooned to 5 boxes of folders and became too cumbersome to keep passing off... that was another reason we switched to online registration so we can more easily track previous experience and feedback. We even went through the feedback forms we had since 2005 and added that into MotorsportReg. So, based on the info I had at hand (lots of autocross, little to no track) and an upstanding member of our club, I made the compromise and put you in yellow group. Unfortunately, that ended up being the most crowded group, and admittedly it was over-crowded for North course by maybe 3 or 4 cars than normal.
Add to that the weather... people are slower in the rain, especially 2wd vs 4wd cars. Mark V and Brad M both drove in Yellow group at various times, and while yes, there were lines of cars, everyone seemed to be moving at a decent clip for the conditions. I honestly feel like this would have been a non-issue in the dry, but that's not something I can factor in when making the pairings.
I'd like to ask you if you brought up your concerns about passing signals and trains in the classroom sessions? Did you go to the classroom sessions?
As far as getting you moved up... you need to realize the position we're in as organizers. At VIR especially, all our instructors are loaded with two students. We put a lot of thought into the pairing, even so far that if we KNOW a student is borderline yellow/blue, we'll TRY to assign that student to an instructor who does not have a blue student. Obviously, that should have been done here, but see the above explanation. Since your instructor also had a blue student who could not be signed off, you needed a different instructor, all of whom to our knowledge were already hooked up with and settled with their students. One thing we try to avoid is shaking up the assignments. I've done a few non-THSCC events, and at half of them, I've had no less than two different instructors at each one... the one NASA event I did, I had three! That's not conducive to linear learning, and from where Mark V sat, moving you would have required moving someone else.
Added: Once the event is underway, we can't track who's driving in the rain and who's not
Thankfully, sometimes our instructors are willing to do more than we ask, and go out of their way to accommodate you, the student. And when that happens, we go along with it, thus, you were moved up on Sunday. Thats the best we could do under the circumstances this weekend.
I'm sorry you feel the need to include "which was painfully slow and frustrating (raining, driving a Subaru), moved to blue after much complaining & begging, where I felt right at home." in your event history listing on MotorsportReg.com. If we did that on your log book, "Kevin was moved up to our Blue group after he bitched and complained enough", I dare say you'd take offense to it, and I take offense to you including it.
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Stacy King
Midlife Crisis Participant
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