February Road Atlanta Cancelled

The race has been rescheduled for June 2-3 and will be run with a National and Pro-IT. A rough schedule has been worked out and we will be racing until 6 on Sat and 5:30 on Sun. Stay tuned for details.

Whadyagonnado?
 
Any idea why a Regional was scheduled in February when there was a June date available? Looks like our already meager track time will probably be even more limited, although I'm sure the entry fees will be reduced because we are sharing the track with a National. Right.

James Wiley
 
At the SEDIV meeting at Jekyll Island we got approval to add SARRC races to the National/Pro-IT at Road Atlanta over the June 2,3 weekend. It will mean a couple of long days for our workers, the SARRC races will be 12 laps rather than the traditional 15, and the National drivers will not have exclusive use of the track for all their sessions (they'll share a 20 minute session of SARRC qualifying and National practice). The good news is the days are their longest then and we'll have one helluva party Saturday evening.

All parties will be making compromises, but it gives regional racers a second SARRC race at Road Atlanta in 2007.

Thanks to all that helped make this happen...

= = = = = = = = =

Mr Wiley,

Traditionally Atlanta Region has run SARRC/ECR weekends in late February and July, Nationals in late March and June, then the ARRC in November. We also used to run a Double SARRC Labor Day weekend, but those dates were taken over by the AMA in 2004. We normally can't run a SARRC in June because it conflicts with the Double SARRC at CMP Memorial weekend (SARRC rule 5.2). but that rule was waived on a one-time basis by the SARRC Committee at Jekyll.

At the February and July races each SARRC group normally gets two 15-minute qualifying sessions and a 15 lap race. At this combined event each SARRC group will get a single 20-minute qualifier and a 12 lap race. I haven't run the budget numbers for the 2007 season yet, but at least for this event I can say the entry fee will not go UP from 2006.

A lot of people put a lot of effort into making a second SARRC event available at Road Atlanta in 2007. Everybody is getting hosed in this deal - the track is losing income because it had to cancel all of it's February events, the regional racers are losing track time, the National guys are losing track time, and the Atlanta Region is losing the income from the second ECR event that cannot be re-scheduled. The good news it's a one-time deal and we're getting a much-improved track to race on. And with Road Atlanta making this much of a capital investment, it should alleviate some of the concerns about the site becoming a golf course in the near future.

Butch Kummer
AR Competition Director
 
We've talked about a night ECR at Nashville, but unfortunately Labor Day does not fall into a "window" during which turning on the lights is relatively inexpensive ($300 an hour). Apparently there's a major start-up fee (my words, not theirs) during each billing cycle to turn on the lights and we'd have to ante that up.

Unless we run it in the evening, there's no time in a two-day Double SARRC schedule for an Enduro or even a Pro-IT (and adding either would require another waiver of the SARRC rules).

For 2007 the big change in the Nashville event will be adding the MWDiv Mid-Am series to it (much like the SARRC/MARRS Double at VIR in May). Maybe in the future we'll go to a three-day event, but since Nashville is on the fringes of SEDIV we like having Monday to travel.

Five-pound bag, ten pounds of ****...
 
Based on a PM conversation with James Wiley, I've gone back and looked at my preliminary schedule for the June weekend, specifically the length of the SARRC races.

We cannot shorten the National races because the GCR requires them to be 45 miles, which is 18 laps at Road Atlanta. When I was working on the proposal to see if adding SARRC races to the National weekend was feasible, I used 12-lap races because the SARRC rules require the races to be 30 miles or 30 minutes (and 12 laps is 30 miles at RA). In my schedule pro forma, however, I still allowed 30 minutes for each SARRC race.

Well, Duh! Averaging 1:50 laps (which the fastest cars in each group could easily do), 15 laps still comes out to 27.5 minutes, and most groups will be done quicker than that!

Bottom line - we can still make the SARRC races 15 laps or 30 minutes, whichever comes first. Only caveat, if we have inclement weather and/or a FCY then it's much more likely it will become a timed race because we simply DON'T have any margin in the schedule to run over 30 minutes.

James, thanks for helping me see the light here...

Butch Kummer
Atlanta Region Competition Director
 
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