I've been running this thought over in my head here lately....
The MRA has always been a long term "GOAL" oriented club.
as in there's a lot of emphasis put on the year end trophy we might achieve.
If you talk to other racers across the country things seem a little different that they don't have that carrot in their eye to try and get and aren't worried about a year end trophy.
What I'm getting at here is, maybe that we put so much effort on the entire season and you have to race all the races and get that year end finishing spot, that it diminishes peoples drive to come out and race becuase they don't want to start from the back of the grid because they have no accumalated points from previous weekends or last year.
the grid posistions are based on points and how well you did before and are doing.
I think that if we revistied the idea of qualifying on the weekends that it might bring back in some old racers that don't want to climb that hill to fight for a good grid spot.
it'd be more intriguiging for them to think that they can pick the weekends and tracks they want and not worry about starting last.
I know, here comes the argument about tires and now i'll need to buy a set of qualifying tires, but that's not the case. truly think about it.....when you practice on saturday your going as goddamn fast as you possibly can to get your lap times down. and your not putting on new tires for that.
some people might choose to buy a set of new tires for qualifying....and that's their choice....and that's probably the same person who made the choice to spend $30k on a their race bike and has the ability to put on 2 new sets of tires every weekend regardless, so it's of no consequence to the average guy anyway because he's already been out "tired" and out "check booked" for the last several years anyway. Who cares if Brad hendry puts on a set of qualifiers, who cares if jon glaefke puts on a set of qaulifiers? really, what's the difference? will he gain a second from his practice tire? maybe, and if he does how far up the twins grid will he move? 5 rows? no....none. fact is if there faster than you, they are faster than you.
I really think this may be an idea to draw back old racers on the grid, and that's what we need right now is entry fees....spectators are nice, but that's only $10 a head. we need more of the $250 entry fees per person.
here's the math: we attract back 20 racers (20x$200) that's $4000 extra.
we'd have to bring in an extra 400 spectators to generate $4000. I've been around the mra a few years, and I don't think we're going to attract another 400 spectators on top of the the normal spectators we have right now. and if we do it's only going to be for one or two weekends.
think about this please before you slam this idea....
This is an idea to try and bring back already licensed racers.... We've been catering to the die hard racers and the number of those entrants isn't enough to support the club so now maybe we need to try and cater to the racers that want to do specific dates.