Ok, I'm not sure what happened to the post I made last night but I'll try to recreate it...

Quote Originally Posted by CO750
With that idea all you are doing is taking the novice grid, splitting it in thirds, and adding two races to the schedule, but not allowing a novice to race in any more events than before.
No, the idea is to replace Sportsman, Nov-U and Nov-O with Nov-A, Nov-B and Nov-C. Slower riders could ride up if they wanted to but faster riders couldn't ride down. Now, this would reduce the number of races that the fastest riders could run but with Scott's plan, they would ride up into the new classes he proposes.

Quote Originally Posted by CO750
Really, that is what sportsman is for. If you don't feel comfortable on the big novice grid you race in sportsman.
I'm well aware of what Sportsman is intended for. What I'm proposing is to take that idea a step further. The current scheme for the novice classes results in huge grids of riders with very different skill levels. I'm trying to think of a way to smooth it out a bit. If the results of these races are based so clearly on skill and not on the bike, why do we run them that way?

Quote Originally Posted by CO750
I'm not trying to jump on your case, and I am a slow novice myself, but you don't get faster racing in sportsman, or NovU/O. If you really want to get faster you need to put in time on the track outside of races working on different aspects of your skills.
Well, maybe you don't get faster by racing but I do. And I don't get faster by running against people who are tens of seconds a lap faster than me. I get faster by chasing someone who is a second or two faster than me and, more importantly, I have a lot more fun, especially when I don't have to constantly worry about getting taken out by someone who's fast but inexperienced with making passes on significantly slower riders.

I get passed all the time by experts in endurance and I've never had a problem with them because they know how to do it. I have had quite a few passes in Nov-O that were close to taking me out. Now, one response might be "Grow a set and deal with it." I prefer to try to think of ways to allow people to enjoy the competition of racing and do so more safely.

Dirk