I really think this was directed more toward regions that might be
"co-sanctioning" events with other, local non-SCCA clubs, such as local marque
clubs, "councils" like the Detroit Council of Sports Car Clubs here locally,
etc., that have different safety and/or operational rules and, if someone goes
away angry because they were expecting an "SCCA" event, could reflect badly on
SCCA as a whole over time (there's a reason I don't run DCSCC events here
locally, which has somewhat to do with operational safety at *some* of the
member clubs -- Corvette Club of Michigan being the notable exception to those
concerns -- and somewhat to do with a couple of the personality cults within,
oddly enough, the same member clubs that have safety issues, again, not CCM).
The last time Detroit SCCA did a joint event with DCSCC, the operation of the
event, dictated by DCSCC, was utterly and completely broken by the sheer number
of cars. Detroit SCCA had (and has) been running its events with a heat
structure, which can and does easily handle high car counts with ease, while
DCSCC requires what I call "zoo format" -- get in line and run when you get to
the front of the line, along with registration and tech to be open well after
the start of runs. This works up to about 80 cars, but by about 115-120 cars,
it's severely strained, and by the 180-200 car level we were running, it was
well and truly broken and people were sitting in grid lines for HOURS waiting
to run. Were people happy about that? No. Who did they blame? Not Council,
but Detroit SCCA. And that's why we haven't operated a Council event in
several years.
I have no doubts that the onset of PRO prompted Mr. Johnson's open letter to
the regions in the February Fasttrack, but it read to me as a caution to
regions thinking of "co-sanctioning" with another club that has different
operating rules and procedures, be it PRO, NASA, a local council, a marque
club, whatever, and that it is important for the region to realize that by
putting its name on an event, it *implies* automatically the approval of SCCA,
Inc., as the region is a chartered branch of the national organization. I
sincerely doubt we're looking at a return to the "bad old days" where you
needed to a) own a narrowly-defined "sports car" to be eligible for membership
in SCCA, b) had to be "recommended" by an existing SCCA member and "invited" to
join, and c) anything you did with another group, such as race for prize money,
could get you expelled from SCCA if you were caught by SCCA's self-anointed
"purity of amateur sport" police.
Quite frankly, and from a legal standpoint, SCCA, Inc. *needs* to be diligent
in this area. It's not Solo-specific, either, it applies to Club Racing, Road
Rally, and Performance Rally equally as well. It's certainly not something we
would've seen from Nick Craw, for whom Solo was only a baby step on the way to
road racing and thus beneath his notice, but Steve Johnson seems to be very
aware of the club as a whole and each element within the club as being able to
stand on its own merits.
Personally, while Steve Volpp's a pal and I wish him well in his new endeavour,
I'm not quite able to swing adding his new organization's events to my
schedule, which is already quite full of National Tour, ProSolo, regional, and
CenDiv events, not to mention Nationals week in Topeka. I don't have that much
vacation available, and the majority of PRO events are a good two-day tow away.
Jim Crider
autojim@despammed.com
#65 ESP '99 Mustang Cobra
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