High Entries

[Terry Johns]

I've just looked on the Motorsport Reg and see that we currently have 74 entries for this weekends event. As I understand it 74 entries at $40.00 is $3,200.00 am I also correct in thinking that the lot rental is $1,500.00 that should leave the club give or take a few dollars around $1,700.00 profit. Does the club really need to be making that much money? wouldn't it be better to lower the entry to say 60, and give everybody more runs, surely the more people we have the less runs we get. If we 60 that will still give the club around $900.00

So its either more profit or more runs. My votes for more runs.

[Stuart]

Your view of this being only profits vs runs is a bit off putting.  Should it not be viewed as # of participants vs # of runs?  Are you willing to sit out so others can have more runs, as this is effectively what you are asking the club to do.

[MurrayPeterson]

So its either more profit or more runs. My votes for more runs.

That is specious logic at its worst.  Profit isn't the issue, and never has been for this club.  And more runs isn't a very good benchmark.

We need to balance run time per participant against # participants.  We could probably get in 500 people for 1 run each.  Or 1 person for 500 runs.  Both are silly, so some sort of balance is desired.  I partially disagree with Stuart about # runs being the benchmark, but instead, number of seconds on course for the day.  Otherwise, we would be starting to design 15-20 second courses to maximize the number of runs.

[Stuart]

You are right Murray, time on course is a more important number.  I was simply using # of runs as it was already part of the discussion.  Another important point is that individual events may make a profit, but this can be offset by a number of expenses not included in the simplistic profit/loss equations (low turnout events, gear replacement, insurance, storage rental, etc.)

[Terry Johns]

Where do you draw the line, 100 entries and get 4 runs, 140 entries and get 3 runs. Somewhere we need to find a happy balance.

[MurrayPeterson]

An important variable is the available venue, and the number of cars we can have on course at one time.  Packwood (or Lincoln) easily allow 3-5 cars on course at one time, while Fort Macleod and Westerner are limited to 1 car at a time, with a small amount of overlap.  I haven't been to YYC yet, but it appears that 2-3 cars are possible, which is why we can handle 80 drivers for the event.  If we get "good", perhaps we can push this to 90-100 drivers for the event, but that does require organizational skills beyond our current level of achievement.  And, really, do we want to be the same as Packwood or Lincoln, where 3 runs of 40-60 seconds duration are the limit for the day?

[Terry Johns]

I totally agree about organisational structures. I guess if we could get started on time it would be a huge help. The last two YYC events Reijo has designed 2 great courses that facilitate 3 cars on track, that makes a huge difference.

[Reijo]

Courses do not loop back so we can put as many cars out as we can bear ... optimally the same as SCCA Tours etc. .... with 1/3 the cars ... well, do the math.   8 runs should be doable IF WE have our act together ... work together ... on a 50 -60  sec course.  Up to us.

BTW, we are sweeping the lot $1k+, 300 new cones ($14 each) plus a storage that becomes $280/month after the 3 month teaser rate is over, new helmets ($335 each) ... never mind putting aside money for Pro Solo timing equipment (over $5k), a cone trailer and/or future motorhome etc......  We had better be putting aside some money ...   Then there is the usual replacement of equipment that gets run over such as timing, cones etc. ....and replacement of equipment that wears out (computers, timing), web hosting, MSReg fees etc. etc. etc.    So as you can see there is more to the picture and what we put on on a daily basis.   

R

[nnywg]

+ portapotties which aren't cheap

[Terry Johns]

sounds good, looking forward to the weekend 

[zero10]

I know this topic has already sort of been beaten to death but I would like to raise a couple more points that haven't been discussed in this thread.

This lot has proven to be able to produce 540 runs (with an average run time of almost exactly 50 seconds) with 2 run groups (80 participants, 7 runs each less a couple drop-outs).  On that day we got a late start, changeovers ran long and lunch ran long, but we still finished at about the right time.  It stands to reason that with 3 run groups and everything running properly the lot could support as many as 840 (120 people, 7 runs each) runs in a day while finishing at the same time, and, I would add, arguably each competitor would receive the same value.  I also think at times the starting schedule was allowed to slip a bit and the time between cars could be tightened up a bit without any impact on safety.  Once you factor that in I believe the lot could support 1000 runs in a day if there was demand for such.

On the money front, I would also like to point out that clubs incur expenses year-round but bring in most of their money over only a couple months in the summer.  You have to make an appreciable amount of money at each event to cover those costs through the winter.  I feel like the SASC is managing their costs and profits well to keep themselves sustainable.

I also agree that the best judge of the "value" of an event to me is seat time and not necessarily the number of runs, although it seems we have adhered to a pretty predictable amount of time on course per run so I suppose for making approximations number of runs works so long as we don't take it to excess.


And, just to take a friendly jab at things:

+ portapotties which aren't cheap

They are in Red Deer

[Sprockett]

FYI, to clarify Course length does not determine how long things take to run. The interval between cars determines total time to run a group.


Edit: ...as Reijo's other thread (that I just read) points out...

[94boosted]

Also I think that bringing out more new faces and introducing or re-introducing them to autocross is great for the sport.