BoD Minutes – August 2024

August 21, 2024

Attendees: Anna Crissman, Kit Williams, James Shanks, Matt Decker, John Bodnar, Chris Severt, Sam Fouse, Rob Wilmoth

Guests: Al Heatwole, Bruce Dover, Amy Brown, Mark Senior, Stephen Miller late

1. The meeting was called to order at 6:33 pm by Anna Crissman, NCR RE.
2. Motion to approve the minutes for the July Board meeting (Shanks/Decker). Approved.

Financial Report

Treasurer Sam Fouse had sent a copy of the financial report to Secretary Kit Williams.

As the details of our finances are confidential, NCR members who wish more information should contact either the Office Manager or any member of the Board of Directors. They are also invited to attend a Chapter Meeting, where such matters are discussed in detail.

Chapter Reports

Chris Severt said the Cape Fear Chapter met on the 13th at their normal location but not in their normal room. They had 8 members attend and talked about the upcoming CMP event and Rockingham. James Shanks said the Triangle Chapter met twice this month, once during Hurricane Debby, which disrupted the meeting greatly, and they decided to meet again the next week. He said in total 21 people attended the meetings and they watched some race videos and talked about VIR and racing in 2025. Anna read Lee Hill’s West Chapter report as Lee was attending a Track Night in America event. They met in their regular location with 11 people, and they discussed the CMP event and the CRE program.

Old Business

1. September event at CMP: Anna said that Al Heatwole is trying to get more volunteers to help with Tech for this event, and Bruce is going to help get him a list of people who can be reached out to. Al said he would like to have anyone with some Tech experience or license, but he would also like to have some physical help with moving equipment and scales so he would take anyone who was interested in helping out. Anna clarified that there will not be any one-day event entries for this event, like we would normally do at our NCCAR time trials. Anna said she is working on getting help for Grid and Pit and has reached out to several people to try and get some volunteers signed up. Anna said we have 16 workers signed up for F&C, and having several more would make things easier and having 20 people should be the minimum to cover the whole track. We have a good number of people signed up for Start currently. Bruce said he would need more people for Saturday morning, and Anna said she was signed up to help but finding some more people would help. Amy Brown said she could help at 7am for a little while. Sam said he has worked out lunches for our volunteers with on-site concessions at CMP, and we will need to work out a way to get each person’s order so they can handle the flow of people to the concessions stand during lunch. The concessions stand will also be able to provide us with coffee in the morning, and the race chairs will be providing a worker breakfast for the flag meeting like we normally do. Sam has worked out with Stephen Miller to cook some meat for us for a Saturday night social, and we will provide the sides for the meal. Sam was concerned about radios for the event, and whether we will need to borrow radios from CCR or if we can use the radios from the track. Rob Wilmoth said he will ask the track how many they have, and Sam will see how many CCR has to make sure we will have enough to cover everything with spares. Rob said he has a few people interested in the CRE, but he wanted to know the minimum drivers we needed to run the CRE sessions, and what we would do if we did not get to that number. Anna suggested we should target having at least 5 drivers signed up to keep the sessions on the schedule, and there are currently 2 drivers signed up. Sam said the REB had met the day before this meeting and had discussed multiple changes and updates that will be coming to the CRE next year. Anna suggested we should put out some social media ads for CRE in the coming weeks. Anna and Sam both suggested reaching out to prep shops and seeing if anyone has a car available to lend out to someone for the purpose of getting experience with the CRE. There was a longer discussion about the CRE rules and how we could attract more drivers and possibly find some cars for those people. Sam had created a 2 page highlight of the CRE rules to try and make things easier for anyone who is interested in it. It was decided to use $100 towards a social media ad to promote the CRE.

New Business

1. NCR Booth at Dave’s Race: Amy Brown said Racing for ALS is running Dave’s Race 6 at VIR this year in September. During the event, they will be having a car show which Amy is organizing. Amy wanted to have NCR at this car show with members, cars, a table, and maybe even our pace car. She felt this would be a great way to advertise the region, talk about what we do, and get more people interested in road racing, time trials, autocrossing, volunteering, etc. Amy said this would be a large car show, would be recorded and broadcast on multiple outlets, and felt it would be a great way to get positive exposure for the region. Sam said the pace car can be used, but it would need to have gas added at the VIR pumps and cannot leave the facility. Rob said he would like to use our pace car for the parade laps, and Sam said that would be possible as long as Mazda North America is listed on the event sponsorship somewhere. We will need to find someone or multiple someones to man an NCR booth and help promote the region. We will work on making this happen, and Al said he may be able to, along with a few others.
2. Speed Suite Loan: Sam said we purchased the VIR speed suite in 2017, and our loan on the speed suite through BB&T, which is now Truist, is up for renewal. We have been offered a simple renewal, which requires no appraisal, no financial statement, a small fee, and at the end of the new 8 year loan we will owe nothing on the speed suite. Sam said this was a no-brainer and we should absolutely take this offer. Motion to accept the renewed loan offer on the speed suite (Wilmoth/Shanks). Motion approved.
3. Super Tour: The Board had been having a long discussion through email about the April event at VIR in 2025. We have traditionally had a 3 day Hoosier Super Tour on that date, but this year’s event left us with a very small financial profit, and we only made that profit due to the revenue generated by us hosting a test day. The Board has been considering multiple options for how to handle this situation and what to do with this weekend. There are a huge number of variables to consider with this decision. We had considered changing the event to a Majors event, to change the number of days of the event, moving our Super Tour / Majors event to May rather than April, and several other options. Sam has proposed making the event a 2 day Super Tour with a test day on Friday. Al said he felt regional racers would not attend both a Majors in April and a regional in May at VIR. Sam pointed out that making the event a 2 day race with a test day on Friday would potentially offer drivers the ability to attend the event and have one less day of travel or hotel costs. The scheduling of the event with other regions and other Majors races can be looked at in the future, but we have reached out to WDCR and they do not have a fully confirmed schedule for 2025 yet. Motion to hold a 2 day Super Tour with a non-competition related test day on Friday at our April event weekend at VIR (Shanks/Severt). Motion approved.
4. SCCA Promotional kits: Anna brought this item up during Amy’s discussion about NCR having a booth at Dave’s Race. The SCCA National office is offering flags, banners, and other promotional/advertising materials to help promote the SCCA. The kits are $300 each plus shipping and tax and we can purchase one if we want. Anna said that even if we do not buy this kit from SCCA, we should look into something similar to help promote what we do, whether it is at car shows or NCR Scholarship Fund events. Motion to purchase a promotional kit from the SCCA (Crissman/Wilmoth). Motion approved.
5. SCCA Gift Cards: Anna said we had been given an Amazon and Hawk gift card from the SCCA National office as a thank you for completing our charter process. The gift cards are in the amount of $100 each. Anna asked if the safety car needed brakes, and Sam said it was fine. Anna suggested that we use them as gifts or door prizes, either during our banquet or during the SIC. Bruce said the Hawk gift card expired in February 2025. Kit suggested we could give them away during Dave’s Race, and Anna and Sam proposed we could give them to the NCR Scholarship Fund to use as a giveaway or raffle. The Board agreed this would be a good use of the gift cards.

Anna brought up an additional item not on the agenda. She said Ron Munnerlyn, the NCR SARRC representative, was considering stepping down sometime in the near future. Anna said if anyone knew someone interested in doing this or who wanted to be a part of the SARRC committee should contact us and let us know of their interest. James said that traditionally having a driver as the region’s SARRC representative usually works well. Anna said she felt we had until roughly the end of the year to find a replacement. Al Heatwole said he would ask around and that he might be interested himself.

Motion to adjourn the meeting (Fouse/Bodnar). Passed at 8:00 pm.

Please note that all NCR members are welcome to attend NCR Board of Directors meetings.

If any member should have a question about the Region or its activities, please contact the Office Manager or any member of the Board.

Submitted by Secretary Kit Williams