July 2024 NCR SCCA Board Meeting Minutes

July 21, 2024

Attendees: Kit Williams, James Shanks, Lee Hill, Anna Crissman, Megan Tyler, Sam Fouse, Chris Severt, Rob Wilmoth, Ryan Lohrman, Matt Decker, John Bodnar

Guests: Bruce Dover, Pat Hill, Al Heatwole, Ben Tyler, Frank Killian,

1. The meeting was called to order by Anna Crissman, NCR RE, at 6:33 pm.
2. Motion to approve the minutes from the June meeting (Hill/Wilmoth). Approved.

Financial Report

Sam Fouse gave a financial report to the Board.

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 had met last Tuesday at Wrightsville Beach Brewery with 6 members and no guests. They discussed Rockingham and the schedule for the rest of 2024. Lee Hill said the West Chapter had met last Tuesday with 10 people and 1 new member. They discussed the incident at Roebling Road that had just happened as well as Rockingham. James Shanks said the Triangle Chapter had met last Wednesday due to moving their meeting to avoid July 4th. They had 16 people attend and watched several racing videos, and discussed the events at Roebling Road and Rockingham.

Old Business

1. 2025 VIR Dates: Anna said VIR had sent us a list of potential dates for 2025 and she had shared that to the Board. VIR is still offering us the March event date, as well as the April date and May date. We have not taken the March date in several years for multiple reasons, and this year it would be the same weekend as the Road Atlanta Super Tour, and it has been widely agreed that this is not a good weekend for us to take, especially as costs continue to rise. The May date they are offering us is now a three day rental, which VIR is now requiring us to rent all three days. We will need to look closely at the April date and decide if we are going to continue having a Super Tour that weekend or just have the event as a Majors event. We will need to put effort into trying to make sure we don’t have a Majors scheduled 2 weeks before our events in a neighboring region, something that seriously hurt us this year. We have many options for how we format our events and what we do when next year, but we need to begin thinking about it and planning now. We are already having conversations with surrounding regions and the National office about scheduling and trying to avoid any conflicts or close together events. In general, the Board agreed that having our Super Tour or Majors event earlier in the year was usually better as far as scheduling goes, and there is still a lot of uncertainty about what we will be able to do next year as we do not yet know how much VIR is going to increase their prices. Anna brought up that SARRC is considering moving the SIC for 2025 to Daytona rather than Roebling Road. An email had been sent out to drivers announcing that they were going to poll SARRC drivers and consider the option. The dates that VIR offered us do not currently include an October date, but they said they will keep looking for us and will let us know if one becomes available. It is likely that we will need to evaluate the schedule further as more things come in line as far as money and schedules are concerned.

New Business

1. CMP Date in September: Anna said we have been offered a date this year at CMP in September, on the 14th and 15th. This is the same day as a SARRC race at Homestead, which is very far away from CMP and should not conflict with us running this event if we choose to do so. Anna has already spoken to SCR about this and they have said they would be happy to support the event with workers and with anything else we may need. Sam said he had worked out that renting the track for two days would be roughly $25000 total, which is drastically different from what we’ve been used to at VIR. He felt we could easily make this event happen from a money standpoint, He said he wanted to have this event as a double SARRC race, possibly with prod fest, and with space for a time trial as well. He said we could also consider running a CRE at this event, which is something new that the SCCA is planning to announce in another meeting after this one ends. Sam said we could run the event as an SCR event to let it count as a road race and time trial for their region, and we could cover the costs and anything we bring in over the cost of the event could go to SCR. Rob said CMP had offered to work with us on the track rent fees if we end up not quite reaching our break even numbers for the event. Sam asked Al Heatwole for his opinion as a driver, and Al asked about the tentative groupings that Anna had sent out at the start of the meeting. Anna said we would likely need to combine and condense our race groups to make the most of our available track time, and she also said we will need to be very flexible about what classes are where and how we group everyone. It will largely depend on who shows up and how many of each class end up registering for this event. The current groupings had two small bore groups, one open wheel group, and a big bore group. There were multiple suggestions for how to schedule the CRE and the TT sessions. One was for a short CRE race and one was for a long CRE race. Anna had made two different potential schedules and sent them to the Board to look over. James Shanks said he had two concerns. His first was that we had given up a date at October at VIR due to there being too much risk involved and now he felt we were signing up for another risk that he felt would put our 2025 races at risk of not having enough money to pay for them. Multiple Board members pointed out that the risk at VIR was to pay them roughly $85000 in track rent before the event even started, where as the risk here was only $25000 by Sam’s calculations. This is a significantly smaller risk to the region, and Sam felt we could very easily have enough money in the bank after this event to allow us to go racing next year. Anna said she is also very concerned about having enough money to pay for our 2025 events, but this event seemed to be a very low risk. James reiterated that he was concerned that we were adding an event onto the calendar that no one is currently planning to attend and that he did not want to risk our 2025 schedule in any way. Lee, as well as Rob and Sam, said that having this event would put us on the calendar at CMP for 2025, which would be a huge plus for the region as racing becomes more and more expensive at VIR, and a small risk would be worth the benefit of having an option for racing next year. Ryan Lohrman said the TT community would love to have an event as CMP, especially if it counts as an SCR event, as this would add another option for the SEDiv TT points series in order to qualify for the season championship. Anna said we have been considering a road racing and TT combo event for many years, and this event at CMP is our best chance to make this kind of event happen successfully. Sam pointed out that this would end up being the first CRE event in the country following the SCCA announcement of the program in the meeting taking place after ours. Lee felt we should try and make the CRE track time similar to the amount of time given to the road racers, to try and keep everything fair among all of our drivers. Both Lee and Sam felt that CMP was the best available track to start the CRE program in the Southeast. Al asked about entry fees, and Sam said he felt it would be close to $550 or so for a full double SARRC weekend. Anna said she had already discussed the event with several people in the TT program and we would not be offering any single day entries for this event. Anna said we should consider doing the same for the road racing entries. Sam said it looked like it may be close to $400 for the TT event fee but that could go down depending on how many entries we can plan for. We also plan to still offer a Track Event registration for this event for drivers who want to participate in the TT but do not want to be part of the competition. Anna asked if we had any other points to make before making a decision. Al said that the proposed $550 entry fee was higher than the Majors event at CMP earlier this year, and he felt that the TT drivers were getting way more track time than the road race drivers for way less money. Anna pointed out that we can only do 2 races for the SARRC drivers, and while we could look at adding additional practice time to the road race schedule for the event, we could not add additional races. Al said he understood but felt that the TT folks were being asked to pay way less and were getting way more than the road race drivers. Anna and Sam both pointed out that this is unfortunately part of how scheduling for a road race and a TT go, and Sam said we could lower our entry fees for the road race if we expect more people, and Lee said we can lower the entry fee if we are ok will accepting slightly more risk as far as the money is concerned. Anna pointed out that road racers and TT drivers use their track time in very different ways, and the TT drivers are more concerned with the number of sessions they get, whereas road racers want every minute of available track time. Some research was done and the entry fee for the SARRC race earlier this year in March was $475 and the Majors in MAy was $495. Sam said he felt we could bring our fee down to $495 but it would raise our break even number for the event, and we still needed to factor in sanction fees for every entry, both SARRC and TT. Lee Hill made a motion to approve having the proposed event at CMP as discussed, with road racing, TT, and CRE, and work with SCR to make this happen. Rob Wilmoth seconded the motion. Motion passed, with opposition from James Shanks. Anna asked Rob to begin the process of securing the event date from CMP and getting a contract. Sam pointed out that SCR will need to submit for the sanction and the contract will need to be in SCR’s name to count as their event. Anna said she would speak to Greg Hunt at SCR immediately about making this happen. John Bodnar asked if we had a name for this event, and Sam said we had two proposals but had not decided on it. Sam felt we needed to make Prod Fest a prominent part of the event, and Al said he did not think this would be possible, as Prod Fest has been very disorganized and scattered for many years. John wanted to know how to add this to the calendar, and where to classify CRE, and it was clarified that CRE is not part of road racing, it is an experiential program, and we would have a track event as part of the TT portion of the event. More discussion was had about naming the event but no specific decision was made. Anna said we do need to come up with a name quickly, as we need to start advertising and opening this event as quickly as possible.

Motion to adjourn (Fouse/Hill). Passed at 7:53 pm. Many Board members needed to leave to attend the SCCA National meeting that was taking place at 8pm.

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