BoD Minutes – September 2024

September 18, 2024

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

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

1. The meeting was called to order at 7:01 pm by Anna Crissman, NCR RE.
2. Motion to approve the minutes from the August meeting (Shanks/Bodnar). Approved.

Financial Report

Treasurer Sam Fouse had sent a financial report to Kit Williams, Secretary.

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 was not available at the start of the meeting, but he had sent in a Chapter report to be read. The Cape Fear Chapter met with 5 regulars and 1 new attendee. They mostly discussed the upcoming CMP event and local and national autocross. Lee Hill said the West Chapter met with 10 regulars in Greensboro last Tuesday. They spoke about the upcoming CMP event and VIR. Lee will not make the next West Chapter meeting but has already worked out someone to cover for him. James Shanks had uploaded a report of the Triangle Chapter meeting. They had a very large turnout and watched some in-car video of Road America, and had a trivia contest again.

Old Business

1. Carolina Showdown at CMP: Anna wanted to do a brief recap of the CMP event, as we do not have all of the numbers and final reports from it. She said she felt it went very well, even with all of the moving parts from having so many different racing disciplines involved at one event. She said she had received mostly positive feedback about the event from drivers and participants, and said that most or all of any difficulties or negatives from the event came from running a new type of event with so many different procedures and scheduling to work through. James said he was impressed with how many people showed up to help in Tech, particularly young people. Lots of praise was given to Shellie McKee for all of the help she provided to Tech throughout the event. Al said he felt the schedule may be better if we separated SARRC and TT into totally separate blocks of time, rather than mix them together. Anna said this was something to consider, and tweaking the schedule will definitely be a priority for the next combo event we run. Al requested if we do more events away from VIR we will need to find a better solution for scales for Tech. Lee Hill said the CRE was a learning experience, and he was very thankful for the help of Jon Krolewicz, who spent a lot of time coaching the drivers. He said we had signed off on novice permits for four of the CRE drivers based on their performance in the event. Lee felt this was a very important program for SCCA, as we are losing drivers schools across the country, and being able to run a CRE during a road racing weekend could be vital to the future of the club. Lee thanked the drivers who participated as instructors during the sessions, and felt having experienced, licensed drivers on track was crucial to how the CRE ran and the success that they had. He felt most people had fun during the sessions, and felt it was a good start to this new program. The drivers got a lot of racing experience throughout the weekend, including multiple starts, restarts, black flags, and various other flag conditions that were intentionally called during their races. Anna said she was planning to approach CCR about getting back the March race date at CMP for next year. She said this weekend was a one off and would not be a weekend we will have available next year, but she was hoping to have a similar event sometime next year if we can. Ben Tyler said he felt the schedule was atrocious, that race control was unable to do another event like this, and that we needed to separate all of the racing disciplines into blocks so they can do one thing at a time. Ben also said the way road racing and time trials use their time is very different, and the way the stewards and race control set up their minute by minute schedule meant that we were off schedule all day both days, and this could not happen again. Ben said he had spoken with one of the stewards about how to train stewards to run time trials and CRE sessions. Brad Davis wanted to know if it would be possible to have stewards be able to operate all of these sessions during an event weekend. Ben felt this was a good sign that there are stewards who want to learn and become more a part of these combo events. Lee felt the weekend went well, and gave huge thanks to Ben for helping make our experience with the stewards more positive this weekend. Everyone agreed that we learned a lot from this weekend and would use that knowledge to make our next combo event even more of a success.

New Business

1. Dave’s Race at VIR Car Show: Al Heatwole wanted to know more about what we would need to do or be able to do at the car show at Dave’s Race. We had planned last meeting to have a booth or display set up for NCR at the event. We plan to display the pace car, as well as a few other cars and have promotional material available. Anna said we had ordered a membership kit from SCCA National but it had no expected arrival time and we probably could not count on it to be available by the time of the event, which is September 28th.
2. 2025 VIR Dates: Anna said the VIR schedule for 2025 has had a few changes since our last conversation. VIR has found someone to take the Friday day in May from us, so we only have to rent the weekend, which makes our event much easier to make happen. She said we also still have a March date on their calendar, which we have been giving to the National TT program for several years, but they are not taking that date this year, which means we need to officially decide to keep the date or not. This date has been a huge financial problem for many years, and the weather has historically been terrible in Danville on that weekend. Motion to drop the March date at VIR for all future years (Shanks/Fouse). Motion approved unanimously.
3. SIC Giveaways: Anna said we have traditionally given away a number of gift cards and event entries at the SIC event as door prizes for their banquet. She asked the Board if we agreed to continue to do this at this year’s SIC. The Board agreed that we should continue to do this, and that we should do the same prizes and giveaways that we did last year.

There was a closed meeting after the normal meeting.

Motion to adjourn at 8:08 pm (Hill/Wilmoth). Approved.

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