> There certainly was nothing in this part of your message that is of
critical
> mass. You don't want to change - don't!! I am not trying to change your
> beloved "club", I am hoping to offer an option, that's all. An option
that
> has generated a substantial amount of interest from others that do not
have
> quite as high an RC factor (resistance to change) as you apparantly have.
Hey George, I know exactly where you're coming from. You've got an idea,
and you think it's good, and you're tossing it open to other eyeballs in
search of improvements.
That's great. That's fantastic. That's the way progress works. "Given
enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" I'm on your side here.
> Pssst - your club leadership doesn't feel the way you do about growth
> (probably for the reason listed above). Your fellow members want TV
> coverage, they want the popularity being enjoyed by other motorsports -
just
> what you say you do not want. Read the interview with your new boss in
> Grassroots, read the messages being posted on this list - - you are in
the
> minority in your position, from what I read and understand.
You're damn right that some of us want what CEO Steve is chasing - in
spades! But equally, some of us do not. And I think that there's room for
both camps.
If you organize your DSC idea, and it has some manner of "success" (by
whatever term you choose to define "success" as) that doesn't threaten or
diminish me or mine at all. Does the existance of softball diminish
baseball? Does field hockey diminish ice hockey? Does the NFL diminish the
CFL?
> P.S. - thanks for giving DG a math lesson.
The math is entirely valid. The calculations I did are independant of
course length. If you have 180 cars, grouped in 3 classes of 60 cars, then
it will take 5:02 to run them through your three "qualification" runs and
the elimination ladders. Practice runs will take an additional hour per run
to run through all 180 cars. This time is immutable, and assumes that
eveything runs absolutely perfectly - and having run events myself, believe
me, they NEVER run absolutely perfectly. All it takes is one parts-shedding
Mini or one shattered Corvette brake rotor to shut you down solid for 10,
15, 20 minutes.
> Please also note that with paid course workers, there is not the time lag
between sessions, > so there is more course time available.
True enough, but once you start scaling up the size of the event, you
increase the logistic complexity. Again, let's assume 180 cars. In a 10
hour day, you can fit in your "main event" plus somewhere between 3 and 5
practice runs per car. So your courses are "hot" (ie, manned with your paid
corner workers) for a 10 hour period. 10 hours standing out on course is a
LONG time. Never mind 10 hours in the blazing sun on your feet, you need to
accomodate feeding these people, bathroom breaks, and just plain human
decency - no staff, placed on course for a 10 hour shift, will do so again!
So you're going to need two shifts as a minimum. This means shift changes
(although they can be done "on the fly" and so need not interrupt the flow
of the event)
Incidently, figure on 3 corner stations as a minimum, per course (so 6
stations) figure at least 4 people per station (corner captain, flagman, 2
chasers) - so 24 people paid to be on course per shift. Figure 2 shifts -
that's 48 people on your payroll, minimum, for the day.
If you pay them $7.00/hour, it's going to cost you $336.00 per hour to have
them there, for a total $3,360.00 in corner worker wages for the day.
> By finishing a session, picking up corner sheets, and
> starting the first car in the next session immediately, there is a LOT
more
> course time available, if my region is any indicator.
What's the largest size of this event format that you've run? It looks to
me that you're looking at a hard maximum of 180 people competing in a
single day event, and that's a long day to boot. I'd bet that to meet the
goals you've set in any sort of reasonable timeframe means you can
accomodate maybe 130-150 competitors.
> If not successful locally, DSC will go away. Dennis Grant has a vested
> interest in seeing it's failure, that would only ensure success of his
"I"
> class.
Oh, come off it George. I have no such "vested interest". I'm on your side,
fer crissakes.
> However, it seems that from simply reading about DSC in it's infancy,
> and discounting it in it's entirety isn't being very fair and open
minded.
One of the painful things about placing an idea in front of the world is
that people WILL see very real problems that you did not. It is entirely
possible that one of these problems will be a "killer tomato" that cannot
be overcome, and acts as a showstopper. In order to reap the benefits of
public comment, you have to be prepared to face that possibility.
Your idea is not a bad one - in fact, as has been pointed out, your idea
already exists in the form of NHRA bracket racing. The fact that NHRA
bracket racing has been going on for the last 40 years or so, very
successfully, bodes well for your idea.
HOWEVER, your idea will also suffer from the same problems that bracket
racing has. It is vulnerable to sandbagging. There exist very definate (and
very cheap!) "killer cars" for this format (so the premise that "the car
doesn't matter" is NOT valid) And most importantly, you are optimising for
driver CONSISTANCY instead of driver SPEED.
Current ProSolo is a lot like Olympic pistol shooting, in that there is an
absolute target and an absolute best score. Your DSC is more like bench
rifle shooting, in that it doesn't matter WHERE on the target you hit, but
that your grouping be as small as possible (ideally, each bullet should go
through the same hole) A DSC competitor is a horse of an entirely different
color than a current ProSoloist.
Speaking as a current ProSoloist, I'd find DSC dull and unexciting - so if
your goal is to attract people like me, then you've missed, and it's back
to the drawing board. If, however, you're after a _different_ audience,
well, more power to you.
DG
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