Jake Hodges asked a lot of questions:
Let's start with your last question, Jake. Are you a crazy,
unenlightened newby? Of course you are. If you keep
autocrossing you will become a crazy old hand. As for
enlightenment, you could pay attention to Ms. Kelley's
musings.
> Catch me up, here. As for Rookies being discouraged enough to not return
> after not doing well at their first events... Are there a lot of data points
> to support this?
There are two to three hundred data points per year
of Novices (nee Rookies) not returning. As for the reasons
they don't return, well, we haven't actually tried to track
them down and ask them, so it's open to speculation.
What the data would show you is that we have a Novice
program which is effective in keeping a fair number of
newbies participating regularly during their first year, but
participation drops off rapidly after that. Of the 1998
rookie class, 12 trophy winners, 5 trophy contenders
(but not winners), and 5 others participated in at least
half of the events the following year. There are about
five of them still participating regularly today. We simply
aren't structured well to provide close competition to
developing drivers after their first year except in a very
few highly subscribed classes, even though the data also
shows that 60% of the revenue comes from drivers
competing for season trophies. So we have lots of
newbies every year coming and going amongst the
core group. The objective is simply to keep autocrossing
alive. Everything else is gravy.
In five seasons I was able to find close competition twice
having otherwise to make up measurements of progress
such as my ASP car being only 3% slower than Ray Miller's
Super Stock car rather than 5% slower as it was the previous
year. There's always something to shoot for, and since you
see 8th out 9th as better than 8th out of 8th, I'd say you're
likely to be around awhile.
Rich Urschel
Ps. We made a couple of minor mistakes with the course
last Sunday. I'm sure we won't be forever abandoning gates
as a result.
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