Navigating the Future: Majors Participation

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$22K not bad. If you don't mind can you share what the top 5 spend items were and the amount for the year?

Three items account for 80% -

1. Tires = 8 sets = about $9K
2. Entries = about $7K
3. Brake pads = about $2K
4. Tow gas = about $1K (we happen to live seven miles from Blackhawk, which is about 6 races per year for us)
5. Fuel for the crew (family) = about $1K

That's about 20K of the 22K. The rest is wear parts like axle CV bearings and stuff. A couple gear sets to dial in tracks or replace pitting sets (Hewland Classic in England is by far the cheapest even with shipping, especially if your buddy needs something as well). 1 quart of brake fluid per year ($70). Oil and race gas is not to bad since we just use 10 - 12 gallons of 91 street gas per weekend ($650 - Wisconsin is a lot cheaper than Illinois due to fuel taxes).

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I have a simple question. Why would anyone beg and plead to be accepted in a club that is clearly not interested in having them when there are organizations who will actually cater to them??

FF and FC will not die with out SCCA. Clearly both are doing well and very healthy with other organizations. Instead of beating the dead SCCA horse go enjoy racing with a club that actually wants you there

No need to start a new club. That would just make for more fractions. Support those who support your class!! Plenty of very healthy options outside the SCCA

Most people with the talent and budget who want to participate in the runoff’s would fit right in at FRP. For older cars vintage is also very healthy. Throw in the various regional groups and all have an existing place to play

There is no chance of open wheel taking over SCCA.. hell if you can’t even get enough guys to keep the class alive how do you think you can take over SCCA??

Beating the dead horse will kill open wheel classes way before they die off because no longer wanted in SCCA

Len, I'm sympathetic to what your saying, but don't completely agree:

1. Bob Wright currently does a nice job with FRP for example - but what happens when he retires? The next owner may do more, or less. Look what happened to the Pro Formula Atlantic and S2000 series when Vickie O'Connor retired. If your not not familiar with that scenario - it proves the point. Same has happened in Canada this past 13 months in F1600 and Atlantic (sounds like they are pulling out of that death spiral with the previous owner taking the series back. BTW - these folks and drivers are super fun to race with, we have done a couple with them). Plus FRP is a long drive for us and a lot of other people - not enough vacation time to make it happen.
2. Vintage: we don't qualify for vintage, and we enjoy running a more modern engine.
3. Who else is there to run with in the mid-west?
4. All we need is:
a. To talk as a class and make sure the rules are such that people want to run their cars vs store them, and bring young guys into the fold.
b. 5 or 6 board members who like formula cars - and no one wants to be on the board so it's easy to win a spot. Most of the current board members are autocross folks. Nothing against them and the world needs autocross, but, when someone at national makes a suggestion to them about wheel to wheel, they don't know if its a good one or a bad one so tend to go along to get along.

Lets not beg and plead, lets take control of our destiny. It's not hard (see 4 a and b above)

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Team, per encouragement here -

Set up a Zoom call where we can all meet to discuss how to improve small formula participation. At he moment its an open brainstorming. We'll figure it out as we go. Starts tomorrow night and weekly for 20 weeks. We can extend it to our hearts content.

Thursdays 9pm eastern, all small formula classes welcome.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us05web.zoom.us/j/82013141123?pwd=6fYy6kZCrpFsUTp9IyE2YweV8a3HBw.1


Meeting ID: 820 1314 1123
Passcode: G5G7wm

[RideMore]

Team, per the encouragement here -

I just created a Facebook group called "Formula F USA" in hopes of finding drivers/car owners that are not on Apex Speed.

I am not a Facebook person, or a social media guy, but I feel compelled to do what I can even if its clumsy. Any advice and or help would be very appreciated.

I have no idea if Facebook is "the" place, but its "A" place to find and connect people. Please tell me what more I can do, and how to do it if you know.

I created two different views of the 2025 Majors schedule for small formula - attached here. One by conference the other by date. There are 31 events total. To get the 5.0 we need to stay Runoffs eligible it means 155 total entries per year, per class. I think that not enough to stay HST relevant, bit its the Runoffs rules.

2025 SCCA Majors - by date.pdf2025 SCCA Majors - by Conferance.pdf

[BeerBudgetRacing]

Team, per encouragement here -

Set up a Zoom call where we can all meet to discuss how to improve small formula participation. At he moment its an open brainstorming. We'll figure it out as we go. Starts tomorrow night and weekly for 20 weeks. We can extend it to our hearts content.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us05web.zoom.us/j/82013141123?pwd=6fYy6kZCrpFsUTp9IyE2YweV8a3HBw.1


Meeting ID: 820 1314 1123
Passcode: G5G7wm

Are you targeting just FF ? Just midwest? What time/zone?

[RideMore]

Are you targeting just FF ? Just midwest? What time/zone?

Sorry, just edited the post to note Thursdays at 9pm eastern. Open for the whole country and all small formula. We decide to do separt class calls, but lets start with everyone and see how it goes.

[BeerBudgetRacing]

Sorry, just edited the post to note Thursdays at 9pm eastern. Open for the whole country and all small formula. We decide to do separt class calls, but lets start with everyone and see how it goes.

Please make a recording and make it available!

[RideMore]

Team, per encouragement here -

Set up a Zoom call where we can all meet to discuss how to improve small formula participation. At he moment its an open brainstorming. We'll figure it out as we go. Starts tomorrow night and weekly for 20 weeks. We can extend it to our hearts content.

Thursdays 9pm eastern, all small formula classes welcome.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us05web.zoom.us/j/82013141123?pwd=6fYy6kZCrpFsUTp9IyE2YweV8a3HBw.1


Meeting ID: 820 1314 1123
Passcode: G5G7wm

I will try to record it, if I'm smart enough to figure out how.

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Team, reminder that the first Zoom meeting is tonight at 9pm eastern. We've been coached by some FV and FC people who have been on the same mission but with a three lap head start on us. Given that advice: Our goal for tonight is to decide the next step or two that we should make to increase total 2025 major entries by at least 31 (so we meet or exceed the 5.0 average entry requirement). We have two ideas we'd like to propose to the group. And we'll see what ideas you folks have as well.

[cliff]

Thanks for doing this Tony. I have been in a fog ever since SCCA made that announcement and this is a great first step to move forward. Thanks again!

[RideMore]

Team, reminder that the first Zoom meeting is tonight at 9pm eastern. We've been coached by some FV and FC people who have been on the same mission but with a three lap head start on us. Given that advice: Our goal for tonight is to decide the next step or two that we should make to increase total 2025 major entries by at least 31 (so we meet or exceed the 5.0 average entry requirement). We have two ideas we'd like to propose to the group. And we'll see what ideas you folks have as well.

Surf to the zoom website. On the top right is a button that says "Join". right next to it is a drop down - pick "Use meeting ID". From there it should ask for the meeting ID then the password. Once completed you should be in.

Meeting ID: 820 1314 1123
Passcode: G5G7wm

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Team,

I will post meeting notes tomorrow. It was well attended and very productive. We all learned a lot. One of my action items is to publish the following email address. For those not on the call, you'll learn the importance of the email address tomorrow when we publish the meeting notes here.

formulafusa.gmail.com Note: all lower case

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First Zoom meeting notes – please at least read the short action item list at the bottom
Big picture notes:

• 22 participated
• From the start all agreed that increasing participation in 2025 was THE topic of the meeting
• The meeting stayed very focused, productive, and friendly the entire 2 hours
• An amazingly knowledgeable and helpful group of people
• We made serious progress and agreed on a short-term plan to increase participation in 2025

A few details:

• CRB member John LaRue shared the details of the SCCA’s decision of why to not have small formula participate in most Hoosier Super Tour (HST) events.
  
  • There is strong support and fans of FF and FV throughout the SCCA personnel and decision makers. We should not worry about the classes being eliminated. He noted that the SCCA could have done a better job communicating this point.
  • There are only so many hot track hours available over a weekend, so that limits the number of possible race groups.
  • The decision was made simply due to the SM/SMX class being too many cars for one race group, so they had to split it into two (SM and SMX).
  • And since the resulting SMX only group was going to be larger than the average small formula group, they decided to go with the group that averages more entries.
  • The SCCA wants to keep small formula healthy. Their best guess on how to make up for the HST decision was to make some of the regional events extra special for small formula groupings by giving them Majors points and importance.
  
  
• In the last days, the SCCA has changed the target Major’s participation number for automatic qualification in the runoffs:
  
  • If a class is over the Major’s participation target average, the class is automatically invited to the Runoffs
  • If the class is under the target, there is an internal SCCA discussion on whether to include the class or not to include the class.
    
    • This is too subjective and risky in the opinion of all who participated in the Zoom meeting. Hence everyone fervently agreed our mission is to drive more Majors participation in 2025.
    
    
  • The rule update is – the two year participation rate for all Majors and Runoffs combined needs to average over 5.0 cars per race.
    
    • It was 4.0, now is 5.0
    • It’s evaluated January 1 each year. If over 5.0, the class is automatically included in the runoffs.
    • For 2024, FF average was 4.3. 151 total entries
    • To meet the new target, in 2025 we need over 200 total entries in all majors and the runoffs combined. A 30% increase (50 more entries).
      
      • There are 32 events (weekends) that count. Each event is typically two races. The events are listed in the “files” tab of the Formula F USA Facebook group.
      • The first three events are 43 days from now (January 18, 2025)
      • The Zoom participants were optimistic that we can make this happen.

The action items for all of us:

• Focus on reaching 200+ total entries at Majors and the Runoffs
  
  • We’re going to keep track of the counts relative to the target
  
  
• Each of us is committed to running more Majors in ’25 than ’24. Many are doing a couple more, some three more.
• Hopefully those who could not attend the Zoom will join us at the track to do one or two more Majors.
• The BIGGER opportunity is:
  
  • Recruit regional runners, non-SCCA drivers, and idle cars to run a Major or three.
  • To make recruiting possible:
    
    • We need to make a list of all cars we know about, active and inactive, SCCA or not.
    • EVERONE PLEASE Email us a list of all the cars your aware of to formulafusa@gmail.com
      
      • Owner name, state, and phone number and/or email address
      • We will not sell or share this list, it’ll stay private
      • A subset of the Zoom group will contact everyone to find out how we can help get these cars to one or more Majors
      • Some of these folks will need technical assistance to make it happen, we’ll help coordinate that.
      • Once we learn what the barriers are, we’ll make plans to address them. We have no idea what that looks like until we learn more.

So in summary, please email us a list of drivers/cars that you are aware of so we can help those who are willing and able to get to a few races. Maybe they are just having a hard time finding crew to go with them and belt them into the car and jump start them on the grid– in that case they can paddock with another crew and get that help. Maybe they need help converting their car to running the radials – we can help with that. Maybe they need some take-off tires to help with budgeting – we can help with that. Maybe they just need to be asked…

formulafusa@gmail.com

[BeerBudgetRacing]

• The decision was made simply due to the SM/SMX class being too many cars for one race group, so they had to split it into two (SM and SMX).
• And since the resulting SMX only group was going to be larger than the average small formula group, they decided to go with the group that averages more entries.

Thinking out loud....

While this might seem logical, isn't it likely that SM drivers can now enter into what, 3 classes ? (SM/SMX/STL?)
Before they had to pick SM or SMX (in the same run group)? Plus could run STL? That was 2 run groups. Now they get 3 ?

How is that fair use of track time?

While we are burdened with the task of increasing our car counts, shouldn't SM drivers have to deal with the consequences of too many entries?

Maybe Miata drivers would move to OW if the racing sucks.

[brian styczynski]

I think something that is going to keep coming up with getting idle or non majors cars on track is tires. Consider holding on to your take offs as I am sure you will soon start seeing requests for tires someone can run a weekend on, and having a set to share could be the only barrier to participation for someone.

[cliff]

Brian...good thoughts as well as anyone wanting help with set-up with these tires, there are plenty of folks more than willing to help.
Please don't let tires or set up be the only reason...those 2 barriers are easy to conquer.

[Jonathan Lee]

Most cars post DB1 era & forward will work fine with R60 radial tires.
People with club fords are in a different boat.

You can bolt on the R60 radials and make minor adjustments, if the tire swap affects your ride height - then reset it.
Many teams/individuals who won some of the most highly contested races ran:
Front Camber 2.5-3.0 deg
Rear Camber 1.5-2.0 deg

Front 20psi hot
Rear 20psi hot

Anyone running DB1, DB3, DB6, and late 80s or newer Van Diemen; shouldn't have a problem switching to R60 radials from treaded/bias ply tires.

If you cannot achieve the camber listed above, then you need to buy longer rod ends for the lower A-Arms of your car.

[RideMore]

Thinking out loud....

While this might seem logical, isn't it likely that SM drivers can now enter into what, 3 classes ? (SM/SMX/STL?)
Before they had to pick SM or SMX (in the same run group)? Plus could run STL? That was 2 run groups. Now they get 3 ?

How is that fair use of track time?

While we are burdened with the task of increasing our car counts, shouldn't SM drivers have to deal with the consequences of too many entries?

Maybe Miata drivers would move to OW if the racing sucks.

BeerBudget - don't over think it. If we showed up with 500 FF's at every race we'd need the SCCA to have more than one run group for us. It would not be fair if they did not.

Now, just substitute 70 into the above scenario and change from FF to SM. In tother words, if a lot of them show up, they deserve space. And to make space, people/classes that dont show up will get less time/space.


Here's the real question of the moment - how many Majors are you doing next year?

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Team, In hopes of capturing the best ideas I've been reading about here, and the work B-Spec and FC did a few years ago:

Attached is a first draft of a FF growth plan for 2025. Please comment with suggested changes and improvements. And most importantly, what else do we need to be doing? Lastly, what's the best use for this document? This is OUR document, not mine. Let's create something useful we can use to guide our efforts. Mostly, we just need to write down the best ideas so we all have something we can refer back to so we know how to help each day or week.Like racing, the results will be a direct result of our efforts.

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December 5th Zoom meeting: A link the the video files with audio is attached. The short story is that were successful getting volunteers to be the Points of Contact for the first seven Majors of 2025. Thank you very much to them and see attached image of the list of people and the task list we agreed to.

We discussed many ideas and it was fun and fruitful. Ideas we definitely want to do are:
1. A T-shirt noting our 2025 efforts. Is anyone in the group a graphic artist?
2. Create a website that non-Facebook and Apex Speed users to find us at, and learn about FF. There are thousands of Formula Ford IRacing participants who may be able to find us through the website for example. We want to tell the exciting story of FF.
3. We want to create fliers for each race that notes where to park, where the Saturday night cocktail hour will be, etc. Graphics help would be appreciated.
4. We need to make more progress on the Registry in the next two weeks. More complete contact information in particular. More posts on that topic to come.

Note: its a two hour meeting - I hope there is a way to run the speed faster:


https://drive.google.com/file/d/12jO...usp=drive_link

[RideMore]

Team, the driver registry is up to 159 drivers! Plus the first Majors of 2025 are only a month away. One of the action items from Zoom meeting #4 last Thursday was to ask this group for volunteers' to be the Lead person for each division. The nine divisions are listed just below.

Here's what you'd be asked to do: We are going to send an email to all the drivers who happen to have emails readily available in your division requesting them to contact you, their Division Lead. You would respond back to start a conversation about their plans for 2025 and encourage them to come race with us. In some cases it would be to do a race or two more than last year, in other cases to get back on track after a break. Part of that conversation would include uncovering the barriers and helping them overcome them, as well as helping all of us understand what barriers real people are facing. Plus it would be important to know what we can do to make racing more often fun for them.

We'd also want to encourage them to network with their friends in hopes of more participation in 2025 compared to recently. It's very likely their friends are not on our registry. I'd be surprised if as many as 25% of the drivers we know are actually on our registry. Please message me if you'd like to be a Division Lead for FF.

BTW - we chose this communication path to preserve the privacy of the individuals on the list, including you. Most probably would be fine with a "cold call" or email from you, but its possible some would not. So we're going to take a gentle approach.

SCCA Divisions are as follows:
NP Northern Pacific
SP Southern Pacific
RM Rocky Mountain
CD Central
MW Midwest
SW Southwest
GL Great Lakes
SE Southeast
NE Northeast