The same day after round 2 race I went to Barbara (race director) to air my displeasure with 5 waves and she sent me to Jordan Edgington (rider rep) He admitted to me its a problem that needs fixing. Than went to Dave Moss (BOD) same day same thing. He said he would talk to Ali about putting it on agenda monday morning. Than talked to Lisa Kinberger (BOD) same thing. Yet here we are. AFM are you REALLY listening??????
Yeah, if you can read this, someone is listening. I had Allie open the registration as early as possible because with the new system we can. When she sets it up, she has to put a race order in the system (which can be changed later). I didn't want to open things later. This problem we're still working through.
AFM: All For Me...
My first thought was to put us with F40 HVWT/F40 MDWT. Make us 3rd wave as a test/tryout. After race get feedback from us and them and go from there. No one came to us about feedback for our race last round cause they would of got an earful which they did anyway. Being that it would only be about 6-8 bikes for the fast guys to catch as well as we would be spread out I don't see it being a big deal but I will let them (hvwt/mdwt) say how it turned out.
What kind of times are you running Mike at Thill or BW?
I'm thinking we can launch 400/350 as one wave and afemme LW/ clubman LW as one wave. Does that seem as if it would help?
who's running this club? the racers? I don't expect a customer (racers are customers) to have to come up w/ a solution for a safety issue.
perhaps the best way to fix this issue is electing someone that will take care of it.
It's not racers coming up a solution: it's using the brain power of the members with ideas for their own grids. The best knowledge and ideas many times comes from those ON the grid, not those watching the grid. They know how the bikes stack up among one another at different points on the track, hence the request for ideas.
No man is an island for alleviating problems. We're a club. Our best asset: each other.
I havnt dived into it yet but perhaps cutoff times should be re-evaluated. Also, with consideration given to race starts with multiple waves and the time in between wave race starts.
Not a bad point. We did away with cutoff times this year and that may be one of the issues. That being said, we DO pull very slow riders from the track. Barb has that authority universally.
Perhaps AFemme/AFemme LWT/Clubman LWT could have its own Race #4 on Saturday.
Barb has said we do not have time. I'm not totally convinced at that.
at Rd 2, there was a delayed wave in one of the races i was in. it made it very hairy to catch larger groups much sooner in the race. a few riders complained, but its not like anything will change with that. and slightly related, im severely disappointed with F1/F4 qualifying. i was forced to deal with more than a few moves on track that i wouldnt expect from Expert racers. but i suspect my expectations are too high given my racing experience(s). those 2 situations make it clear that a 5 wave race is absurd. i cant imagine what the leaders of that race are dealing with.
IMO, AFM uses diff-wave starts too much. not enough same-flag starts for diff classes.
That delayed launch was due to a bike down from the first wave in T2, I was told. They cleared the bike quickly before launching our wave.
The AFM is not WERA. Grid are larger this year than last year by a significant margin. F1/ F4 qualifying is not ideal...it hurt me too, but given my expectations are less than yours and racing experience, more than yours, I'm thinking we have different formulas on "experience". After F1/F4 qualifying I did start to work on how to separate those two, but don't have an answer yet. I likely will by round 3, but there's more pressing needs which are the focus of this thread.
We have too many different classes, IMO, too high track costs and not enough racers who are up to the task to pay the true freight. You brought up the idea of putting new leadership in. Trust me on this Robert: it wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit.
Keeping things going in this club is a constant tight-rope effort. This is the first season where we (the board) have felt comfortable in our attendance. Let's hope the economy keeps rolling on and guys like you keep coming out and not spending too much money chasing Moto America grids.
