February 09 Planning

by Andy Bell

It’s been a while since I have written, but it has been a very busy off season for a variety of reasons this year. One issue of the SCCA being an all volunteer run club is that life sometimes gets in the way of important things like planning a race season! This year, in addition to the holidays and usual off season events, we had to deal with a dryer fire and repairs, the sale of the company I work for, the moving of that same company, and on the racing front the uncertainty surrounding Cooper Stadium.

So, first the bad news.

Cooper Stadium will be off limits to us and all other users until it sells. Franklin County simply wants to lock the gates and not let anyone on the property since they no longer have any full time custodians of the facility. We will keep trying to change their minds, but for now, we will not have any races there in 09. This puts a serious dent in our schedule and as of now, we have 3 dates where I want to race, but do not have a venue.

Now the good.

National Trail has picked up a couple extra dates for us. Jim Layton is an excellent guy to work with and is working on arranging two “extra” events at his facility where we would be paid by other car clubs to put on an autocross. In the past this has led to very large Stanberry donations and is a great deal of fun for those who participate. We get to reach out to the drag racing crowd and drive some really cool hot rods to boot.

OSU is also very supportive and will pick up a few event dates as well. We will host the inaugural Great Lakes Divisional Solo Series there in May and in August host the Governor’s Cup there.

I am still planning on running 11 points events. We may have to impact fun runs and driver’s schools to take advantage of the available days we have on lots. One thought we are pursuing is to find smaller lots for driver’s schools and put a lower cap on entries. Now that some of the snow has melted we are looking at several candidate lots. If they look OK from a safety standpoint we will pursue working with the owners to see if we can use the lots for some smaller events.

2009, February