Detroit Region SCCA

State of the Program

We’re going to need help for 2022. We need sites, and we need event chairs and safety stewards.

First, there’s the elephant in the room. Availability of event dates at Schoolcraft Public Safety Training Center (PSTC) has dropped considerably. We were only able to secure two dates for 2022, though there is a possibility of adding one more in the fall depending on if Schoolcraft opens up the fall schedule for booking.

That leaves the bulk of the autocross season dependent on sites primarily outside of the Detroit Metro area: Michigan International Speedway (MIS), and Oscoda.

I’ve been working to secure another autocross site in the Detroit Metro area, but I’m going to need more help finding sites and, more importantly, following up with site owners to ensure that we make progress towards the ultimate goal of booking a site for an autocross. I’m looking for volunteers to help.

Second, we need event chairs and safety stewards. MIS and Oscoda are understandably the most challenging sites to chair an event due to distance and site-specific challenges. But they now make up the majority of our events, and we need event chairs to put on the events and we need safety stewards of record to sanction these events.

I probably gave myself too many balls to juggle, trying to handle site procurement, Motorsportreg setup, and the chairing of two local events plus the Oscoda Pro Solo, and ended up doing a poor job at all of those things. For 2022, I will not be chairing any events, and will tailor the schedule to the number of willing event chairs. I would much rather have six very good well-run events than nine poorly run events in a season.

Here, I’m also looking for volunteers to step up and commit to working as event chairs and safety stewards for our 2022 events. The 2022 schedule is still being put together, but I will set it up according to the preferences or availability of my event chair volunteers.

Tentative 2022 Event Schedule

1. Season Opener at MIS: date TBD
2. Memorial Day weekend at Schoolcraft PSTC: Tire Rack Street Survival on May 28, Solo on May 29
3. June Test n Tune at Oscoda: date TBD
4. Summer Heat Solo at Schoolcraft PSTC: July 3
5. Joint Region event w/ SVR TBD
6. Oscoda Pro Solo: August 5-7
7. Before Nationals Solo at Oscoda, joint Region event w/ SVR: August 19-21, tentative
8. September event TBD
9. Season Ender at MIS: date TBD

Looking for Event Chairs

During both Solo Planning Meetings, I made a call for Event Chair volunteers.

People willing to chair or co-chair an autocross event:

• Paul Gaecke – new, willing to co-chair with experienced chair
• Michael Weber – new, willing to co-chair with experienced chair
• Ido Waksman – willing to co-chair with someone new
• Keith Armitage, Eric Penn – co-chairs for Memorial Day weekend
• David Colletti for an Oscoda (June or August)
• Al Chan and Brian Harvey for an Oscoda
• Stuart King – willing to chair solo or co-chair

If you are willing to chair or co-chair an event for 2022, please contact me directly at jli@jleez.net.

Site Committees

We have materials for folks who are willing to reach out to potential event sites. I as Solo Director will make the introductions as needed, but I will need members to assist with follow ups.

• Stuart King will reach out to Connie Kalitta about a potential VETMotorsports event at Willow Run Airport.
• Paul Gaecke and Keith Armitage volunteered to assist with searching for another site.
• Ray Jason has SCCA site acquisition materials that can be sent along to volunteers.
• Fred King to check in with the person organizing NCCC events in Flat Rock for a site contact.
• Idea to reach out to Matt Davis or Vaughn Scott about possible use of the pad at the Bosch facility in Flat Rock.
• Ray Jason to look into possible site at Kettering University.
• Bob Riggs suggested looking into Schoolcraft lot at corner of Haggerty and South Drive.

Program Improvements

Communications improvements:

• Ido Waksman suggested forming a publicity team to take care of all publicity and posting of events on the website, Facebook, calendars, etc.
• Al Chan suggested creating an autocross mailing list seeded with the participants of the 2021 season registered in MSR.

Schoolcraft PSTC improvements:

• Limit entries to 160 cars.
• Run a single session event schedule (no more separate morning/afternoon sessions).
• Minimum of 5 runs.
• Suggestion to get the High Octane Bakery food truck to show up at all the events, Eric Penn to assist with this.

MIS improvements:

• Need two grids to allow on-the-fly worker changes.

General event improvements:

• Pre-assign core workers and timing crews.
• Post-event social dinners or happy hours. The cost of these can be budgeted into the Solo Director budget or the event budget.
• Mementos for participants for each event? Ray and Al noted that DRSCCA had done dash plaques for all entrants for each event in years past.
• Al Chan suggested measuring and tracking metrics for how well the club runs events, e.g. expected # runs per hour.
• Encouraging novices to become DRSCCA members, perhaps with a free event upon sign up, numbers, etc.?
• Need a better way to let people know about worker points. Ido Waksman suggested making worker points a more prominent part of the DRSCCA website, and suggesting the use of worker points in email blasts, MSR registration pages, SPS orders, etc.
• Need an additional set of Farmtek equipment to serve as a complete backup system.
• Additional training for Timing and Scoring. Keith Armitage suggested creating a video series. I noted that with the Audit computer working, we really do need someone familiar with AXWare to work Audit now in order to assist the Primary Timing. It might be time to rethink the paper forms for audit too. There was a suggestion that perhaps the autocross and rallycross groups could share best practices or participate together in training sessions.

If you have additional suggestions or comments on the above, let me know at jli@jleez.net.