Over the past week, we had heard some concerns about the race length’s at NCMP this coming weekend. Although these races were the same in estimated time on track, there were racers that did not like having heat races of only 5 laps.
We quickly tried to gauge how many racers felt this way snd sent out a survey to our database:
As you can see, in typical CupKarts fashion, it was perfectly split on opinions. So while racking our brains to come up with a solution that didn’t have us racing until 8pm each day, we received an email from one of our competitors who had an idea.
She noted that the class she usually competes in (Senior Open) had no pre-entries. And as that class was very lightly attended in the race before, she offered the suggestion of eliminating that class for NCMP to allow more time for the other classes. EUREKA!!!
So early this morning, we started over on the timeline for the event. Lo and behold, we we’re able to increase Heat races to 7 laps, and features to 10 without extending the race day more than a few minuets! We also had to shuffle the class order, to accommodate as best we could the families racing in multiple classes. Obviously, removing a class makes that more difficult, but we did the best we could.
The survey responses to the format moving forward were a little more telling. It seems like most people like the Qualifying, 2 Heats and Feature format we have used for many years. We are definitely willing to talk more about changes moving forward or for the Grands, so if you would like to talk about it at the track, please see us.
The other question we have to answer is the fate of Senior Open. It’s a class that holds a special place in our hearts, and we’d hate to see it go away. But as the racers are speaking by either not attending or registering for other classes, the writing is on the wall. We will still offer the class at MRP, to see if racers with the traditional 4-cycle bodywork are looking for a place to race. However, if the class does not reach a level of at least 6 entries that weekend, we may be forced to eliminate it for the remainder of 2020, including the Grand Nationals.
We hope this solution works for the majority of our racers. We understand we can;t make everybody happy, but if making this change was beneficial to the majority of our racers, we are happy to oblige.
