May 5th Thunderslot race

[turboman93]

Everyone,

May 5th is free comic book day across the country.  With the addition of King’s Cache in the store, we need to move the Thunderslot race from May 5th to another date.  I would propose that we double up on May 19th on the series races as the following weekend is Memorial Day.  I’d like all discussion to occur in this thread to keep it contained for easy reference.  We will finalize the date at the April club meeting on April 14th.

[BarkingSpyder]

Shawn, doubling on May 19 sounds reasonable.

[porsche917]

All – If we are going to double up on a race I would rather see it on the 12th and move the club meeting to the 19th.  My reasoning – if your Thunderslot car is not working well you will have to run two races with it if we double up on the 19th.  If we race them on the 12th and you have an issue you have the whole week to sort it out before running it again.  Thoughts?

Marty

 

 

[BarkingSpyder]

Marty, that basic logic is sound.  So 1 more vote for the 12th for Thunderslot #3.  and moving the May meeting to the 19th.

[chapracer65]

All

I will be gone May 11 through the 23rd, and I would rather not have to miss two Thunderslot races (besides someone else having to be race manager).   I see that the calendar has been changed.  Does this mean that a decision has already been made?  In this forum I only count two votes for the May 12th date.  Would the May 5th date just mean that we would have to park in the other lot?  Or is King’s going to fill up the rally track table?  Could we schedule a race on the 26th before Rally practice instead of the May 12th or May 19th race?

thanks

Russell

 

[BarkingSpyder]

Lets dicuss today.  Russ – what are your specific recommendations?

Do you want to move move #3 to April 19

and #4 to April 26?

[chapracer65]

First: Clarification on the May 5th date.  Did King’s say we can’t have a race on that date?  Will it just mean we have to park in the other lot?

My preference is not to have races on both May 12th and May 19th.  It does not matter to me which of those dates is a single race day.  Other than that I am open to alternate dates.

[turboman93]

Russell,

First off, there should have been no changes to the calendar as I said we would discuss and finalize at the April meeting. I’m not happy with this change being made prematurely.

Rudy told us about that date and suggested we not hold a race that day.  That’s why we’re having this discussion.

[chapracer65]

As long as there is time, I believe that scheduled club meetings are the best time to make race schedule changes.  The give and take of a round table discussion is more effective than email or forum threads.  Discussions on this forum are useful to get an idea of options and people’s ideas, but I believe nothing beats a face-to-face meeting.  It is difficult enough to accurately convey one’s opinion with words alone, without tone, inflection, body language, charm and charisma, to  influence opinion.  I think a month out is enough time to make a change.  If time is short, as it was with the COTA Ferrari race, the forums can be used to arrive at a consensus, with a mass email alerting everyone to vote in the forum.

[turboman93]

I want to make a clarification on the May 5th date.  Rudy came to Marty and I and explained the free comic book day being May 5th and suggested we change dates.  I took that to mean we should.  That being said, if we as a club, decide that we’re fine parking in the other lot and having our race on May 5th, we can do that as well.

Russell is the series manager and is who will ultimately decide what we do.  As of now, the calendar is unchanged.

[chapracer65]

One thing I have been a little fuzzy about is exactly how much authority the race manager wields.  Are race dates and rules his final decision?  If so, when is the hand-off from club votes on prospective race series to the actual race series rules.  Could a race manager change a race series from a spec series to an open series?  Change what models are eligible?  Can no changes be made without his permission?  Presumably the race manager would make reasonable decisions, listening to opinions from the members.

In the case of the race dates for the Thunderslot series, I am willing to abide by the decisions of the majority of the members, particularly because, at this point, I am the one most affected.  I would be fine with the original May 5th date, or the 26th, or any dates except for having races on both of the dates that I will be gone.  However, if there are problems with alternates, and the will of the club is to have races on both the 12th and the 19th, I would be fine with that.

[BarkingSpyder]

[Reply to 12022-Russ]
SERIES MANAGER AUTHORITY-This has been ‘the elephant in the room’ we discuss (at practice anyway) almost every year and often when someone other than the race manager makes un-vetted decisions or just influences the proletariate in favor of their recommendations (2017-917 being a notable instance).

One *possible* natural approach could be: SM proposes rules; solicits changes -based on experimentation (like the sidecars) up to the final-rules date; vets changes via vote with club; makes a command decision (influenced by the vote). Dates are no different-SM should vet changes with members and in the end make the final decision. They are responsible for rules and stories/results so they naturally should have great influence on rules and dates.

Essentially, either the members need to convince the SM to change per the common preferences, or the SM convinces the members that their rules have strong merit. Mutual Respect is key to this working-(1) members should try and understand the SM’s approach (as we did with the hard-line specs for the Revoslot); and the (2) SM should respect that series participation may suffer if members consider some rules technically or financially burdensome.

[turboman93]

Russell,

That’s a lot to digest and should be discussed in a different forum than this post.  Let Marty, Steve, Mark and I discuss and we’ll come up with ideas and share with the group.

[BarkingSpyder]

[Reply to 12006-Shawn]
Shawn and Russ I Apologize. Guys as these dates were flying around I did some “What-Ifs” with the calendar. For the last 3 years I have entered the dates in Google Calendar and made a corresponding Word version for the corkboard. I check the COTA schedule and make sure we don’t schedule races the same weekends as F1, PWC, MotoGP, and SVRA; likewise I schedule races around the annual planning meeting, Christmas party and holiday weekends. When I find potential conflicts I point them out to the Series Manager (SM). Sometimes the SMs pay attention to the *future* calendar dates, but often they seem to focus on the most imminent events. The whole process takes a few hours and requires focused attention to detail.

*In this case-I Apologize for being too-proactive in changing the dates. I had no idea the changes would be taken as if they were “hard” changes, IMHO they certainly could not be firm until a) the event was imminent (as per Russ, one month away) and b) the Series Manager declared them as final.
In my mind the dates were clearly Drafts until a) & b) had occurred.
Again – I apologize for the confusion and will not do again; certainly there was never even the least intent of these dates being taken as absolutes.
Series Managers – please view your series in Google Calendar and coordinate all changes with Steve B.

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