I attended the 2009 SCCA convention in Las Vegas to interact with the attending CRB members, Div Exec stewards, NAs, DAs and club members to inform regarding my speciality and position as National Administrator of Club Racing Driver Licensing.
There wasn’t much input to me, so the Driver Licensing programs we operate with must be doing OK.
But, as with all of the club, there is always room for improvement. One area we speciality NAs will be working on for 2009 is to help simplify the GCR and submit Operation Manuals for our speciality factions. The simplification process is to remove routine speciality guidelines and processes from the GCR and place them in specific operation manuals, which volunteers reference mostly, not the general SCCA club racing membership. By doing this we remove all the suggested processes that are overly detailed for the membership but a necessary information guideline for specific areas involved. This also gives the document control to the speciality gurus and moves the CRB to approve these documents as an administrative, rather than a membership, activity. These operation manuals will be annually updated by the NAs and placed in the various SCCA document libraries, being hard or electronically available. An example of a speciality guideline process is the use of a rubber stamp to indicate a Driver Licensing Competition license has been accepted for a participation waiver … why would the membership and CRB care … only the administrators and the national office care.
I also attended several informative secessions and town halls and award ceremonies.
The directive this year is: make it easy … make it fun.
There was reported a slight decline in membership, participation, and licensing for 2008, but not on the scale of the decline in the world economy. There was a positive revenue income from all SCCA factions … but the club lost money due to their investments, like all of us. The SCCA national office is working on implementing an online competition license renewal process that will up load all your membership personal data and your previous 12 months races from the SCCA data base, so you don’t have to search through a pile of race results looking for sanction numbers.
There are competition changes for 2009, such as, new car classifications with STO/U, and the Runoffs location. Head and neck restraint systems will still not be required, but recommended. Sound rules’ changes are in process, especially to accommodate track specific rules. Fuel rules are also being changed, but not completely clear to what yet.
EP driver Greg Ira won the “most improved National driver” award, and FF driver Chris Keller won both “road racing driver of the year” and “rookie of the year” awards.
The Colorado region won the SCCA’s Tom Burke Award for membership growth (jumbo size region) and the overall region achievement award (jumbo size region). Colorado region RE Joe Gilmore was in attendance to accept these. The Colorado region was the only SCCA jumbo sized region to actually increase in membership for 2008, being about +3.5% (seems people are getting ready for HPR). It was announced that SCCA now has 114 regions, with the newest region being RMD’s own Eastern Idaho region.
I did not lose any money gambling.
