Righto…..deep breath, there’s been a raft of postings since I left work, hope you’re all sitting down!
Firstly, haven’t got a problem with Juniors racing for free, which would obviously be a decision for the clubs to be made at our Regional meeting. Personally agree with the idea, as I know of a couple of drivers that would greatly appreciate that sort of help! We would however have to clearly define ‘Junior’. The BRCA recognise 2 Junior classes, Under 13 and Under 16, both ages being as of the 1st January in that respective year. However if we want to go with Under 14 and Under 19 that again would be a collective decision but as DC has quite rightly pointed out they would have to be Championships within the main Championship so as not to impact on final overall positions and the following years formula’s.
This would also require a certain amount of extra effort on the part of the clubs, confirming classes with myself (something which I struggled to obtain previously) so that accurate Championship positions can be maintained.
Am a little concerned that it has not been recognised that we do currently (and have done so since the passing of former Regional Rep. John Cheeseman) a separate Junior Championship within our existing Regionals! Unfortunately (and this brings us back to the original point of this thread) many Juniors (and even more Seniors for that matter!) either only do one class (2WD is v.light in Junior numbers) or only race at their local clubs venue thereby not accruing enough points to have an impact on the Junior Championship. A certain Kyle Moon being one exception to this having finished third in the Junior 4WD Championship in 2008 and 7 places in front of his Dad!
As Alan quite rightly pointed out we only had 4 Juniors doing sufficient counting rounds in 4WD and only THREE in 2WD. It was worse still at the National Junior event, only ONE in the Under 13 category (to show what can be achieved, Jay Holmes finished on the podium both days) and TWO in the Under 16 category, in fact we had more representation in the Veterans (come on be honest there are more Over 40’s out there) THREE than either of the Junior classes!
As has been mentioned before and has been experienced by a few SE drivers in recent years there are End of Season Finals specifically for all the lower formulas, Juniors (in both age groups) and even the veterans, where the SE has the double 2008 Champion, eh DC?
Alan, applaud your (or any) clubs efforts getting our hobby out into the community, something many of us have tried to do with differing degrees of success and are continuing to do! Unfortunately, as you point out, it’s all about dates and everybody’s other commitments, whether they be to RC or not. So the bottom line is for any club in the Region (or any Region) to heavily publicise any dates such as your event that they may be involved with, using their own and other clubs websites, the popular forums, magazines and (if I ever get my PC back and fixed) the SE Regional email list that I have built and see if we can get more drivers out there.
And if anybody has got any ideas how to get local TV radio and press involved can they please share? We tried for last years EPR National and failed to get one single response, one for the new BRCA PRO me thinks!
I would think that RCC Racer magazine would also be willing to help, they have done so previously at similar events nationwide, normally supplying a quantity of back issues of magazines to be distributed, for free, amongst interested watchers. Just ask Matt! The ‘other’ magazine may only feature minority interest classes but I think you’ll find that RCC Racer continues to support off-road publicising National, Regional & Club events and off-road kit reviews. If you want your club featured or reports published it only requires a few well crafted words and in-focus pictures and I’m sure Matt would feature them in the Club Racer section? And yes I am biased!
Unfortunately the Southport National is on the weekend of the 18/19 July so no Regional anywhere that weekend I’m afraid! That’s not to say that any club/s could not approach the organisers about some form of race/demonstration but unfortunately the National competitiors would not be around.
Whew!!! Sorry!!!
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