Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilD
Wise words  |
Thanks.
And, just to add, a couple more thoughts.......
I'm also not sure when the practice of not awarding prizes to the winners of weekly races started, but IMHO this has also contributed to the "finish and leave" practice by racers. There's no (real) motivation for them to stay nowadays.
All of you
new guys don't remember of course, and you might think it nutty, but there was a time when part of the weekly entry fees (from the previous week) paid for small trophies, or plaques, or neck ribbons, or even large chocolate bars to the podium finishers in each class.
I know this sounds odd to all of you thinking trophies are only awarded for the larger events, regionals and nationals and end of season extravaganzas and the such - but it used to be a point of pride, and something to race for each week. Heck, I still have the first tiny little trophy I ever received - for winning the B-final. LOL I also won dozens of little (20x70mm) dash plaques, that I pasted all over my pitbox, from various tracks. It was a mark of honor in collecting these prizes, little as they were.
But here's the kicker....
These weren't distributed until the end of the night, after everything was packed away, prior to shutting off the lights - and while there were still chaps that hauled arse immediately after their individual final was done, clubs at least guaranteed themselves the podium finishers would hang around and contribute to packing things up. If you didn't stay, you couldn't collect your prize later.
Yes, it was a little more cost for the club, and a little more work for the race director organizing and handing out the awards - but it was some kind of reward, a lure to keep people around afterwards, instead of just demanding entry fees for races from which racers walked away empty handed afterwards (we keep like comparing ourselves to real 1:1 racing, but we're the only kind of racing in which the podium finishers receive nothing for their efforts).
Nowadays all it seems is that clubs are trying to turn it into profit-making endeavors, and (unfortunately) race directors end up with the reputation of being the bully bellowing on the microphone
(no offense intended) - and (like I said earlier) when you make it your right to insist on racers paying entry fees to race, then it's the racers right to leave when they're done.
Again, as I was saying earlier - it's all about attracting racers (flies/honey), and not doing things to run them off. 
Another thing I suggested to a small club, that didn't have the manpower if everyone left in a rush, was that part of the entry fees each week be a premium (maybe a pound or two). This premium was returned, in cash, to those that stayed around and helped take down the track at the end of the night. This helped, especially for those of us that are cheap (or poor) as if enough people didn't hang around and help those that did ended up racing for free that night.