Somethings been playing on my mind

[Si Coe]

Not sure if this is a rant, comment, question, discussion or what. Its just something thats been eating at me since yesterday and I want to get it off my chest.....

Last Saturday our regular race controller rang me up to say he couldn't make Sunday due to a family issue. I'd promised my wife I wasn't going racing because we've got a baby due next month and we still need to paint the nursery, but as the only available race controller I agreed so the meeting could go ahead.
Literally everything possible went wrong.
Track problems, generator problems, timing problems, complaints about marshals - it was never ending. I seriously considered packing up and going home, but with all these people booked in I felt I couldn't.
Then, near the end someone who was a visitor to the club made some comment to me about how he felt it wasn't a very well run club and he wasn't impressed.

Now I'm not really complaining about the comment. Its something I've heard plenty of times at other places, about other clubs, directors, drivers etc. Its a standard part of racing.
No - what bothers me is that if I hadn't come along there would have been no meeting at all. And during the meeting I was very very seriously thinking about packing away and going home.

Then it occurred to me that the people that run the meetings, no matter how badly, are what makes racing possible. Drivers naturally expect a slick, professionally run meeting but often never consider what goes on behind the scenes to do that. They complain when things don't go right, but so few actually try run a meeting themselves.

So you know what? I may be a terrible race controller but at least I've tried. Because if people like me don't, there won't be any racing left.

[Hpi_guy]

im with you on that, i always give credit to race controllers that give up their time to organize events, personally if i know or overhead someone making a negative comment then i would try my best to resolve it to take some pressure off the race controller, that is something that really aggravates me

[Steve.T]

I agree with you completely. You didn't deserve the abuse you got. If I go to a club for the first time I make a point of thanking the organising team.
People like you are needed in all sports and organisations otherwise we would have lots of very boring weekends.

[Si Coe]

Don't get me wrong - I hold my hand up and admit I screwed up. I was chasing missed laps the first two rounds before I realised that the problem was the minimum lap time was set at 20 seconds, we'd built a fast, short layout and the top guys were lapping in under 20 seconds. My fault, but I'd never encountered that before so didn't consider it. Thing is stuff like that you learn by doing.

Plenty of people did various things to help me out, but then they weren't the ones doing the complaining!

[Steveonamission]

It always was an issue for me when running a club, there never seemed much appreciation for it, although I could take a 'visitor' with a complaint, but never had the patients for a 'regular' of the club to complain about something as they could obviously see how much effort I would put in each meeting. After I've rolled out the carpet, taped it down, took out all the track markings, built a track, setup race control, hardly get any play time on track, to do it all over again, but this time pack it all up? While mostly everyone (apart from 2-3) sodded off home. I quit in the end, never been back, feel alot better for it too.

I feel for you I really do.

Steven.

[Dudders]

Here here Si !

Until you run a club or race meeting you have NO idea the effort, time and energy it takes up.

99% of drivers, newbies and F1's no not of the pains and the stresses involved.

I love it when someone comes up and shakes my hand and just says "thanks for running today", even if they have hated it or loved it. I am staggered when people are and then go with saying cheeri-bye bye. I think it grates so much with me.

It's not just the day, it's the planning and pre prep and organising, it's not a one day wonder every week.

Rant over but I'm with you Si. Cheers to more of your badly run meetings

[Maritime]

Si Coe

I have been a race director for 15 year now for my sins.

Sometimes it is a thankless job but more than less of the time its a great job to do*
pleases alway think of all the good time.*

As committee member or race directors
We love the sport that's y we give up the time we do for others.*

People who complain are two a penny
So just forget about it and keep enjoying what u love*

Hope all go,s well with the new One that's on the way

Ian knight

[Dudders]

Originally Posted by Si Coe

Because if people like me don't, there won't be any racing left.

The best sentence I've seen on oople this year....

[johnnygibbon]

Si your the man when we ain't got Rog
And to be fair we've had some damn enjoyable meetings if not perfect ones
7 min qualifiers 10 min finals are ace
Imagine if I ran the meetings
There would be put stops to change batteries and bump ups like 8 th
And tbh I reckon Si is one of the guys who would let it happen
If he could get the laptop running properly any way
Race controllers are needed more than ever nowadays with the sport growing

[danDanEFC]

I wouldn't do it for a big bag of pies.

Thanks to all the race directors, especially our Eric!

[AfroP]

As the saying goes fella.
"you can please of the people some if the time but you cant please all the people all the time"

People will always dwell on the negative and thats what sticks in they mind.
Am sure you dk a great job. Keep it up and dont let a couple of problems get you down

[jkclifford]

A Badly run meeting is normally down to the knobs that attend it. If you don't have to run around sorting out Cristal clashes and lack of Marshalls and oher crap which the drivers should do, it gives you more time to do what you should be doing.

The other one I hear a lot is ooh the tracks too bumpy, or the grass is a bit long or the jumps arnt wide/long enough, but on the work party days 2/3 people tops!!