RTTA Lessons Learned

[vintageracer]

Competition.

The ruin of MANY a hobby for MANY hobbyists!

Add contingency money to win/place, face time on TV and in print and you see what rises to the top! Hatred, jealousy, despair and of course arm chair CEO's. This is and was inevitable!

As much as you may desire and hope Hendrick, Childress, Gannassi and Penske are NOT at the RTTH events, Goodguys or the optima event looking for their next young driving sensation! These are still amateur events that are unfortunately moving ever faster to sponsored shoes wheeling the cars for big buck owners OR heavily product sponsored drivers/owners looking for free/discounted parts for their cars in return for hawking their sponsors products. Of course the products I use on my car are the best products out there if they were not I would not use them. Given the HUGE amount of quality suppliers that now cater to our hobby they ALL CANNOT be the best. Could it be possible that the product with the best promotion does not mean that product is necessarily the best product? Sadly, my opinion, is that our hobby is becoming ALL ABOUT THE MONEY!

My hat is off to Bill, Jimi, Yancy, Finch, Bret, Kyle, Stacey, the Pozzi's and ALL THE OTHERS who are INVOLVED in promoting and producing events for us to attend and ENJOY! Thank you ALL from the bottom of my heart! From a business prospective being the promotor's of these events is CRAPPY business plan from the time, money and effort aspect needed to produce ANY event and the potential financial return if any you might enjoy. You better LOVE PROMOTING EVENTS cause the greeter job at Wal Mart probably pays better with a LOT LESS responsibility and NO Capital Expenditure. Even better is the fact that as the greeter at Wal Mart you do NOT have put up with a bunch CRAP from winey customers. All you have to do is point them to customer service and smile!!!! I'll bet all the guys listed above wish they could do the same thing and point the winey event participant to someone else who cares!

I started "racing" (that's what I liked to call it) in the 70's with SCCA and Corvette club autocross and loved it. I then got bored with autocross and moved to Club track events which were similiar to today's "Open Track" events. I eventually realized that Roger Penske was not going to be calling anytime soon and just as with autocross I also got bored with club track events. Since I was then in my mid 30's I looked for the next level of car competition and decided that weekly racing and SCCA were not my cup of tea and settled into vintage racing. NICE people, NICE events, all the WHEEL TO WHEEL competition you could want AND LOT'S OF TRACK TIME at ALL the premier tracks across the country that you could want race or better yet afford to go race at! No work on the car all week, race it and wreck on Saturday and then work on it all week to do it again the next weekend like the local round d rounders. Where's the fun in that? Yes, some would say that vintage racing is also "All About the Money" as lord knows there are LOT'S of guys with LOT'S of money out there racing. They also PAY TO RACE and first place pays the same as last place. ZERO DOLLARS!!! As much as "I" enjoy going to the RTTH event (I have been to all of them) and the people sitting in line ALL DAY to make 4-6 one to two minute autocross runs is just not much fun to me. Same with open track events with controlled passing. Once you run "Wheel To Wheel For Real" autocross and open track events are just not that much fun! I will not be surprised when many of the current heavy hitter participants in our current events will also come to the same conclusion and look for that next thrill level. We have not even talked about drag racing which is like sex with your girlfriend. Three hours worth of work for ten seconds of glory! I'd say that also pretty much describes a day at the drag strip with 3 hours working on the car, waiting in line to try and make a 10 second "pass" down the track!

Answer this question. Do you really think that an invite to the optima event would be so coveted IF the event was NOT heavily promoted, NOT on TV and NOT mentioned repeatedly in many print magazines? I think the obvious answer would be NO! Kudos to Optima and their event marketing department for such a successful marketing and promotional campaign!

I cannot say enough NICE things about the Optima folks and ALL THE OTHER FOLKS mentioned above who invest their OWN MONEY, TIME AND EFFORT into promoting events that people in our hobby want to attend. Don't like the rules? Don't like the location? Don't like the cost? Don't like the decisions? Pissed that you have a mid pack car? GO OUT AND PROMOTE YOUR OWN EVENT! Make your own rules. Spend your own money to hold the event and probably most important go look in the mirror and see yourself pissing and moaning about something you do not like about your own event. Welcome to the real world of being a promoter who is trying to make all these potential race car drivers who enter your event happy!

Enjoy our hobby at whatever level you choose to participate. If you want to complain go find another hobby to complain about!