johnjw

Crewing for a H2 team and was told yesterday that they are re-classing because of poor turn out for National's. Thought HC had help from HPD and would make it easy(er) to make nationals.

Lo-Buck EF

no one form the east coast came out. utah is just far and between time off work and money, we just couldn't make it. its 2300 miles from my house and 2 weeks off work.

Xian

I'm not surprised to hear it... *BUT* it sucks to hear HC is getting killed off.

navin

iTrader: (1)

sorry for the n00bish question - but it seems like HC is alive and well on the east coast (although some cars are out of commission now), but why would just a small field for Nationals cause people to change class?

Lo-Buck EF

well, there are 11-15 cars out here that aren't going. i guess the east coast was dominant in HC registrants last year.

Gmedalion

There's a bunch of H2 guys in SoCal but Miller is just too far for most of them as well.

dirty19

iTrader: (1)

Lets face it people... Spencer hit the nail on the head.
Traveling is just too far, time off work, and its not cheap to transport your car across the country.
Then theres the crew expenses if you have a crew.
Food
Lodging
GAS!
misc....
It adds up, and the economy isnt getting any better, despite what some people think.
We are club racers, not playboy millionaires with money falling out of our behinds.

rice_classic

I agree with dirty about he economy but I also think the "economy" of Honda Challenge is suffering as well.

Honda Challenge is doing well in the PacNW with the local Conference (ICSCC). And guess what they are?.. They're H4 cars. It's the economy stupid! Revitalize the class that's most affordable to race in!

To this day, I stand by the theory that the exodus of the drivers from H4 to H2/H1 will be what kills Honda Challenge. Without an affordable race group where the financial barriers to entry are relatively low a group will find it difficult to replace the racers that churn out. By alienating H4, Honda Challenge more or less deleted it's recruiting department. And let's be honest with ourselves here... if I'm new to racing and I see what it's going to take financially to compete in H2... do I really want to be racing a FWD Honda? hmmmm maybe not. But if I see these big fields of H4 cars that cost very little to operate and maintain then the low financial barrier is much more alluring and I can now justify racing an old fwd ****-box. (I personally love racing my fwd shitbox)

I just never understood it personally, the engine swaps that is. Why you had all these folks having fun racing each other in H4 and then all of a sudden everyone wanted to do engine swaps. So now they spend thousands more racing the same cars, against the same people just to go 3 seconds a lap faster.

Driven

Honda FWD theft ruined my hopes of ever running HC.

BlueTeg

iTrader: (2)

H2 is alive and well in Arizona with 6 H2 cars currently and another 4 that are getting finished this fall and/or getting competition licenses next month at our annual competition school. We should have a 10 car H2 field for the first race of 2014. In our case, most of the guys that are running H2 started off with cars that were already H2 spec or very close to it, so it just made sense to stick with that classing. When the numbers started to peak for H2, it just kept building momentum and rather than building a cheaper car to race in H4 by themselves, new racers are building their cars to run with the rest of the guys in H2.

It's unfortunate that the series was pulled from the schedule at Nationals. But the drivers have to do what's in the best interests of their finances and the organizers have to do what's best for the event.

The good news is that it sounds like local participation is still on rise in most regions for H2 and H4. I think overall it bodes better for the series to have 80-100 racers, racing all year round across the country vs. 15-20 that only come out for the big show.

lwnslw

75% of the field at nationals was SoCal . We already had entry fees paid , all of us , but 1 month prior to that we had a crossover at Laguna seca with NorCal , I believe there was 12-14 cars , basically all SoCal and 2 NorCal . So this is the deal , why go and travel 14 hours to Race against the same guys that I race all the time when I can just drive 3 and see them all . Plus I don't know about other regions but in one month we had to pay one local event, Laguna seca and nationals , just on entry fees was almost 2 grand . Given that Honda was generous enough to help us with the entry but still have to pay for everything else .
Participation in a national event is really incredible and has to be done at least once but despite what everybody says car counts in all the classes is down. Besides i already race against 3 national champions in regular basis. Events are really light . We used to see up to 25 h4 cars in one race . We have good 15 h2 cars here and 10 h4 . Believe me , money is not there. All the cars pulled out because of light participation from other regions. We had already I believe 8-9 cars going . We don't have to spend another 3-4 thousand to race each other . We want other regions to participate also. SoCal is not honda challenge .

rice_classic

What's ironic is that I had early intentions of going to the NASA nationals in my CRX except I would going to be in PTE. I wasn't even planning on running H4 with NASA locally, just PTE because I just couldn't bring myself to buy RA1's. I do not like them RA1's, I do not like them Sam I am!

Ev

Have you looked into a dyno reclass? We have a PTE crx running hoohoo's

rice_classic

I did the dyno reclass but once I decided I wasn't going to do the national event it made absolutely no sense to enter any local NASA events.

Lo-Buck EF

Thsres no spec s30 either. After the hp cap, balast over and max hp dq, no one showed.

lwnslw

thats weird Spence, cause at Laguna it was the biggest field, I think they had like 37 cars in there.

Somebody mentioned above that they don't know why people want to jump to H2 to run 3 seconds faster, If you watch Rolex, in some tracks, the differential between prototypes and GT is around 3-4 seconds, they all have spec tires also.

I was watching some of the races , pirelli challenge, continental and correct me if I'm wrong but car count is also low in some races, the STb race had less than 10 cars.

We have covered rules for ever, still I'm not convinced at all that rules is the main reason why there is no cars. Like I said , we have a good 12 cars here but for one reason or another we can't get all the cars on the track at the same time.

Of course it is expensive, if you think that with a budget of couple grand a year you are going to be competitive, you are wrong.

Racing is expensive even at club level, with some events costing your pocket over $1000 and sometimes more and then do that 9 times a year, do the math. That is 10% of a $90,000 salary a year.
Racing is a luxury not a necessity.
Please don't get me wrong on this and don't get offended but, track days and driving events is not racing.

What I mean is the money that you spend is not the same when you do track days vs when you do racing.

Maybe your entry fee is the same but that is just about it. I race to be competitive and win, I don't want to race to run around the track, for that I can do a driving event.

Until you get in a series with the goal of winning the championship regional and if possible the national , you won't understand what I'm talking about.

Money just keeps flying out the window.

Fast510

iTrader: (1)

I don't think that anyone is going to give you crap for saying that you race to win and not just have fun but, you don't HAVE to spend buku dollars to go out race, be competitive AND have fun. Sure some events cost a lot but like rice_classic is saying, H4 is essentially the economy class, (not trying to hurt feelings, I'll be running there.) So why not save all the money spent doing an engine swap and applicable upgrades, run H4 and use the saved money for events?

I also don't believe racing is a luxury, it's a hobby. And there are a lot less involved hobbies that can cost just as much; it is also something that you can kind of choose how in depth you want to be in it. I built my car for quite a bit, but I could so I did. Could I do it for half the cost or even less? Yup.

My car is pretty dang near done and in the process I've convinced two other guys to start building H4 cars also. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that anyone running H2/H1 or anyone that can afford to run those classes should scale back, I just think that people should take a better look at H4 for numerous reasons.

This is racing, no one chose to do this because they would save money; but there are options that can help.

rice_classic

That was me. I don't think there's a perfect equation for it but saying that every second per lap you want to go faster costs exponentially more money. Fuel, Tires, wear rates, consumables, build costs etc... It all grows with speed and grows fast. That's why there was a huge thread on running street tires in IT over at the sandbox. Racing really is about the competition and more often than not, the faster you go the less "close" racing becomes (not always but often).


Non bolded: Agreed. My first championship cost me $18k (more than 10% of my income to be honest) but my 2nd championship season cost me $9k. This years championship cost me about 11k but that's because I had to repair the car. I like racing with $8k-$12k per year (8-10 weekends) and that's running near track record times all year long in an ITA/H4 car.

bolded: I couldn't agree more. However appealing to folks who can't afford racing (even budget racing) are doing well. Chump/Lemons and where NASA just launched the PacNW, 95% of their entries are Time Trialers/lappers/Drifters. And lwnslw: I'd take it one step further... if you're at a race event and your the only one in your class and there's nobody around to "race with".. you're not racing either, it's just really expensive lapping.

Don't forget about the Mid-Pack-Guys. These guys show up for the competition too and they get the same out of it as we do in regards to competition vs lapping they just don't run up front. And...that's...ok...too.

I think there's two ways the mid-pack guys churn out of racing or opt to changes classes:

1: If there's nobody to compete against or if running mid-pack starts to get too expensive, they stop showing up as well.

2: Carrot is just too far out of reach: I feel the mid-pack guys like to think that running up front is within their grasp, if they just spent time with data/training or bought the expensive tires or the fancy engine. Some relegate themselves to the fact that couldn't if they tried, but most can see the carrot. If the guys up front, however, spend the big bucks (like a $10k Spec Miata engine and new Ho-Ho's every weekend) then many mid-packers will get disenfranchised, because the carrot is now financially out of site. And then back to your point lwnslw: What's the point?

lwnslw

fast 510, yes it is a hobby , but it is a very expensive hobby that can be considered a luxury. You have to have the extra money in the pocket to be able to afford it.
I can get a driving event almost every weekend for around 150 a day . I don't need to take the race car. I own an H4 car and a H2 car and without getting in too many details I know how much this guys are spending in all their cars. It is very expensive even for them.

Rice, not tutting my horn here again don't take it the wrong way , but you need to consider the company I have here in Socal, mid pack and rear pack and front pack are usually 1 sec separated in qualy. The difference in front and back is a mistake at the start or a miss shift. The carrot is really not that far, So it means , fresh tires every day, breakes, suspension, etc.

rice_classic

I get what you're layin' down. I was taking into account big picture and not focusing on any one organization or region.

Fast510

iTrader: (1)

I guess 'expensive' could be looked at as a subjective term, too. The amount that I've spent on my car some people think is absolutely ridiculous but it cost what it cost, it's just money. If you want something bad enough you figure out how to make it work if you can't just do it. I'm just saying, not everyone wants to go racing to be '#1' and that's how it should be; you have to consider the more guys out there just wanting to have fun wheel to wheel racing the less expensive it is for them and the more drivers that show up.

With Seattle trying to raise minimum wage to $15.00 an hour there isn't any reason that a huge influx of racers don't emerge in the NW, lol.

All things aside, I don't think HC is dying per say. How much could it really cost NASA to add those rules into the rule book and hope people show up at an event anyways? (Assuming they run HC the same time as other races. If you're NASA and are already paying for the track that weekend ...)

Fast510

iTrader: (1)

As a side note, $150 a day for two days = $300. And say you do 2 HPDE/track days a month for five months, you've just spent $3,000 ... plenty to have done at least 3-5 wheel to wheel events in that same time frame.

dirty19

iTrader: (1)

Its expensive period guys.
An average weekend cost me 1000.00 or more.
Doesnt matter about the class.
Entry fees are the same regardless of the class.
Fuel to and from...
food
lodging
crew expenses.
Sure H4 would make the cost of the car cheaper, but it doesnt help the overall weekend picture.

Xian

And that $150 figure doesn't take into account the consumables on the DE car. Yes, it's typically lower than a "real" race car but it's not something that can be completely excluded.

Racing is expensive, no doubt about it. I'll +1 on the "$1k/weekend" figure being thrown around. And then your DD turns into a truck vs. the sporty/DE car... and you need a place to store the trailer/race car, and weekend time for wrenching, and an emergency repair/body work fund, and new tires, and new parts, and, and, and...

Personally, I've found renewed enjoyment in instructing. As close to "free" track time as you can get, pretty low consumables, and it helps keep you a little sharper for "real" race weekends.

rice_classic

Crew expenses dirty? Really? Whoa dude, you race in style.

Xian: You say all those other things like they're bad. BTW: owning my tow vehicle (Econoline van) is what allows me to have a sporty DD (FRS). If I didn't have a vehicle like the Econoline there's no way I could get away with having a sports car as my only vehicle. But yes, racing does require one to wrestle a gorilla of logistics. I am a very very lucky man. My girlfriend helps out a lot. At the last race I drove away to pre-grid for the race and when I came off the track at the end of the race the van was packed, the tents were down and everything was ready to be loaded. I just had to drive on the trailer and we were on our way. She's the best . Y'all should be jealous. I also understand now why when I started racing I heard many old guys say things like "Well my first 2 wives didn't like racing..." yeah, I get it now.

If I add up all my racing expenses and amortize them over the sum of the total weekends then my typical weekend is roughly $1k with the all expenses taken into account.

Here's another tip to save money: Share your car.
I usually compete in 2-3 events per year with my dad where he races the car in a different class. Most of the logistics costs are halved. Transport, fuel, housing. He also writes me a check for labor and wear/tear as well.