Chrisw,
I'm curious to hear your opinion as a new-comer. You say that NASCC's 'Getting Started' page wasn't helpful. What would you have liked to see there?
Chris
Chrisw isn't out to lunch. I probably encountered the exact same roadblocks and frustrations he had. If i was to list every specific thing it would be a very long essay, and i rather just write a solution another day then write a detailed complaint today so here is a very vague answer to that question from my point of view.
1) the nascc website gave absolutely no useful info. its about twice as good now then when i first tried to navigate it now that the links actually work and there is a little bit of info (but still almost no info that is useful to anyone new), but it still terrible for anyone new to the sport. It is clear the road race section was written by someone who probably has 10+ years under their belt and probably can't remember how little a newbie would know about the sport in this province. I like to sum the nascc website up like this: here are some extremely boring pdf's on rules that are hundreds of pages long that you will have no idea what they mean until you actually come racing, and even then will need to read them 10 times. no we wont tell you how classes work, how races work, or any entry level info. no we wont tell you what you actually need to come racing, what that stuff costs, or what it costs to actually race in this province until you have already been racing for a year. If you want 5% of that info you should come to an nascc meet with 20-30 people who you dont know and stand up and ask questions. Congratulations if you are the most extrovert person in the world because you might figure it out before you find a hobby that is easier to get info on.
I've had ideas on how to fix this for a long time, communicated them before and all taht, but nothing changed. Its what i want to see change the most on that website, and i will write out what i think will solve the problem, but work's been retardedly busy the last 3 months so I didn't get around to putting anything together yet. My memory is getting a little long in the tooth for remembering everything i wanted to know starting out but couldn't find answers to, so it won't be super easy to make a simple answer sheet newbies can understand on how to actually go racing here; i expect it'll probably take me hours and hours to actually think out something that isn't a half assed fix. If we use what i'll write out, great, if not whatever.
....oh, and I still loath that line that says "road racing, like ice racing......." that's pretty much like answering some american kid's question of 'what's baseball?' with, oh its like danish longball!. 7 billion people on this planet and mere hundreds ice race. its safe to say anyone looking for a definition of road racing doesn't know wtf ice racing is. Nothing proves more clearly that whole section was written to the wrong target market then that one line.
2) the wcma website is terrible. Yes, its volunteer based, and no, i wouldn't envy the person who gets to update that someday, but it looks like a 1990 website, which is fine if its functional, but it has almost no info on it that is useful to anyone except someone who already races. Not one person will be attracted to road racing after reading that site or have a clue as to what to do except to hopefully click on the club websites and hopefully they answer questions. man are they in for some disappointment when they do click on a club website too lol.
3) the saving grace for the wcma website sucking should be the forum. Complete opposite is true. You know it took me something like 3 years to actually get an account on here that worked? years of trying and not having my account approved, or being labeled as a spam account or god knows what. and then once the account is approved, you have no activity on this forum because well, no one can get an account approved and you have to waste 60 seconds every time you post figuring out the answer to two questions. if it takes 3 years to get an account approved on here, you dont need 2 questions answered before each post, and if u have 2 questions that needt obe answered to post, you dont need a 3 year approvals process for new accounts (it should be instant). Ya, and i know someone reading this right now is thinking, its just me, clearly I dont know what i'm doing with computers, there is nothing wrong with the forum, because they signed up just fine. ya, its just me, and most everyone I know who also tried to sign up for this forum and had the same exact problems lol. There is a problem with this forum.
4) where the hell is the info on open wheel racing in alberta? Open wheel racing has no chance imo of growing, or even surviving in this province. As bad as closed wheel is for making it impossible for people to get into it unless they have infinite motivation, open wheel is about 1000000x worse. The only way you could make it harder for people to actually do open wheel here is to hire some snipers to take out anyone who is ballsy enough to just buy a damn open wheel car and show up/register it accidentally on the one time there is open wheel racing a year here. what happens if open wheel's car count dwindles to the point where there is so few of them there is no choice but to not give them a run group? open wheel will then have almost zero chance of making a comeback in this province if that happens.
anyway, for the topic, i dont see how class rules will change car counts significantly. you want to increase car counts, you gotta make it easier for people to race and that is a far bigger picture then just class rules.
- that means revamping licensing so we aren't telling people who have licenses in other places to piss off until they take out road race school. Someone else signed off on them with similar criteria, surely that means they aren't a complete idiot, and if they are, we pass almost every single person every year that takes the school anyway. I know it'd be a cold day in hell before i took another road race school to race in bc or montana especially if i had to make a special trip to do so.
- that means making it cheap to race. I'm sorry but if you want to attract young people, gl with the way things are currently setup. Its fine for people estabilished in life with gobs of money, but young people generally aren't loaded and can't afford to get into thsi sport even when they do make a lot of money. $500+ fire suppression, $150+ belts that expire after 2 years or 500+ ones that expire after 5 (seriously what are these things made out of that they are deadly to use when they merely were just stored in a box for a couple years?), $500 racing suit and helmet if you go cheapcheap, and you really shouldn't go cheap, $500 transponder, $600 racing school + $300 in misc to take it and actually get the license, $700 hans device, jerry cans, basic tools, jack, stands, billion other minor bs things, etc. you're looking at about $4500 minimum before you even factor in the cost of a race car, all the wear and tear stuff, or tow rig, or trailer, and that's before you factor in what each race costs. Its a huge list of upfront expenses you gotta buy and the list jsut keeps getting longer. I know what it cost me to make the transition from lapping to road racing, and it was well over 30g, and even after dumping that, and being the type of person that is willing to spend 100% of my disposable income on racing, i can tell you, some may think if it costs 30g to get into the sport or whatever, that who cares about hundreds here and there, that wont make a diff, but 500 here or a couple hundred there, actually does make a difference to me. I'm likely not racing this coming year except for the enduro because of all the extra costs this year. If i'm in that boat, having been single for years with almost no real expenses, I'm sure i'm not the only one. When i'm married all i gotta say is, it was a smart decision of mine to buy all the racing shit before i got married, cuz zero chance i would be allowed to do that after, and the racing expenses are going to get scrutinized even more so when I do get married.
I have a lot more to say on attracting more people to this sport but no one is probably stil reading this by this point anyway so this is long enough as is.
