Uk club racing after covid19?

[MG CHRIS]

After this horrid virus passes and eventually people start to regain some for of normal life how will the uk club racing look like. Maybe this could be the time to radically alter the way its run.
Surely clubs and organising will have to cut down dead duck series or merge to keep numbers and viability of the racing to continue. Ive noticed a huge list of championship or series with extremely low numbers surely that wont or cant continue after this has passed.
Could we see a heavily reduced number of series and more common sense involved in the industry or will it go back to how it was.

[MG CHRIS]

Kraken said:

BertBert said:

I love the idea of having capped lap times. Is that a thing used elsewhere?

Pretty sure the 24hr Creventic series uses capped lap times for some of its classes.

And pembrey with the welsh sports and saloon car series.
Msuk have further delayed racing till june suspect that will go further than that so very unlikely we see any racing till late summer if at all.

[MG CHRIS]

andy97 said:

epinettes said:

I think it could be a difficult 2020 for club racing, especially as a lot of the meetings will be moved to accommodate calendar changes with F1, WEC, BTCC etc.

CSCC have already announced that we have been bumped from our August 22/23 slot at Silverstone to accommodate a potentially re-arranged date for the WEC and wait until F1 starts trying to rearrange things!

Which is strange as wec hasn't got Silverstone on the new schedule.

[MG CHRIS]

Dynion Araf Uchaf said:

MG CHRIS said:

Which is strange as wec hasn't got Silverstone on the new schedule.

it is isn't strange at all, its the organisers trying to second guess which country will be first out of lock down, allied to where the teams are based. I would imagine all the promotors of each championship is trying to do the same.

I think racing in Italy won't happen this year, and I'm not sure it will happen in Spain either. UK, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia might be ok. France 50%, rest of world - who knows.

True however I cant see big motorsport events taking place there is no way government will allow mass gatherings of people together until way into September if not the rest of the year.

[MG CHRIS]

df76 said:

MG CHRIS said:

True however I cant see big motorsport events taking place there is no way government will allow mass gatherings of people together until way into September if not the rest of the year.

Haven’t seen anything to suggest this isn’t likely to be accurate. In the best case scenario I could imagine some non-spectator motorsport events happening from September, but nothing like a “normal” race meeting until this time next year.

I think sprints hill climbs and trackdays will be allowed but with social distancing in place either out door briefings or online and no spectators allowed. Maybe a few small club meets but there is no way the likes of btcc goodwood revivals f1 etc etc will take place.

[MG CHRIS]

I did think that club racing would be easier to run than the bigger meets due to logistics and less people but it does look like they will just focus on the big events. Also for championship is it really worth running them in what time we have left how many people will be in the position to do a full 6 meetings in a short time frame.
May well be worth cancelling 2020 and set back up for 2021 and just have a few non championship races with combined grids to bump up numbers. But that requires some sense which seems absent in uk club racing.

[MG CHRIS]

It be interesting too see the numbers of people entering these races. I was due to start my first year of club racing this year but due to the virus have decided its best to save money for a house over wasting money racing at this current point.
I suspect most club races are seriously considering if it is worth the cost when many will be either on furlough or working for companies that are in risk of laying people off.
Castle combe does have a pretty decent turn out for its championship the hot hatch and saloon car championship usually have 30+ grids with the ff1600 and gt championship with 20 or so in each.

Looking at some of the barc run championships with combined races not even getting north of 15 cars I suspect club racing will look very different with many championships either merging too boost grids or folding all together. For example do we really need 4 different mx5 championships in the uk the mk1.

[MG CHRIS]

The last club race I watched last year was the barc truck meeting at pembrey.
The welsh saloon and sports car championship had 17 cars.
Monoposto teideman trophy had 20 cars.
Legends series had 17 cars
MGOC had 12 cars
Truck class 1, 7 class 2, 11 trucks.

So 5 championships with less than 100 cars not exactly great and this isn't that uncommon specially for barc run events.

[MG CHRIS]

andrewcliffe said:

MG CHRIS said:

The last club race I watched last year was the barc truck meeting at pembrey.
The welsh saloon and sports car championship had 17 cars.
Monoposto teideman trophy had 20 cars.
Legends series had 17 cars
MGOC had 12 cars
Truck class 1, 7 class 2, 11 trucks.

So 5 championships with less than 100 cars not exactly great and this isn't that uncommon specially for barc run events.

I was there supporting Monoposto. Tiedeman Trophy is a small autumn championship and attracts a number of people who want to contest a 3 meeting, 3 day mini-championship, whereas many of the others prefer to contest the full 14 round 6 weekend championship. Thus a one-dayer in Wales at what some perceive as a 2nd tier circuit in October would possibly struggle. As it happens, Monoposto hadn't been since 2007, so it got reasonable entries and there were two withdrawals following problems in testing.

I know one of the guys that runs a ralt in the series when he can with his son was good racing tbf compared to the others. Can understand why pembrey always struggles for entries but It does seem a problem for barc on small grids compared to others. Even when 750mc went to pembrey in 2018 they had decent grids late teens early 20s.

[MG CHRIS]

Another track that does well on its own is castle combe their own series are always well subscribed, the gt championship has taken a dip in recent year but to see gt3 spec cars race against home built cars is fantastic to watch also a big variety of cars.
The saloon car series has some seriously quick cars in it.

[MG CHRIS]

roddo said:

BARC have done things slightly different with us (Mazda Motorsport club) this year, they have sold us the track time and don't care how many cars we have.....that said this allows US to dictate the entry fee and by dropping the entry to one of the cheapest available along with introducing the RX8 class we HAD 20 cars booked for brands.
Hopefully we won't loose any drivers due to covid19

Just seen the regs on the rx8 class I built one for the cscc series with a mate but due to the virus he has had to pull out. Could be tempted to run a few meetings this year ready for next year. Do prefer the shorter style races over the endurance of the cscc. What is the entry fee?

[MG CHRIS]

roddo said:

Hi Chris
Entry fees for 20min quali & 2x20min races should be a max £400

We have a great bunch of drivers who are very clean and fair.....I have an RX8 and I know of about half dozen others so once we get out it will be a great race

Edit
For clarification that's 6 or 7 RX8's
8 mk4 mx5's
Various mk1 & mk2 mx5's
6 or soo mk3 mx5's

Edited by roddo on Monday 25th May 20:18

Think you may know me I was in the pits when you were at pembrey in 2018? im good friends with clare gaffor. Used to spend loads of time on the nutz forum before it got took over welshy1 on the forum.
Will have too see on what happens this year see you are at pembrey so could possibly make that one.

Edited by MG CHRIS on Tuesday 26th May 21:24

[MG CHRIS]

df76 said:

BEP said:

Still nothing from certain BARC championships...all seems very odd

I was thinking the same the other day, all other clubs seem just about sorted now. I believe that the competition staff are still furloughed so perhaps expect news in a couple of weeks time.

Ive seen 2 dates published for the wssc but it not got a lot of comments from racers so not sure on what will happen with them. Did see brscc have launched another new series a sprint race for c1/107/aygo but wont allow current c1 race cars why in hell would you do that.

[MG CHRIS]

ESD1711 said:

We’ve been offered a three meeting championship up here, with a meeting mid September and two in October.

Having given it a lot of thought, I’ve decided not to go ahead with what was due to be my first years racing. There’s a lot of things I don’t think are particularly clever - self scrutineering being one of them, the potential for our championships to be decided over three half day race meetings bringing out a whole host of driving standards questions with folk going for gaps that aren’t there etc.

Just doesn’t make sense for me in my own particular situation sadly.

Im the exact same situation im now saving that money for a house move which I was planning for next year. Surprising how much you save when your not spending it on your race car.

[MG CHRIS]

df76 said:

Having just listened to the last daily briefing (for now), I’d say that a November race event in wales is somewhat optimistic!

Specially in Anglesey where there has been a big outbreak in a food factory. Even without that dripford is not letting go of his control over wales on doing something different to England.