I have decided not to do any NASA racing in 2009.  Last year I wanted to do it to spend more time at Infineon and less time at Thunderhill, but although I had a good time at the NASA season opener, the structure of the event left me a little cold, and I discovered that I just enjoy the SCCA races too much.

The quick summary of my issues with NASA were: A) not enough workers, especially around tech and grid; B) racers seemed to be 2nd-class citizens to the HPDE crowed; C) not enough track time.   The first issue was pretty serious — anyone can just jump out there on the track with the racers, since no one checks anything.  Even on the official results from some of the sessions just say, “Who are you?” for some of the cars, because … the officials didn’t know who was in some of the cars.

And the last issue is pretty serious too.  The schedule APPEARS to give a decent amount of track time, but since there is no time allocated between groups, some of the allocated time goes to just simply getting some cars off the track and geting other cars onto the track.  Every session is at least 5 minutes shorter than advertised, at least as far as quality track time is concerned.

Anyway, I was looking at the schedule for the 2009 NASA season opener, and it’s really screwy!  I call your attention to group A (that’s the group I’d be racing in.)

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