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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The NASA National Championships are taking place this weekend at Mid-Ohio.

I’ve just been looking at today’s results, and they prove my point that I made back in March about the way NASA runs the race schedules.

If you look at the actual schedule, it looks like today’s qualifying races are 20 minutes long.  However, if you look at the results, you can see that the checkered flag was thrown on most these races less than 10 minutes after the green.  10 minute races?  Come on, people!  It’s hardly even worth hitting the track.  It was raining today, so cars were a little slower than normal, but these qualifying races were only 4 laps long.

The actual National Championship races on Sunday are scheduled for 40 minutes, which probably means that they’ll be closer to 30 minutes in actual length. maybe 13 laps.  That, at least, is pretty much a real sprint race, although in my opinion a National Championship race should be a little longer.  When the SCCA held its National Championship Runoffs at Mid-Ohio, the races were each 20 laps.

Again, anyone who compares NASA schedules to SCCA and determines that NASA gives you more race time needs to really take a harder look.  It might still be true in some cases, but it’s not as rosy as a first glance makes it appear.  I think NASA tries to cram too much into each day, even at their premier race-only weekend.

EDIT: The event is over. With better weather, the 40-minute races did turn out to be more laps than I expected … between 15 and 19 laps, ranging from less than 29 minutes to over 32 minutes. But none of this takes away from the level of competition at the event, congratulations to all of the winners! Next year’s NASA Championships will be closer to home, at Miller Motorsports Park in Utah, we’ll see how that one goes!

NASA NorCal published the schedule for the April race weekend, and I have to say, it’s pretty lousy.  Each day, there’s a 10-minute practice, a 20-minute qualifying session, and a 20-minute race.  And those times are TOTAL, including pace car laps, cool-down laps, etc.

The SCCA weekends have 30-minute practices, 20-minute qualifying, and 30-minute races — and those are the actual durations of those events.  SCCA includes a buffer between each race group to get one group off the track and another one on.  NASA includes no such buffer so the published times have to include those group setup times.

One of the things that I had to give up when I switched from National racing to Regional racing was that I was no longer eligible for most of the SCCA contingency programs I was involved in.

For those who don’t know, a contingency program basically boils down to cash awards for doing well in races, but it’s not prize money from the event itself, but rather, it’s money from the companies that supply equipment.  For example, car companies like Mazda, Honda, BMW, VW, Subaru, GM and others will give you money if you win the right races in their cars.  And the tire companies participate too: Hoosier (my brand of choice), Kumho, and Hankook participate, in general.

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This weekend was the 2008 season opener, and it was a lot of fun and a little bit exciting! The weather was absolutely fantastic for any time of year, but especially for February. It was only in the low 40s early in the morning, but 70 in the afternoon, and bright and sunny all day with a very gentle cool breeze. Beautiful.

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Now that I have a NASA race under my belt, I can highlight some of the differences with the way these two clubs operate. I should preface this by saying that I’ve run only one NASA weekend, and with NASA NorCal. Other NASA regions may operate differently, and in fact, other NorCal weekends may be different. I have done SCCA races with many different regions, so those impressions will be more widely applicable.

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This morning I replaced the 2007 version of the home page with the all-new 2008 version. The significant thing is what I’ll call the “final draft” of the 2008 race schedule.

It includes 10 race weekends, from February through November. Pretty full season.

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Since the first race of the season is likely to be a NASA race, I’m trying to get all of my ducks in a row. My car is legal in two different NASA series: Performance Touring (PT) and German Touring Sportscar Challenge (GTS Challenge).

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All three clubs where I could race have announced their race schedules for next season (here are the links):

• SCCA
• NASA
• BMWCCA

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One thought I’ve had, given how hard it is to leave home for a long weekend, is to find a way to do more races at Laguna Seca and Infineon (which are only about 90 minutes from home), and fewer at Thunderhill (which is about 3 hours from home.)

Only way to do that is to skip the SCCA races at Thunderhill, and instead, do some NASA races at Laguna and Sears. I’m a long-time SCCA guy (been a member for over 19 years!) and really consider the SCCA to be my club, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t partake a little bit in the competition.

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