SC shootout questions

[black99lightnin]

I'm sure you guys have thought about this, but I'd like to give some input. What if you opened the SC shootout to all factory supercharged Fords. Include Lightnings, Harleys, and Cobras. This would get you more racers and much more spectators and still be a "sc" event. Obviously the more racers/spectators means more $$$$, and less chance of the board or a member having to come out of pocket to support the event. You could advertise the event on all related boards, nloc.net, svtperformance.com, nhtoc.net, etc..... The last Lightning Fest was held at Topeka, but I believe next year it will be held at KCIR. They found that was the most central area to all. Topeka was expensive because of road course that was a waste. KCIR will be alittle cheaper.

The car club I'm in locally www.fpacarclub.com rents gulport dragway 3 times a year. For our little club meets it runs us around $3K, for our Ford/Chevy shootout it cost us $20+K this year. Tracks can be very expensive so the more cars and specs the better chance of the event being a success.

[BlckOnBlckBrd]

How about you guys open Lightning Fest to all supercharged Fords so I can go race at KCIR with you?

Jason

[black99lightnin]

How about you guys open Lightning Fest to all supercharged Fords so I can go race at KCIR with you?

Jason

If I ran the board or had anything to do with L fest I would. I do believe they left the road event open. I've heard the guys have a blast, but they don't make any money. I will attend next years L fest to see firsthand how its run.

For the car club I'm in we have decided to open our small races to all makes, as even at the $3K track rental fee, we are losing around $1000 per event. This is with 60-70 racers and spectators.

The only reason why I suggested opening to all supercharged factory fords is two fold. One it would get all sc'ed Fords involved. Do you know how many people don't even know about sc's? And also the more cars the more potential the event would be a success. From what I understand the last event had 30something racers. Somebody lost alot of money renting a track for 30 cars to go down.

[XR7 Dave]

Actually we had 35 cars and the event broke even which was our goal in the first place. We also had sponsors give us over $7000 in prizes which went to the winners of course. Our sponsors this year included Magnum Powers, Superchips Custom Tuning, C&L Performance, Supercoupe Performance, Baker Performance Tech, Spinning Wheels SC, Lentech Automatics, Morana V6 Racing, Texas Thunderbirds, SuperCoupes Unlimited, and the SCCOA! The event is much more than just a drag racing event. It is also the social highlight for SC owners with a weekend long party and lots of good ole bench racing. :D

We have considered opening the event, but with our event format it isn't the most practical thing. Probably the most popular aspect of this year's track event was the fact that everyone got to make as many passes down the track as they cared to make, and we still ran 6 classes of eliminations by 3:30pm! One of the key attractions of our event is that we have many classes to give everyone a chance to win. Out of 35 cars we had 17 winners!

Another key aspect to SC Shootout planning is the fact that the demographic of SC owners is quite varied. There simply aren't enough SC owners in the middle of the country to support a completely centralized event. Historically speaking half of the participants were within a 350 mile radius of the event. There aren't 15 SC's (at least that are interested in racing) within a 350 mile radius of Topeka. ;)

We are working hard to bring you an event next year that gives more people the chance to participate. We have not given up the exclusively SC event concept yet. This year has the makings to be the best event yet. There are many very exciting things in the works for this year, you can expect to see some (more!) records fall and some great door to door racing!

David

SC Shootout Coordinator

[Birdman93]

Another key aspect to SC Shootout planning is the fact that the demographic of SC owners is quite varied. There simply aren't enough SC owners in the middle of the country to support a completely centralized event. Historically speaking half of the participants were within a 350 mile radius of the event. There aren't 15 SC's (at least that are interested in racing) within a 350 mile radius of Topeka.


Dave-

If that's true, how come the Super Coupe Club of Iowa had a total of 28 cars show up at the October 16th Club Clash, of which 16 were MN12s? :confused:

[XR7 Dave]

Dave-

If that's true, how come the Super Coupe Club of Iowa had a total of 28 cars show up at the October 16th Club Clash, of which 16 were MN12s? :confused:

I'm not sure that I can give you the answer you are looking for, but I will try.

Looking at the information that I have available to me there seems to be a big difference between the demographic which turns out for a local event vrs a national one. We likewise have no trouble getting 10-12 SC's to show up for a local event here in Ohio, but then when we brought the national event here only 2 of those people chose to participate in the Shootout. I attended a local track day on Ontario (5 hrs drive from me) last year with 16 other SC's for a great track day. The SCCOO also bragged of having 34 MN12's attend a chapter meet this past summer. However, come Shootout time only 4 of those people made the short trek to Ohio. While it may be entirely possible to rally a strong local group to participate in an event, you have to look beyond that and see where you can draw other people from in the event that your local contingency suddenly has more important things to do. Remember this is a national event, not a local one.

Judging from the response to our poll in which 300 BBS members voted for a preferred location, only 4 votes came from Iowa, 5 from Nebraska, 2 from Kansas, 5 from Missouri, 9 from Illinois, 1 from S. Dakota, and 6 from Minnesota. There were NO other votes between Cedar Rapids and Denver.

So what this tells us is that there is decent support within the Iowa-Missouri-Wisconsin triangle, but there is no substantial support from the west. We need to put the event in the center of a viable demographic, not on the fringe of it. Historically it has been shown that people do not travel over 1000 miles to participate in these events. Since it is over 1000 miles from the West coast to Kansas City, it is not reasonable to assume that any west coast SC'ers will make the trek. This effectively means that any event East of the rockies is out of range for the western folks. A geographic center of the remainder of the country east of the Rockies would be somewhere between Nashville and Cincinnati. Both previous shootouts were selected with this in mind.

Because there is substantial risk involved in an event such as this with track rental, trophies, and other non-reundable expenses, we cannot reasonably rely on the good nature of a local group for event success. Looking at numbers alone, there were 70 respondants within 300 miles of Norwalk, Ohio with just 35 eventual participants which marks a 50% attrition rate. In contrast there were only 25 responses within a 300 mile radius of Kansas City. Are we to assume there would be only 12-13 people who show up to a Kansas City event? I surely hope not, but I wonder how many of your local chapter would make that trek....

Perhaps the poll is not an effective gauge of who and where the support for a shootout is, and this is why the information gleaned from it is only a tool that we will use to help us determine the final location.

I hope that explanation helps somewhat. :)

David

[Andrew Wang]

If I may add my $0.02 worth, I like the SC/MN12 only format (it's our little thing) and I'm sure the event will grow and attract more participants and sponsors in future years.

As for the next part of the equation, looking at it from a business/marketing standpoint, a business man wouldn't open a business with a market of 10 people when he could have a market of 100 (purely an example and not meant to **** on anyone's cornflakes :D). I believe the potential is there it's just a question of timing (for individiuals) and location, location, location. We all would love to have the shootout in our own backyards but that just may not be possible. I sure don't envy the shootout comittee and the task they have on hand. :D I'll be there again for the next one.

[SpeeDemonSC]

i know of a good 5 sc's willing to do the long haul of a drive to go to any kind of sc type event. all i need is a date and a time! even its its just every 1 renting out the track for a day! im willing to put sum money in on the event!