So yesterday was Festivus, so I'm a day late in putting pen to paper on this, but I've got a lot of ideas, and now you people are gonna hear about them.
Don't worry, there aren't problems, just potential opportunities.
1) the elephant in the room, we're not going to discuss or mention factors and reasons why, but running used beaters haven't gotten any cheaper in the previous few years. Is it time for a $2500, $3000 or $4000 sub class? $2000 is beautifully simplicit and used to match the year of the competition, but we're entering $22 beyond that and forces are moving purchasing power the other direction. Expanding budget opens a potential pandora's box that likely wouldn't be closeable. Would recoup stay at $1000? would it be 50% of the class cap? Do the high value classes forego recoup? If Tom and the gang decided to crack open that box, it in itself would warrant a rather massive conversation.
2) a grandfathered class. A chassis returning to the challenge to compete again? Cool you get previous challenge entry cost paid towards your budget. $180 is 9% of budget, that's a significant advantage that over 3-4 years can become junkyard forced induction or take off coilovers. Again a wormhole of additional recoup from year to year could also be entertained. One factor to consider with this potential adjustment would be that it likely wouldn't increase entries so much, as it would reward those who have already come out to the event. Unless builders were bored, wanted to develop new chassis and platforms and were selling off previously entered, grandfathered legal chassis to others to come out to join in the fun.
3) Allow for trading of a Challenge entry or GRM and/or Classic motorsports subscription to be utilized towards the purchase of a vehicle or parts with that equivalent dollar amount not counting against budget. Example, say Stampie has a turbo for sale for $200 and I say, hey Stampie, can I pay for you 2022 challenge entry and your GRM subscription for 2022 instead? Stampie: you can pay for my challenge entry, but I picked up the 10 year subscription back in 2017, so throw in a bottle of rye towards the bar instead. My budget hit would be the amount of the bottle of rye, minus the percentage of it that I drink while at his bar (recoup), towards the turbo. I apologize about throwing up in the pool attempting to maximize recoup of rye.
4) makerspaces class. For those who aren't familiar with makerspaces, they're membership based workshops with, depending on the space, welders, 3d printers, lathes, waterjets, CNC machines and everything else under the sun in between. They often serve as incubators for small businesses as well. a single makerspace could have 20+ people within it each working on a single entity within a build. I'd be very curious to see where the entries from that class would turn into. There's a great potential crossover amongst communities to benefit both GRM and makerspaces and challengers as well. We as a community would need to promote and raise event awareness to individual makerspaces in order to create involvement and entries.
5) make the event BIGGER. This sounds crazy and would be beyond an ambitious undertaking and Tom may be tempted to delete the thread prior to even reading through this recommendation. But I'm thinking a 5 day long event that cost $800-1000 per and entry (with the option of the traditional challenge on Friday Saturday still existing). But here's the format I'm thinking. Tuesday-Wednesday at The Firm, Tuesday time trial. Morning HPDE style practice, with slotted times to limit the number of vehicles on course, if your vehicle has a failure on course, you're not getting additional time or another slot. Sorry. Then afternoon, Standing start, followed by 2 flying laps and a cool down lap, making for 4 laps, 3 of them timed. Wednesday, Rallycross. Thursday off day, and help staff and our host transport things to Gainesville to get set up for the second half. Friday, autocross and drags, Saturday concourse, awards. I would propose that the full week format allow for the dropping of a dynamic score, 3 scores to be utilized as opposed to all 4. Don't want to rallycross your build, we get it, it's rough on cars and suspension travel is necessary, don't run it, use it as your drop and have an extra day to prep for the weekend. Your car is low on power, but has great suspension? Cool, you may want to drop the drag times, but you can certainly decide to make a few passes. Not sure what to drop, and want to run everything? The spreadsheet should be able to highlight where your score was lowest and be able to drop it for you. This format fits the 200tw development fantastically, but obviously would be a monumental undertaking. Would it generate more content and interest? Absolutely. I honestly would suspect that it'd become a must attend type of event and would generate more interest from potential outside influencers. And sponsorship partner wise, I feel that it would at minimum quadruple the event's value. But it would be an undertaking. Tom, let us know what would be needed to make this happen, even if it starts with telling us why it currently couldn't. Whether it be budget, staffing, etc. If you need or want to reach out to me directly as opposed to on here about potential roadblocks to making this occur, please do so.
6) Autotrain class, okay, this is from the zoom chat, but the thought is amusing.
7) this isn't challenge related, but it's community related. Format. How many independently owned magazines of any genre do you know of? How many internet forums are you still active on? This community is wonderful and amazing, but via natural causes, we are shrinking and we're not getting any younger. In the other thread engagement was brought up to raise awareness of the challenge to increase participation. And I agree that it's important and our host put boots on the ground at the right locations, Carlisle, PRI, Mitty, Hillclimbs, and all sorts of other events. The tagline under the title of "Grassroots Motorsports" reads "the hardcore sportscar magazine" and that's accurate and they're where they need to be to locate those who are hardcore. Being hardcore, means having some level of commitment that's internal. People who find their way here and as magazine subscribers have done so because they're not casual about their motorsports interest. It's a double edged sword. I'm not suggesting any sort of form of gate keeping, as trust me, I want the community to grow, but often people inquiring is more powerful then broad promotion. It also allows for self identification within a niche.
Truth be told, more digital, in particular, video content is needed. But that's an undertaking in regards to labor and equipment. I miss GRM live, but it was also really only reaching the audience that is already engaged. GRM isn't the only entity facing this. I have a friend who does the digital media for an automotive organization and back in April 2020 I told him to buckle up as his content production is going to need to increase by 4-600% and that his organization would be best served by hiring 2-3 people under him to fit the future needs, and that revenue would come from it (that organization had and have to funds to make that staffing commitment, but didn't) and now they're floored because Peterson's Automotive museum has more subscribers than they do on youtube, but it's because Peterson's have been churning out 2+ videos a week on average over the past 22 months. Back to GRM, it's difficult as within the racing industry there have been fewer events within the past 2 years and supply chain issues which means financial supporters (sponsors and advertisers) have less money to partner with organizers with regards to events and content. Outside of Haggerty, there really aren't many entities within the world of motorsports who are in a better place financially now then the were prior to the world changing. So the concept of making more content won't yield the same financial return as it would have previously, unless it's generating clicks and generating funding via youtube monetization. Which gets back to, this is a niche community, do you want to see it watered down by content for a population that isn't hardcore?
