We hear it all the time: Autocross is too….
And the end of that sentence often involves some combination of money and time.
Some attractive numbers from a recent PCA autocross hosted by our local Florida Citrus Region: 30 bucks for six runs, while we were wheels up and heading home by 11:50 that morning.
I can assume they are getting free lot rent and/or insurance, because my break even costs for venue alone are 50 cars at $50 each. And that's without insurance, which represents another 20 cars.
So my soft costs per diem mean a minimum field of 70 cars at $50, and that doesn't budget for equipment purchase or replacement. Add another 5-10 cars per event to cover that. We do give 6 runs unless something goes wrong.
More power to your local PCA chapter, but our little indie club can't survive on events that small or cheap. At 75 cars we're just breaking even.
Duke said:I can assume they are getting free lot rent and/or insurance, because my break even costs for venue alone are 50 cars at $50 each. And that's without insurance, which represents another 20 cars.
So my soft costs per diem mean a minimum field of 70 cars at $50, and that doesn't budget for equipment purchase or replacement. Add another 5-10 cars per event to cover that. We do give 6 runs unless something goes wrong.
More power to your local PCA chapter, but our little indie club can't survive on events that small or cheap. At 75 cars we're just breaking even.
I'm looking forward to driving with your little indie club for the first time this Saturday. I found the $50 price very reasonable. This will be my first Autocross so I am curious how long it takes to get run ~100 cars.
I feel shorter events are what many people are craving now. Making those numbers work for the organizer can be difficult, but it may pay off dividends in the long run.
In reply to J.A. Ackley :
We usually have about 100 cars, split among 3 run groups, and we give 6 runs. It's usually about 90-120 minutes per group, including down time for worker switchover. Drive one group, work one, relax one.
So somebody who just wants to show up, get teched, drive, and skip cleanup / trophy talk will be there about 6 hours. If their "relax" group happens to be the last group they can split an hour or two earlier.
We could do morning and afternoon heats with 2 run groups each. 25 cars in each group, half in each heat. That might get it down to 4 hours per heat for drivers. But it would make a longer day with extra work for our volunteers and the morning group would not get the chance for trophy talk, which doesn't happen until the trailer is mostly packed.
Motojunky said:I'm looking forward to driving with your little indie club for the first time this Saturday. I found the $50 price very reasonable. This will be my first Autocross so I am curious how long it takes to get run ~100 cars.
Excellent! Thanks for coming out. Drop by the tent and look me up.
For a novice, we recommend you show up about 8:30a for check-in and tech. There will be a novice course walk around 9:30 (I'll probably lead it). Driver's meeting around 10:00, and first car off at 10:30. Roughly 90-100 minutes per group plus downtime between; sometimes people are slow to get on station. We should finish running somewhere around 4:00p. It takes 30-45 minutes to pack up all the equipment, and then 15 minutes for results and trophy talk.
Usually we're off site around 5:00p unless there's a hitch.
This hit home for me.
I went to my first autocross in 1989 and we typically had 25-35 cars. We'd get 6 runs and be done by 2 in the afternoon.
Flash forward 10-15 years and our local SCCA got hard core autocrossers running the local region. Along with 15-18 events a year they became all day affairs. Granted you'd get 10 and 12 runs but you'd also be leaving at 4:30 in the afternoon.
These days we typically do 8 runs; I honestly would be content to give up a couple of runs to leave a couple of hours early.
I thoroughly enjoy autocross but I don't always want to spend 8-10 hours at the track.
I love to autocross but I start to lose my cool laid-back vibe if I'm left to roast on a worker station for more than 90 minutes or so... at two hours I'm smokin' hot. Most of the sites around here - that translates to 25-30 cars per heat... 4 or 5 runs. Average launch interval + some basic arithmetic tells you that. I get frustrated when the club leadership forgets to do the math.
I also get frustrated at time wasted, whether it be for heat turnover, timer glitches, general disorder and whatnot. I'm not talking about "stuff happens" but avoidable delays and 3X30-minute heat turnovers + 2 hour drive home means the difference between home for dinner or home after dark.
On the other hand - I get that we rented the site for the whole day and some people don't care about being done by mid-afternoon. But a well-run event is a big factor in my enjoyment level.
In reply to bludroptop :
We do our absolute best to start cars at 10:30a, launch a car every 25 seconds (course design permitting). That gets a 30-car run group on and off course in about 90 minutes. We'll end up logging somewhere between 550-600 passes during the day.
We try to keep turnovers to <15 minutes by emphasizing at the drivers' meeting that total event time really depends on everyone reporting in promptly and not screwing around.
On top of all this... we need to run friendly, fun events or people won't come back!
The Region I ran off and on for quite a few years would typically do 3 runs per Run Group, sometimes the course was short enough they'd do 4, and it was rare, but I can recall an event or two when we did 5 runs. But that was super rare.
The goal was each run group took one hour...which I thought was quite reasonable. The entire program was done by Noon, so they'd have "time only" groups in the afternoon...for those that wanted or needed the practice. If you wanted to be home early afternoon, great. If you wanted to spend the whole day autocrossing, you can do that too.
its not autocross but the Chicago region SCCA has switched to evening track events. Registration opens at 2, we are on track at 5 and done by 8 /w pizza and bench racing after in the classroom. People really like it, our events are a bit less expensive than a full day, and since we are not on track until 5pm the track the last few days the track was able to rent the facility to a motorcycle club ensuring the track is able to stay busy all day.
In reply to ClearWaterMS :
That does sound fun–kind of like Track Night in America.
David S. Wallens said:In reply to ClearWaterMS :
That does sound fun–kind of like Track Night in America.
yes, the only difference is that we run 3 groups (novice, int/adv, time trials) so we offer transponder rentals and live timing/scoring for a TT group. The TT group also has the benefit of being gridded by previous lap times to ensure you always have a rabbit in front of you.
I used to be of the opinion "why leave early, when everyone can just get more runs/use a longe course/etc?" Now I'm definitely in the opposite camp because I like to do other things with my day.
When I ran with WDCR, they would do morning and afternoon groups, each with 3 heats. The one time per season you ended up running Morning 1 and working Morning 2 (or vice versa) was awesome because you could be easily be out before noon, and that's with (usually) big fast courses. If you got stuck in afternoon working or running last heat though... that sucked.
Unfortunately I don't think there is a real goldilocks zone balancing Cost, Time, Run Length, # of Runs, etc.
In reply to prodarwin :
I agree, some events can go long–could be scheduling, could be an issue that crops up. The person behind our local PCA events has made it clear in that we’ll be finished at a reasonable hour. I’m cool with that. :)
prodarwin said:I used to be of the opinion "why leave early, when everyone can just get more runs/use a longe course/etc?" Now I'm definitely in the opposite camp because I like to do other things with my day.
When I ran with WDCR, they would do morning and afternoon groups, each with 3 heats. The one time per season you ended up running Morning 1 and working Morning 2 (or vice versa) was awesome because you could be easily be out before noon, and that's with (usually) big fast courses. If you got stuck in afternoon working or running last heat though... that sucked.
Unfortunately I don't think there is a real goldilocks zone balancing Cost, Time, Run Length, # of Runs, etc.
i know its probably more work and you would probably have to raise the prices to enable discounts for volunteers but what about doing morning and afternoon sessions? akin to 9 holes vs 18 holes.
the local miata club runs 3 groups (run, work, rest) and does it twice throughout the day. So you have a morning run and afternoon run and you work for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. If you were willing to keep registration open all day you could easily separate those events to be AM and PM as different events.
IIRC our cheapest site last year was $1800. 39 cars would mean canceling the event or going broke. I ended up sponsoring the Street Survival School and one autocross just so it would happen.
In the past 15 years, we have gone from all-day events that were limited to 200 drivers to zero sites and zero events. The old guard is tired and the new crowd has little interest in volunteering. Between site costs and waning interest, autocross is dead in this area.
Duke said:In reply to J.A. Ackley :
We could do morning and afternoon heats with 2 run groups each. 25 cars in each group, half in each heat. That might get it down to 4 hours per heat for drivers. But it would make a longer day with extra work for our volunteers and the morning group would not get the chance for trophy talk, which doesn't happen until the trailer is mostly packed.
I wish more clubs would offer something like an AM/PM setup. I understand its probably not as appealing to the hardcore guys as FTD competition would be split in different track conditions and 'trophy talk' as you say. Still as not particularly serious autocrosser I'd make a lot more days if I could get my 6 runs in half a day instead of a full day. I'd even pay more for it if it means giving volunteers a better discount for being their all day.
ClearWaterMS said:David S. Wallens said:In reply to ClearWaterMS :
That does sound fun–kind of like Track Night in America.
yes, the only difference is that we run 3 groups (novice, int/adv, time trials) so we offer transponder rentals and live timing/scoring for a TT group. The TT group also has the benefit of being gridded by previous lap times to ensure you always have a rabbit in front of you.
I have to say the nice thing about the TT group was very little traffic. You're unlikely to catch the guy in front and I only caught the back end of the grid near the end of sessions. Maybe with a slightly longer track that wouldn't even happen. I do wish they had laptimes posted in the online results during the event. I had no idea if I was 1/10th off the next guy or multiple seconds until after the event.
As David mentioned the low entrant count and short course made for a shorter day. Some of the cost saving for the sponsoring region is that national covers the insurance and the local independent club provides all the equipment, cones to timing which reduces the regions expenses, not sure what the venue rental is.
theruleslawyer said:ClearWaterMS said:David S. Wallens said:In reply to ClearWaterMS :
That does sound fun–kind of like Track Night in America.
yes, the only difference is that we run 3 groups (novice, int/adv, time trials) so we offer transponder rentals and live timing/scoring for a TT group. The TT group also has the benefit of being gridded by previous lap times to ensure you always have a rabbit in front of you.
I have to say the nice thing about the TT group was very little traffic. You're unlikely to catch the guy in front and I only caught the back end of the grid near the end of sessions. Maybe with a slightly longer track that wouldn't even happen. I do wish they had laptimes posted in the online results during the event. I had no idea if I was 1/10th off the next guy or multiple seconds until after the event.
we had live timing, did it not work for you? we use speedhive for live timing and you should be able to use the site to look at all of the data...
In reply to MauryH :
Way back when, that's how we operated - in conjunction with the local PCA chapter. They did the insurance, we did the equipment.
That ended when National told the chapter that they would not insure co-sanctioned events.
At that point lot rent was zero, too, because we had our events at a local public school parking lot. So yeah, we could get away with 30-car fields at $20-$25 a car.
ClearWaterMS said:we had live timing, did it not work for you? we use speedhive for live timing and you should be able to use the site to look at all of the data...
I had access to the site, but it only listed overall position, not times. I assumed it was a configuration issue.
Duke said:At that point lot rent was zero, too, because we had our events at a local public school parking lot. So yeah, we could get away with 30-car fields at $20-$25 a car.
I need to remember to ask you about this on Saturday. I think that I recall events on Centerville Road/Prices Corner in what must have been the late 80s but I don't recall any other events in the area. Of course, I wasn't really looking for them either. I'm disappointed that I'm just now getting around to dipping a toe into the Autocross/RallyCross pool.
In reply to Motojunky :
That was probably our club (we were founded in 1952), but I'm not sure. I know they ran for many years at the Dravo Shipyards in Wilmington. I've seen movies and some of those courses were scary.
BMC went inactive in the late '80s or early '90s and didn't get reactivated until the early 2000s. I started autocrossing with them in 2007 and became AX Chair for 2013. My daughter took over as AX Chair in 2020.
I'm looking forward to meeting you in person!
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