What can be done to make Lemons more attractive to spectators? (Page 4 of 7)

I guess my concern would be if the penalties get to severe then how is that going to help the attendance at the Lemons races? It seems that Lemons has grown bigger because they got away from some of the ridiculous penalties that were issued in the beginning, like 2 wheels off trying to avoid a collision or even the peoples curse. A lot of people I know voiced concerns about spending a bunch of money on their car or even just spending a lot of time on it only to possibly have it crushed. I personally prefer to go to a racetrack to go fast but that is my preference. I get the whole theme/party/class C have a good time mentality and I think that is awesome it just isn't the whole reason I go to a Lemons race. I'm to much bent on the competitive nature of racing and not the lets just make laps concept. My point would be to make sure you don't run off the people that are typically the largest group in attendance especially if your trying to get more people to attend. I love this series and will continue to make as many races as my wife will allow but if it gets to the point to where they make it more difficult to compete or penalize me for having a car that I have spent a lot of time on fussing over the small details then I might have to reassess what I want to do as far as participation.

BTW my build now is hopefully going to be a good blend of class "A" and goofy theme if that is possible, come out to CMP in September and let me know what you think. I spent a lot of time on the car build and even more on the theme.

Mmm.  I see.  You are saying that having fewer A and B cars at the race could increase spectator attendance.  Fair enough (though I disagree), but I think I can be excused for interpreting the statement that you want fewer A and B cars to show up as meaning that you think they are doing Lemons incorrectly.  And for what it is worth, I edited the insults out before posting (and they weren't even that bad).  Only thing I can see that isn't chock-full of politeness is the bit at the end, which falls under the category of sarcasm rather than insult.  Perhaps I'm not the only one with a reading comprehension problem.

I fall under the "meh" category when it comes to more spectators, but how's this for constructive input: assuming you want to further the "more class C cars" agenda rather than just reduce A and B car counts, then making suggestions that will actually do that might be good.  Which would you rather watch, a race with 12 class C cars and 60 assorted others, or a race with 12 class C cars?  (No, I'm not using "agenda" as a pejorative.)

I've driven in all four classes, and what I like to see when I show up to a race is a shit-ton of cars of various speed potentials.  Mixed-class racing is fun regardless of where you are in the heap, and it isn't a real crapcan race unless there's barely any space on the pavement.

And finally, last time I looked at it the non-safety budget for my class A lap-record-holding abomination was $340.  Building a fast car doesn't necessarily require spending money.  This is a tiny bit of an aside, but I suspect that the majority of over-$500 cars on the track at any given race aren't cheating, they are legally exploiting residual values.  If there's a root cause for the speed-creep that people are concerned about that's where to look.  I am also not 100% convinced that there is a speed-creep problem, and don't believe Lemons speed differentials are all that high compared to other categories of multi-class racing.  I do believe that multiple seasons of wisely managed residuals can make a $500 turd into an expensive and well-developed racecar, and that sort of thing increases perceived barrier-to-entry for people trying to get into crapcan racing.

Scott

PS: some of the over-$500 cars on the track at any given race are cheating.

Or Cats...

If we want 100 class C cars again, then offer $5000 to the winner of class C and raise team fees by $100 to pay for it.   "C" class it is....

I loved that video...

That isn't necessarily how it works.  For example the shit-brown Pinto Cruising Wagon that won class B at Sears Point a while back continues to run in B, but with a one-lap penalty.  Running that car stock in class A would be absurd.  Moving it to A then providing budget leeway to make it more competitive there doesn't do anybody any good.

As far as X class goes and speaking as someone who was stuck in it for a season and won in it, it sucks.  It takes away the intrinsic reward of contending for a win: no one cares.  We didn't even care.  It wasn't about prizes, it was about competing with people on a level playing field and winning or losing on merit.  The implied rules exemption of having an exhibition class sort of provides an excuse for getting beaten, so even an overall win doesn't matter.  X class cars were almost invisible.  I would much rather have a good time at a race and lose than have a shitty time and win but running in X just felt like a waste of time and money.  Er, more of a waste of time and money.

And exhibition classes are a bad idea if you care about keeping speeds down.

Scott

Well said sir, well said.

As for attracting spectators...what driver in this series really gives a flying f*ck who/how many people come to spectate?  I go to RACE, and have FUN, which is what I pay my dues for.  My guess is Jay will continue the series as long as it's financially viable in his eyes, and the number of spectators isn't what pays the bills.   As long as we have as many teams/drivers that want to race, I think the series will be just fine.

I also think that Lemons and econo racing suffer from the same fate as Softball, about the only people you are going to get to come out to watch a softball game is people that are on the team and their families.

More than half the class B cars are equal to class A cars, the bigger difference is usually the team not the car. There are class B cars finishing in the top 10, and Class A cars that can't even break the top 20 even running all weekend. Class C vs. A&B is a much clearer line than A vs.B.

The safety is my big concern. So far we've done really well, but as the gap keeps getting bigger we're going to keep having more Ferkel and Nash style crashes. Not everyone who has a fast class A car has the talent in a pinch to match the speed potential of the car. Usually it's no problem, but when it is a problem, well, eventually even a near perfect system will have a catastrophic failure. Our Cage requirements are top notch, and requiring "HANS" is a big relief, but as we saw with Stef, even a properly bolted in person's body can still only take so much of a beating. So keeping cars slow enough to maintain an effective closing response time may mean the difference between "Well that was a crash!" and "Well that crash just cost them the insurance coverage."

And Yes, the CMP block party is one of the best ways to draw interest. Most tracks are in the middle of nowhere and so are out of sight and out of mind for most even locals.

We can't really raise C, because C cars are just too dang slow to ever get faster. That's part of the point, they have no right to be on a racetrack and that's what's fun.

But, most of us are not Pros, we don't have the training and experience to recognize when enough speed is enough for our ability to deal with it until after the situational breakdown happens. I always told my Private Pilot students that even though they just earned their shiny new Pilot's Certificate. They now have just enough skill to be dangerous, and not enough knowledge to know what they don't know. And what they don't know is what's going to try and kill them.

The best solutions are either:
A: Try and encourage a slower class A in a fashion enjoyable to everyone.
B: Require real Licensing or Training, either overall or for A class drivers which will do the opposite of getting more people involved.
C: Pull slow and/or questionably reliable cars and/or Drivers off the track.
D: ?

Lemons has always done spectacular with the methodology of A because buffoonery and good natured shame is always a good time.

The old "club" racing has done B and C and well, we know how that's been going.

If there's a D out there I can't think of, perhaps that would be great too. But right now only A means more people keep showing up and everyone goes home happy and in one piece.

Either way, I hope I can get some time away to go down to CMP Fall to see your Fiberglass masterpiece.

And yea the CMP block party is the best thing for raising interest and awareness, most track are in the middle of nowhere and so out of sight and out of mind even for locals.

Lawn chairs on the track.   With snacks.

Popcorn machines... Lots and lots of pop corn.

It's a pain in the ass to schlep a big TV, computer and extra monitors to the track but I do it at CMP, and I'd do it at Barber if I had a way to get a good signal from timing and scoring. It really depends on the judges... Matt Adair hated it the one time he judged CMP, but I think "the regulars" like it because it keeps people out of their hair, and the attraction keeps the vibe up at the judge's station/HQ.

I've got a friend who used to have a proper TV truck, and one time a few years ago he asked if there'd be any interest in bringing it to CMP to do live coverage of a race. And we're talking real TV - 12 cameras, 96 channels of audio, multiple graphics packages, etc... and I talked him out of it, because it wouldn't be worth the $500 in fuel he'd burn getting there and back. I had had a discussion with Jay about it at a prior race, and we both agreed that there wasn't really a market for it, because all those cameras aren't free, people to run them aren't free, people to schlep tens of thousands of cables aren't free, someone to produce/direct the show (even if it's a tight ship with one guy doing the switching, graphics, audio, etc. like we used to do) isn't free, a roving paddock reporter to tell all those interesting stories isn't free, and on and on.

We kinda saw this a year or two ago when Spank tried to be the "man in the pits" streaming with a phone... to cover this size of a spectacle, you need multiple "segment producers" running around getting leads, writing down details, keeping track of locations, names, car numbers, etc. ad nauseam. Live TV is hard work.

Streaming to the internet isn't an option at most tracks, because mobile data is expensive if it's even available. I've got AT&T and I have to drive around looking for one bar at CMP, for example. MSR Houston wasn't much better. And CMP's got "broadband" internet with paddock wifi, but their pipe is like 1.5/256k DSL, which is probably the best they'll be able to get out there for the next decade.

By way of comparison, we used to cover the US national speed skating championships, and we streamed exclusively online. We charged (as I recall) $40 for the week, and uploaded a 768kbps 540p video stream. We burned through hundreds of gigs of data, but that's not the point. At our peak, with more than 2,000 competitors, constant short-race action, a VERY talented color commentary team (think Speedycop and Spank doing live commentary over a race) and all sorts of glossy shit like graphics for names and times, superimposed clocks, instant replay, finish-line cameras, the works, with a team of 6 people. 4 of those were standing behind a camera for 14 hours a day, and the other two of us were inside a 40x8' windowless metal box with 8 tons of AC to keep it below 80 degrees. It's A LOT of work... and there, at our peak, we had about 1500 people subscribe. That's one week a year. Imagine trying to do it two or three times a month.