Paddock Parking Courtesy (Page 1 of 2)

Sorry about parking in front of your trailer, but I didn't exactly have a lot of options...

This tends to be more of a problem at the asphalt expanse paddocks like Joliet. There seems to be more spread for some reason. Probably because it looks bigger than it is compaired to a road and dirt planned out paddock. You tend to see a lot less parked longwise trailers and such.

It doesn’t help that the whole Jolliet facility is a bit form over substance but I guess that works for country club tracks.

The asphalt spots are plenty deep as well. We fit the toter home/stacker with room for the racecar in front of it. There's no reason why somebody would need to put a 4 spot wide canopy an extra spot over so they had room between the canopy and their trailer.

This is one area where some "traditional" racing groups do it better. They have paddock stewards who "police" this and keep things fair.

Or at least get their Authority Addiction rocks off. A lot of people avoid "Traditional" racing groups because of those kinds of folks. They have an inevitable and unfortunate tendency to trend to the petty and arbitrary.

I think *most* of the people who are racing know not to do this, but their friends and family still don't seem to get it.  They think any place there car will fit is OK to park. 

The last time we had someone park in front of our trailer we blocked them in.  They weren't too happy about it, and had  no idea that they had done anything wrong.

So let me know if I'm being a dick about this, but if you get to the track early, then you can't reserve a big block of prime real estate for your five other friends who who won't be arriving until later, sometimes even a full day later. I get really sick of getting to the track early and having big sections of paddock area taped or roped off for some other teams that will be arriving at some unspecified later time or date (and sometimes they don't show up at all). Then when I remove the tape or move the cones or whatever they did to block the space off and move in to set up, people act like I'm the bad guy. I've even had them call the track staff to report me removing their tape and parking in the spot they wanted for their friends. I've had this happen at Lemons races and at NASA races.

And while we're on the subject, the same goes for power outlets; first come is first served, unless it's some place like NCM, where you pay for and reserve specific powered spaces in advance (which I really like).

The notable exception to this is for Terminally Confused when they do a big BBQ dinner at CMP; they should get a big spot right in the middle of everything, because free delicious smoked pig.

Which is a shame because the Shenandoah bowl made a great paddock for after hours.

Feature, not bug. Arbitrary punishment is fine if there isn’t the illusion of having a say. Lemons is an absolute Jay-tatorship and that’s a good thing. No voting on rules, or complaint hearings, or other work flavored “fun”. It’s part of the disincentive system of avoiding penalties (which are all clear, consistant, and concise) in the first place.

I think Jay does a good job at being a "Benevolent Dictator", like many have on their Lemons team

We didn't used to grab too much space.  But managing a couple hundred people through our paddock spot on Saturday night, while trying to serve food and fix our car proved a little tough in a standard amount of space.

I do agree with first come first served.  These days the track staff at CMP tapes off a spot and holds our power plug, but we still get in line early on Thursday.  I'd fully expect Roger to take our spot if we rolled in mid-day Friday, and I wouldn't blame him if he did.

I'm ok with space saving. I'm the recipient of that favor more often than I'm the one doing the saving. So yea, I'm that dick and I'm sorry if I've ticked you off because I couldn't arrive until some time after tech opens (I've been doing better about arriving before tech closes at least)

We here on the West Coast have our own Terminally Confused-esque chowline with Amanda. She feeds several teams for the entire weekend and typically the first affiliated team to arrive to the track will try to save her (and her CrazyMike) space because she works on Fridays and doesn't arrive until it is time to prepare dinner for 50-100+ people. HQ is also kept fed while they are at the track, so having proximity to them is also desirable.

Alan Frisbee, who is now retired, has been very gracious in the past with his personal time, arriving early and saving spots for Amanda-affiliated teams. He also brings at least one jug of hand cleaner to leave in the bathrooms, and brings lots of oft-needed supplies and tools for others to borrow, even when he is not drivng. Others I'm indebted to include Anton, Wendy, Overzet, Cheseroo, Q, FyremanBill, Robb and a host of others who have allowed me to squeeze in here and there.

Some of us run multi-car efforts whereby many cars captained by different owners share multitudes of drivers across all the cars, and we benefit greatly from the car owner who arrives first to save spots for those of us who have to drive at least 10 hours to arrive at the second closest track to our homes.

So yea, I'm biased.

But I also have been on the flip side where I was told, "I don't care if you brought 3 cars, you only get 1 team spot. The 10x20 spots are PER TEAM, dude."

Your post is a good reminder we all need to be courteous and not take more space than absolutely necessary, even if we're saving space for an affiliated team.

Or a Shantytown Castle with a moat!

To be fair, Nelson Ledges provided the moat for free!