Discussions about the Fee Structure and Registration Process

don't expect responses to your first three questions - nobody owes you that. call it the cost of doing business.

the fee structure and registration process are already pretty darn simple - I wouldn't change much.

the two changes you propose add more complexity.

Re: the camping fee- as stated above, not every team camps,so those that do,pay a little extra for the privilege.

Disclaimer: I don't know any of this stuff, and I don't work for Lemons. I'm just an middle-aged dude who tries to figure out how things work. I'm also not saying this to be mean. This is how I think this little part of the world works.

I think this is to preserve the "club" nature of the organization for insurance purposes.

Probably overnight insurance in the case that somebody misses the pile of mattresses with their burning ATV as they yeet it off a ramp. Don't do that. It'll make it more expensive.

In the pre-pandemic days it was like that, but 4 drivers were mandatory. This meant you weren't ready to race unless you could convince 3 other equally sketchy people to at least sign up for the race. Think about how hard it is to convince your regular team to sign up on time. Now say you don't have 3 friends, but still want to race? In the before times you had few options: convince some other team with more drivers to sign up with you. Convince any random Lemons person to sign up and you just paid their share and got more track time. Make up a fake driver to register. Email Nick and explain why you wanted to race with less than 4 drivers and make him do some extra work to make the database not hate you. I'm sure the new way is easier.

Easy answer here. Don't crash your car. Alternatively, pay attention to Lemons emails/deadlines.

I agree too. I mostly tell my friends/ family not to visit because of the $30 fee.  I think reducing to $10/day would be more reasonable.  But that's basically 1/3 the income because I think most people only visit for one day.  (At least my family)

I forgot that this was the process. I have run races with 2 drivers(NHMS 2017 maybe) and I remember now that I had to sign up some previous drivers with valid licenses to fill the other two spots. 

In general we do pay attention to them.  Its just that for NHMS 2024 there was an unexpected change of process that tripped my team up. 

Obviously don't crash the car is the plan, however sometimes the racing gods have other plans and send rouge Subarus your way.

I buy the argument that a significant part of the cost of the fees is for insurance and safety response. It's not like the spectators are sequestered in stands away from the action, like in stadium sports. They can actually be in the paddock when someone sets their car on fire, or when it falls off a jack at just the wrong time.

I can make the argument O.P.'s refund proposal is asking the organizers to accept the risk of any team screwing up and not having a functioning car for a race - rather than the team, and then the team asking for a refund.

Reducto ad absurdum: what if 75% of entries unexpectedly crashed or broke in testing just after entry close - two weeks before the race? Would other wait listed teams be able to turn around their car for recently opened spots? What would be the limit for asking for a refund? As opposed to: "No refunds."

If O.P.'s team can't, they shouldn't anticipate other teams could; and from that perspective, they're actually arguing against themselves, because that passes the risk of "not enough revenue to pay for the track rental" onto the organization. The organization accepts that risk when they contact for the weekend, but that's in plenty of time - likely at/before the beginning of the year. That's their risk of doing business.

Now, flip the script:
A full complement of teams register and pay, and they have their numbers confirmed. Everybody gets to the track Thursday night when they're told the gates will open ...
and the organizers had a problem transferring payment to the track owners, or simply decided they didn't want to because they had a case of the flu.
Or, they had another event they were organizing that turns out to be more profitable, and they decide to run that one instead. But they refund the race entry fees, so you're not out-of-pocket to the organization itself and they don't owe you anything.

How are you feeling now?

I don't find the proposal reasonable. Plenty of alternatives for teams, like:

1. Buying / renting a race- ready car, or
2. Buying / renting an almost race- ready car, and finishing it at the track, or
3. Finishing that second build every team member has been hoping to get to, or
4. Getting more team crew members and starting from scratch at the event [be a hero] - or the week before,
etc.

If "Waitlisted" is automatically assigned after a specified *PAID* entry limit is reached, for me, the answer is simple:

'Your entry is guaranteed accepted only when PAID.  No refunds.'

That's just my opinion.

This is ignoring the deterrent factor of "No refunds.", and again: transferring additional risk - to the organization - over which they have no control.

I could make the argument that as a guide from the organization:
"No team should pay for an entry unless they have a car that runs and drives and is 'race-ready', and that will pass tech *again*, and that nobody's going to be f'n with before arriving at your tech time on race day."
But that's a bit extreme, and cuts down on the Lemons fun.

It's not as if the race is limited by history and custom to exactly 33 cars.

And it's not like individual sport events where there's an elimination bracket based on powers of 2, and any entries past 128 or 256 cause unreasonable hours of delays because of other rules.
Or: events with preliminary pools that work well with multiples of 7, but everybody *hates* pools of 5, so the difference between 49 (7x7) and 50 (10x5) is a WORLD of difference.

  This ^

No risk to organization I Said you only should get refund if someone else runs in your spot.  Organization still collecting 100% of capacity race fees.

For example: let's say cap is 100 cars.  You blow up 3 weeks before race.  Then a "wait listed" team takes your spot and pays should organization get money from 101 cars when only 100 are allowed to run.

Also I think you are not following the "something went wrong "  at a previous race part.  OK of you have high hopes to finish a new build on time maybe finish then register?  Although I totally didn't follow that advice.  First race I got car to idle for 10 seconds on deadline to register.  Told my team captain "OK I'm on the right track I can finish this register"  (and I did and we raced and blew up lol)
Either way if you have races close together and you have a major issue at first race, sucks to also lose all the money on 2nd race.  Only applies to full races.

Ah, I think finally we've come to the core issue:

You want to lock in your race number!

Here's a better proposal:

Lemons could sell - not reserve, SELL*, a restricted license to one person associated with one team the right to use a particular number during any particular race, individually, times multiple races.

* Lottery if necessary- no sooner than a month after the year's schedule is announced, organizers right to control if they choose, more races for any given number preferred over fewer, any entries not fully paid by the entry deadline forfeits the license to the number, the number doesn't transfer with priority to a different race, only Lemons can reassign the number, and any other parameters I'm missing.
After all, who doesn't want a Beetle to have first crack at #43? Or that orange thing to have a #12? Or whatever other meme I'm missing - I'm not a race head.

Then, you only get a spot if you're fully paid before the race fills up or entry deadline; and no refunds after the deadline - period.

Though perhaps - only perhaps - transfer to a future race if a waitlisted team is fully paid by the deadline.

But then we're getting into complicated rules, and that's not what Lemons is about. But I think that could work as an enhancement to the team's preparations.