Need a discussion: Running an autocross event and how to react when it all goes to E36M3

Grab a beer, I'll wait...

Back? Good.

Full disclaimer: I have been autocrossing with this club for 9 years, a member for 6, and was Registrar for 2, which I relinquished for this season. I am still a member, but that expires tomorrow.

One of our local clubs put on their season-opening autocross this weekend. Saturday featured a Driver's kills Clinic in the morning, followed by the first autocross of the season. This has been done forever, but 4 seasons ago I suggested we change from an AX practice day, to an actual points event (as participation was zilch). This time, however, they maybe should have thought about a practice day. They had purchased all new wireless timing lights on tri-pods, a new timing control box, and had seriously upgraded the actual T&S software with dual workstations, wireless barcode scanning, and live results.

The volunteers were asked to arrive between 6:30 and 7:00 AM for the DSC, with students between 7:30 and 8:00, for a first car on course at 9:00 event. We showed up and worked. And worked. And worked. There were 18 instructors, 36 students, and two courses. The organization was honestly not great, with no communication to the instructors, and lots of just standing around. The first car didn't start until ~9:40.

Fast-forward through the DSC (which actually went pretty well) and it was finally called off at 11:40. Not too bad, we recovered alright, all the students got ~12 runs over 2 courses. Now the instructors and volunteers had to combine the courses into one, open registration for AX #1, do tech, etc, while the students got a lunch break. Here comes the rub, all the DSC students and instructors were automatically entered for AX #1. That's 54 cars/drivers already...

So 47 more people had pre-registered for the event (they stopped taking registrations at 101 total, and did not allow walk-ups) and these people all showed ready to race. The club decided to 4 run groups, with A Run/B Work, B Run/A Work, and then C Run/D Work, D Run/C Work as the groupings. A & B were the instructors and students...

Needless to say, it started going downhill, fast. Nobody like to show up to an event just to be told they now have to wait 3+ hours for others to run first. A Group didn't actually hit the track until well after 2:00 PM. Group B finally got to drive around 4:00 PM. We had been volunteering for 9 1/2 hours by then. They also decided for some reason that every group was getting 6 runs! About 5:15 I finally gave up and left, having only done 5 runs and completed brain-farted my way through 4 of them. I got home about an hour later to news that Group C was just hitting the track. It was sundown! They were still running past 9 PM at night.

Besides the very obvious issues of the Group C/D and late start times, we were sharing our venue (Portland International Raceway) with another club, who was running a DE (we were in the infield paddock). The other club did not allow track crossings in between sessions, and would not allow anyone to leave either (which is the second time they have done that to us), which frustrated the non-DSC participants even more.

Autocross #2 was Sunday, and went off pretty much without a hitch (I wasn't there). Today results from #2 were posted, but not #1. It seems most of the C & D groups times somehow did not make it to the actual database. The clubs responses online to the criticisms have been, well, not polite or informational to be nice. A lot of talk went back and forth between a board member and a non-member, with the club's sentiment pretty much coming across as "we don't want you", with the actual AX chair posting some non-information to stay tuned, and finely some vague direction to email him for refunds.

I am very frustrated that "my" club performed an event like this, and then responded in this manner. The official position is now that all non-DSC participants will receive a full refund an/or a free event of their choice for this season, AX #1 will not count in the standings, and an event #9 will be added into the schedule. All of the online comments were pretty much deleted.

What are your thoughts? I really want some frank discussion about this, but my club is restricting that in our own venues. I need to know whether I should be presenting solutions and getting more involved again (I am the back-up Registrar still), or if I should let my membership lapse and sit out this season to see what they do on their own.

Thanks for being my sounding board GRM.

Sounds to me like they berkeleyed up, they know that they berkeleyed up, they don't need (or want) to be further told that they berkeleyed up, and are actively trying to make up for their berkeley up.

If the online criticism was not being offered and/or received in a totally constructive manner, what would reopening the topic for discussion accomplish? Real and meaningful dialogue belongs, and is FAR better accomplished, face to face...Like at the club meetings. That includes in regards to the tactfulness, or lack there of, of official and unofficial club replies.

Tricky situation;

Is there any chance of talking sense to the current autocross chair? An acknowledgement and apology is not easy, but it would do wonders for clearing the air. Is the core group unified and inflexible, or is it dominated by one strong voice with the rest just tagging along? It hasn't started well, but if you can get the chairman/core group to see the problem, there's a chance that it can turn around without a crash-n-burn. You'll need consensus within to make a change of direction without a change of leadership.

If not, is there someone else willing to take over as autocross chair? If so, there's an option of pulling a coup and excusing the current chair to the sidelines. I just handed over the reigns after 9 years. I was still enjoying it, but I would have done it sooner if I'd had a volunteer sooner.

At this point, you can either get more involved and help effect the clean-up, or walk away and stomach whatever outcome the club arrives at without your input.

I'd make that decision based on whether I thought the club could change: is there a significant group of people who not only understand the issues but are willing to work hard together to effect change? And can that group overcome the opposition, should there be resistance from bruised egos? If you can't answer "yes" to both those questions, proceed no further, unless you're particularly masochistic.

Man I wish we had that kind of participation here. I also wish we had a closer event than grass valley. It's nice to see that much action at PIR. I think if they have THAT much participation they need to split up. Two different days, or locations.

I thought it was normal autocross protocol for things to go to E36 M3 at least once per event?

4 run groups for just 100 drivers makes me think that you're thin on workers each heat. That could be a factor into why things took so long (down time between heats for workers to go to course, frequent red flags/reruns if corner workers can't get quickly recover cone hits, etc). My region basically needs a minimum of 35 people per run group for things to run smoothly. Just something to consider.

It sounds like they bit off WAY more than they could chew. In our region on driver education day we do that in Saturday and then the PE on Sunday.

Trying to cram two days of stuff into a single marathon exhausting slog of a day isn't the way to have fun and since fun is the only reason to do autocross it sounds like a planning mistake.

Talk to the planning folks, make sure they know what they did wrong and move on. No biggie and no permanent harm.

What he said.

You could also see it as not just a driver education day, but an organizer education day.

It was just an "ah we berkeleyed up" situation. They seem to be handling it as well as possible. Except maybe for the online stuff.
For what it's worth, in Houston we don't run four heats until we get above 140 people consistently. Once we do run four heats we run the event like a morning event and an afternoon event. You are assigned AM or PM when you register, and you either show up at 7:30, or noon. We had 145 entries on Sunday, so we're close. The biggest problem now is getting everyone through registration and tech. With two tech lines running it still takes nearly two hours to get everyone through. I'd love to hear suggestions for how to make it faster.

I usually arrive on site ~ 7:30a and open tech as soon as I empty my car and have it ready

we (the tech chief and I and the other minion) usually swap out and get reg. and a course walk or two by 8:30 or so (but we typically have about 80 - 90 cars, and only run 1 tech line, plus we've started doing annual tech) and often there's a car or 2 waiting to be teched after the drivers meeting

I have to agree it was a perfect storm:

1. new timing system.

2. Newish crew

3. two events in one day?

4. A decent number of entrants

Yeah... they bit off more than they could chew. In hindsight, they should have set up registration and tech for the additional Event #1 people (assuming the school people/cars were already registered and tech'ed).

They took on too much! It appears they have learned. You can offer assistance or mentorship, or you can stand by sand see what improvements will be made. Just do not try to wrestle control. You backed off this year for a reason. We get burnt out over time.

A good suggestion might be for some long-term planning. Like having an assistant to learn from the leader so they can manage events in the future. All volunteer organizations struggle with that kind of transition. We tend to rely on the experienced people and don't really look at the learning experience with the expectation that we will be doing this later.

Clear cut case of taking on too much and forgetting it's supposed to be fun. I think this is common in the autox community -- it's supposed to be fun. Next time, shoot for six runs with time left over for beers, and bring a bigger hat.

I haven't presided over a crash-n-burn of that magnitude, but we've had some failures and problems.

Whether it's public or not, there needs to be discussion about how to proceed. It sounds like there already has been some, and an effort made. What needs to happen now is a change of tone from "here's your damn money back, you ungrateful bastards" to "sorry, we tried to do too much this time, let us make that up to you."

The autocross chair should issue a public statement with a brief apology, a short outline of the reasons things went south, the plan for future events to make sure it doesn't happen again, and an offer to make it up to those who are dissatisfied. Then the club as a whole can move on and learn from the mistakes.

4 run groups, and 6 runs each for 100 people and starting in the afternoon is not going to happen. In my region we manage to do 900+ timed runs a day every event, starting 9-10amish and finishing by 6pm. We have a higher run density than nationals, and even we would probably not tried to get 6 runs in, mainly because we would have only used 2 heats for 100 workers and two heats takes longer than 3 or 4 because you have to stop running in order to change workers. 2 heats, 4 runs each.

Cockups like this happen though, sounds like inexperience on the organizer's parts. Putting the kibosh on the online bitching once the apologies and refunds were made was probably in everyone's best interest.

Stories like these really make me think about what it takes for my region to do what they do on a consistent basis. If we don't have 100+ participants in an event it is a light showing. The spring/summer events at a particular location pulled over ~200. Was it always perfect, no. But to echo some of the other comments, the AX Chair and the core group made sure that everyone always was aware of what was going on as best the could and owned up when things went badly.

When you get to the bottom of it, these people are doing this for fun. All of it. Some people lose sight of that and things can escalate quickly. I would think it was less about what really happened on the day of the events and more to do with the reactions to those events.

So, if you want to have fun, go for it. If you want to be involved, please do, even if that is not mutually exclusive from time to time.