Executive Directors Notes-OVR Majors

What a way to kick off the 2016 Lake Erie season with the OVR Majors. It was quite a weekend with about 420 cars....the largest field we have seen in a long time. We ended up having 38 people on Friday, 50 on Saturday and 45 on Sunday. I thank everyone that came out and worked this race. We needed everyone that came. We had many people travel in from distances to help us as well. We had travelers from Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey, Kentucky and Indiana. Along with our regular LEC members join us there were several members we have not seen in many years come work corners again with us. 

The days were long and the rain for the most part stayed away but it got interesting when it did. The activity on track definitely kept everyone busy everywhere. However a special shout out goes to Turn 4/5/6 on Sunday....I haven't seen that much activity there in a long time but everyone did a great job keeping it sorted out. I believe most everyone had a good time, I did see a lot of smiles all weekend.

Overall everything went well we did many things right and somethings need to be improved upon. I felt our flag work was very good. We still need to remember the white flag rules for moving safety vehicles. White flag when they are moving on course and stationary.yellow when they are moving or stopped off course and waving yellow for stopped on course.

Communications on the other hand were generally good but we struggled Friday morning and Saturday afternoon while Sunday was very good. Early on we were missing course checks and struggling providing the proper information to race control. We were not being complete with our report. We improved steadily but when racing started on Saturday the "Wheels fell off".  This time we were not paying attention to the net and prioritizing our calls properly. Too many situations where calling spin and go's when we have a hot pull going on elsewhere on track. 

We did improve over the weekend on more detailed information on an incident location, what we need on the initial calls. The initial calls were very good all weekend.

I did spend time in Race Control listening and observing and some of our communications issues were caused by stewards asking for more information during critical points at times and sometime by some indecision but we all maintain our professionalism but I my plan is to sit down and talk to a couple of stewards and talk to them about procedures and see what we can do to improve them.

I am also aware of the radio headset issues that plagued us all weekend. I know it was frustrating at times but everyone again maintained their professionalism and made adjustments to overcome the problem. I have talked to Mid-Ohio about the issues and they are working on improving the situation. There should be improvements by SVRA.

We did a captains meeting Friday night and the feedback was very helpful....too bad the weather Saturday night didn't allow us to have one.

If I were to grade our performance over the weekend, I would give it a solid B.

I hope many of you will return soon. We have a busy schedule ahead of us and we can really use your support.  We have an LEC reunion planned SVRA weekend. We are planning on providing dinners Friday and Saturday night of SCCA Pro weekend and hope to prove to Mid-Ohio we are back during AMA Vintage. Our next SCCA club race is the OVR Double Regional July 16-17 and we are expecting around 250-300 cars for that event.

​Also....Mid-Ohio is looking for workers for Dart KArt/WKA June 17-19. This is a pay day weekend. If you would like to help out, please email me at [email protected]

Hope to see you soon!!!!

​Bill