CCS WHAT THE ??????

[ahastings]

I'm with you gsxr racer mike. I raced one season as an amateur and won a lot of contingency and purse money. Now I am in my second year as an expert and riding faster than before and I don't get squat. It is very discouraging . The current system where am and experts make the same amount of contingency is wrong. It encouarages sandbagging like the incident here. I have seen racers get bumped in one org. and switch to another to stay am or novice with WERA. Sure the factory contingencies are only for experts , but unless you are at the AMA privateer type speed you won't see much of that. Here is the definition of amatuer from the Cambridge dictionary. Note #2.

Definition
amateur   [Show phonetics]
adjective
1 taking part in an activity for pleasure, not as a job:
an amateur astronomer/boxer/historian
He was an amateur singer until the age of 40, when he turned professional.
Compare professional at profession.

2 relating to an activity, especially a sport, where the people taking part do not receive money:
amateur athletics

[grich575]

I don't know what kind of pay outs ya'll are referring to as being equal between Ex and Am. In the FL CCS division the only thing Amateurs get is product contingency. No money. And the contingency cert.. that are given to Amateurs are worth much less than the Experts get.

With the technology that is available it should be pretty easy to track riders performances. After one licensed amateur year with an average finish in the top five, the next license should be expert - no questions. If the rider is only running a few races per year, well, the next year they can run those few races as an expert. For those riders switching back and for between series, all results should count towards their average. The current system of having to score a set number of points is easily bypassed by only racing a couple of races per weekend and then stopping when the points get close to the cutoff and then switching to another series. If a rider wants the contingency, they would have to finish in the top five and this would drive up their average making them ineligible for Amateur the following year.

But just like everything in life - NO MATTER WHAT - YOU CAN NEVER MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY!!!

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

     I'm guessing that I have raced at something like 100 events since I started in '96, I know it's over 10,000 miles on the track (according to the odometers on my 3 race bikes). Over all that time I estimate I have recieved enough contingency/purse money to MAYBE pay for 1 event. The majority of that money came from Suzuki as manufacturer purse money all in 1 year when I had several top 5 finishes at those selected events on a new enough bike to qualify for the money. Other contingency has been scattered across the years and never amounted to anything substantial, almost all of that was as a top 5 Amateur (mostly tire contingency).

      I'm in a position that I can get by doing it on my own, but it still hurts financially. Since I have not attempted to run up front again over the last few years I decided that I wouldn't run any stickers on my bike at all. The game has certainly changed since I did well in the late 90's, now people dump unbelievable amounts of money into tires till they go broke and have to quit. What that does is raise the bar for the devoted long term racers to a level that is financially hard to continually compete at. That mentality continually gets reinvigerated by the new guys who see the current fast guys doing it. Those select few who can constantly buy fresh tires reap the rewards of tire contingency, while the rest of the racers just end up with fried tires. It's kind of a vicious circle, by new tires constantly and you get to run up front if you have the ability, don't constantly buy the new tires and you run just outside of the contingency and end up with astronomical tire bills that you front all on your own.

     Even if everyone somehow could purchase new tires for a particular race, and everyone ran the exact same pace, there are only a handfull who will get contingency money up at the front. As I said before, I look around at the riders meetings and see so many new faces every year, but not very many veteran racers, that screams that there apparently is a problem! Racers should be rewarded with incentives for staying in the sport as an Expert, not ignored as an 'also ran'. Transfering contingency from the Amateur classes to deepen the payouts in the Expert ranks would help to ease the burden for the Expert racers who are going that much faster than those at the learning level.

     I was reluctent to even comment on this topic here in this thread after thinking about the legendary Yellow or White YPSB thread that wouldn't die. :-/

[xseal]

In the end, this is an internal thing. You have to live w/ yourself. I had some good races as an amateur last year, finished 3d in MA F40 in my first year racing making only 1/2 the races (yeah, ... day job).  Got bumped this year, my only original objective was to get better and become a competent expert.  The contingency is not an end, just a nice surprise when it comes.

There are guys that did better than me last year that (somehow?) stayed amateurs. I hope they enjoy the couple hundred $$ they get from Pirelli/Dunlop over the course of a year, but you can't help but respect those guys a little less than guys like ARnie, that move up and try to keep up w/ the big boys.

[xseal]

oh yeah, the guys I really respect are the ones that move up fast so they can collect enough expert points to qualify for an AMA race.  That is cool, giving up winning amateur races to be on the same track as the pros.  Who cares if you get lapped, you're riding w/ Hayden/Hacking/etc.  

My hat's off to those guys.

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

     There are certain variables which may prohibit you from racing Pro, as I found out. In my 1st year as an Expert back in '98 I qualified to race as an AMA Pro, but I didn't go that route for an unfortunate reason, insurance. The company my work uses for health insurance will not cover any injuries incurred during 'Pro' racing, they don't care if it's only recreational and not your career. Someone I work with dirt track and ice races motorcycles and is quite good at it, he races not only the Expert classes but also the Pro classes. A couple years ago he went down during an ice race and got some injuries from the studs in his tires that required him to go to an immediate care facility. He made the mistake of saying how he did it to the doctor which resulted in the insurance company trying to deny coverage. The insurance company dug into it and found out that it was a Pro event so they said he wouldn't be covered. Luckily he wasn't in a Pro class when it happened so he wasn't doing anything deceptive and he told them that. They actually contacted the race organization and found out the exact class he was running when he went down, which was indeed not Pro, so he was covered.

     This is the major reason I never attempted going Pro when I use to run up front as an Expert. I have had people argue with me that the insurance companies can't deny coverage for a recreational activity, yet I saw 1st hand that they can and do.

[OmniGLH]

There are certain variables which may prohibit you from racing Pro, as I found out. In my 1st year as an Expert back in '98 I qualified to race as an AMA Pro, but I didn't go that route for an unfortunate reason, insurance. The company my work uses for health insurance will not cover any injuries incurred during 'Pro' racing, they don't care if it's only recreational and not your career. Someone I work with dirt track and ice races motorcycles and is quite good at it, he races not only the Expert classes but also the Pro classes. A couple years ago he went down during an ice race and got some injuries from the studs in his tires that required him to go to an immediate care facility. He made the mistake of saying how he did it to the doctor which resulted in the insurance company trying to deny coverage. The insurance company dug into it and found out that it was a Pro event so they said he wouldn't be covered. Luckily he wasn't in a Pro class when it happened so he wasn't doing anything deceptive and he told them that. They actually contacted the race organization and found out the exact class he was running when he went down, which was indeed not Pro, so he was covered.

     This is the major reason I never attempted going Pro when I use to run up front as an Expert. I have had people argue with me that the insurance companies can't deny coverage for a recreational activity, yet I saw 1st hand that they can and do.

"Pro" is short for "professional"... and there is a difference between doing something "recreationally" and doing something "professionally."  That is where the insurance companies draw the line.

[xseal]

I'm not dinging the experts that don't do it, I probably won't (can't).  Just saying, that as compared with being a "amateur national champion," I think simply making an AMA grid is far more impressive.  My hat off to them.

[ahastings]

I'm not dinging the experts that don't do it, I probably won't (can't).  Just saying, that as compared with being a "amateur national champion," I think simply making an AMA grid is far more impressive.  My hat off to them.

Yes, but you will win more money/contingency being an amateur national champion than you will just making an AMA grid. Ironic isn't it.

[hi-side_racing]

Wasn't this thread about one specific individual that should be running as an expert ?

pretty soon its going to morph into a "have you seen the latest Star Wars movie"  ;D

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

Wasn't this thread about one specific individual that should be running as an expert ?

pretty soon its going to morph into a "have you seen the latest Star Wars movie"  ;D

     Isn't that supposed to be coming out in a few weeks? I heard some guy from South America has a copy of it already, he apparently got it by posing as someone else. ;) :P