West Coast Racing

[CCS]

First,  CCS never asked for conflicting dates at any CA facility, as the "step-child", we were "given what was left. (For 4 years I asked for March or April dates at Buttonwillow and the only ones open were July and November (and in 2003 they took November away.) Race organizations are creatures of habit, so looking at your last years schedule gives you a good idea were the next years is going to be and when. We were forced to pick our California dates out of what was left, not what worked for CCS. (You think we chose to race on Easter? That was WSIR's choice for us this year.) Our FIR schedule for 2005 was affected by Firebird scheduling track days before race days this season. Never mind we've been running 4-8 races a year there since 1984. March 6th was the first open weekend that didn't conflict with ASMA or have a track day scheduled on one of the other courses.

[CCS]

Second, CCS invested $270,000 over 4 years trying to get things going there in California. Payroll at a CCS is probably double what it is for a non-profit club, if that club pays anyone at all. Add that to the fact CCS carries excess medical insurance (most "clubs" don't provide medical) and a minimum of 5 million in liability at all facilities and you can easily see why our overhead is higher. These are things that mandatory because we are owned by a huge corporation, it is the cross we bear.  

We did not pull out of California on a whim, when we started we presented CCE with a five year plan for the Pacific region, and at the end of four years of struggling with poor available dates, less than average turnouts and rental fees/contracts that helped make it impossible to even break even we-I was forced to admit to Clear Channel that it wasn't going to work.

I could go into all the details about the tracks and the changes in their contracts that hurt us, I could go on and on about how much medical insurance cost us or I could go on about the money spent on personnel but the fact will remain that an average of 404 entries will not pay the bills at tracks like Buttonwillow and Thunderhill.

[CCS]

Third, we did advertise those events and it helped, but not enough. We did the best we could do with the budget we had, our biggest problem was effective distribution, and no matter who we hooked up with to help, it never seemed to get done completely. We also placed ads in mags like City Bike to try to reach more people but the results speak for themselves.

The reality is when your best event in California loses money, lots of money, and you have cut your controlable expenses to the minimum to still put on a safe event, there is no way to justify continuing the punishment.



If by chance Ray is serious, I just notified Carrie Hester at Buttonwillow to release our July and November 2005 dates, so there are at least two dates open there.


On the release of our 2005 schedule, CCE does not like to release schedules until it has contracts in hand, and since 99% of road race facilitites will not give multi-year contracts, we end up in the catch-22 of asking for dates every July, rearranging them in October and November and not getting to release them until December. No excuses, just an explaination.

[CCS]

Just one quick bit on the marketing...when you have a budget, say $100,000 to market 70 events in 23-28 locations, it doesn't go very far. Add in there that your marketing person gets paid out of the same fund (the money to pay them has to come from somewhere) and you end up with maybe $1000 per race for marketing. That sounds pretty good until you figure that print ads cost $1,000 to $1,800 a page in one magazine or radio ads cost $200-$500 per slot and it takes an average of six impressions from one station for the message to sink in and it soon becomes a nightmare to figure out how to make that money work best for you. That is why the money is "pooled" and multiple events are advertised together, while it stretches the money, it dilutes the message...catch-22 again.

If some one has a better answer, I'd love to hear it.

By the way, Daytona in it's new configuration, 1:42 for Superbikes and 1:44 for Supersports seems to be the "norm" for day one from what I've seen. Gearing is really different now with the tighter infield, so stock up different ratios for March.

[Roger@ASMA]

I can definitely say that advertising costs vs income have a huge impact on whether or not an event is profitable. We run sports cars and drag racing at ASR and I lost my butt on a bunch of drag races this year because of advertising costs and bad weather.

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

     Kevin, I always appreciate your responses here, thanks (I realize it's not a requirement for you  :) ).

     The whole marketing thing has been beat so far into the ground over the last couple years that it's now dirt. I understand the limitation with budget constraints in advertising, that truely is a handicap. That idea that was tossed around by Tiffeney about distributing literature and posters thru us was attacked by racers like a starving pirrahna in a puddle. There are many of us that would gladly go around to motorcycle shops and hangouts for free and get this advertising displayed. It may not bring in masses of spectators but I bet the $5000 for advertising the 5 Blackhawk Farms events would sure put alot of well placed posters in the faces of those who may possibly come and spectate or get involved themselves. I had an idea before of having inexpensive business cards made with event info, the CCS contact number, and a basic map on the back to the closest track. Nothing fancy, just something you put along with the poster that the curious can put in their wallet. Then they stumble onto it occasionally and it's like continued advertising in their pocket, plus contact info and race dates. Even though I like flyers also, I feel they are probably more apt to being discarded or lost too often, but still an inexpensive way to get the word out at motorcycle related facilities. For example here in the immediate county Blackhawk Farms is located in, the population is about a 1/4 million, with a lot of motorcyclists.

     This is just my opinion, but I think that was a really good idea that shouldn't be too expensive. :)

[Bad_Matt]

Kevin,

Thank you for your response. I guess i just would think that a more subtle change would have worked too.  Are you considering opening up the Buttonwillow dates as CCS south west events or opening them to Ray as the organizer?  I guess that wass not to clear to me?  

I will make an effort to put together the riders for the date if in fact it is a CCS run race.  How many race entries do you require?

[RAY_HYMER]

I think it was awesome for Kevin to reply.  For those of you that want CCS to respond to our concerns, here is a direct response from them.  :)

I think between myself, Matt, Steve, my son, Q Nealy, Eric Pelley, Harden, Herd, Joe Jackson, Pollard, and Harris, we could have at least 70 entries.  I don't know if Catching or Long are going to race CCS this year, but if they are, there is a bunch more race entries.  There are many more racers that would show up, too, these were just some that came to mind.  
The July Buttonwillow race had about 210 entries on an AMA conflicting weekend, and as a comparison, the May race at Firebird (SW only) only had about 180, so there is a good chance, with a little effort, to get over 300.  Add in if you can get USGPRU and the sidecars to participate, plus the LP track day and New Rider School, it seems VERY feasable to get enough participation to make the race weekend work.  You could even make it a twin sprint weekend without the GT races!  For those that complain about practice, Buttonwillow raceway runs their own track day the day before.  It's open track all day long!   :D

Hey, here's a thought!  I didn't see a Formula USA race weekend scheduled out here.  How about at Buttonwillow that same weekend?   ::)

Kevin: PLEASE let us know what you need us to do for you, and I am sure that you will be surprised how much help you would get!  
    

[Eric Kelcher]

Not trying to put words in Kevin's mouth. Just an idea if you are willing to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak.

If you think it can be done then CCS may sanction the event run by outside promoters (ie like ASMA, LRRS or CCS florida).

Kevin said he is relasing the dates held for CCS at Buttonwillow so if you call tomorrow you may be able to get those dates to run races there. Catch is the promoter would have the up and the down side of it, get enough racers you make money not enough you have to cover the loss. As a santioned promoter event you can run extra classes and only have to run some (I know the SS classes but unsure which others) so you can tailor the event to fit the riders in that area.

[Super Dave]

Posters suck.

Spend all you want, but I haven't seen many of them actually get into the right hands...but the reality is that the right eyes have to see them.

Self promotion of racers to potential spectators is the only answer.

If you haven't put out press release to your sponsors or to anyone that you know...

What are you really doing?  What do you have to sell?  Might as well invite people to watch a track day.

Thanks for the input, Kevin.  I know about the secondary coverage, but I forgot to mention it here.

[garthed]

I stopped racing CCS last year. In 2003 I raced almost if not all of the SW and Pacific. I to live in Northern CA and many of the racers I raced with in the CCS no matter what location where from Northern CA. Once CCS decided to pull out of Thunderhill in 2004 that was it for me. With out even one local track it made no since to race in CCS any longer. I'm not the biggest AFM fan; I always tried to get afmer to race in CCS but CCS made it harder and harder by conflicting dates with AMA and AFM races. For CCS to have gained a foot hold on Nor cal they should have made every effort to not schedule races at the same time as other event while CCS was still trying to gain there customer base. That's why T hill was never profitable for CCS. The races are here in NorCal to race but just not on the weekends that CCS scheduled because AFM would be running at some other track on the same weekend. So AFMer that might have come and raced a CCS race never did because of points or loyalty to AFM. I know a lot of AFMer that are fed up with the 80 plus grids and would welcome another organization up here. It's very frustrating to me because CCS had such a HUGE potential to be successful but fail miserably. So now like everyone else in Nor Cal I'm stuck to racing with 80 other rider going into turn one because there is know alternative now.

If you guys can get something going at Buttonwillow or need help organizing I would be happy to help, as long as it does not conflict with another race.

[RAY_HYMER]

I have made my offer and suggestions, but I have not heard from Kevin about this.  I don't want to be a "sanctioned" event.  If I want to spend the time and money organizing a race organization, why would I need CCS involvement?  My offer is to help CCS get a race on their schedule for Buttonwillow, so they can hopefully find some way to keep the Cali racers in their system.  I have heard from other racers that would like to help, but in the end it has to be CCS that puts their foot forward to authorize us to get the Buttonwillow race approved.  As the season approaches, I will have less and less time to get this done, so hopefully something happens soon!