New Club Sprint Rules

[djr81]

as usual stupid australian farken law making regulation making weeners take the fun out of anything and everything they can. I want a country with far fewer laws and more leinient enforcement of them.

That would be Kiwi land then. Sad, but true.

As for the death of track days I can't see them becoming less popular. Only two things loom that may take them out:

1. Cost.

2. Big accidents.

The first is obvious the second, well that is pretty obvious too, really. In this day & age it comes down to "has everything possible been done" to remove the chance of injury or death. So how defensible is 200+km/h in a non roll caged car?

Edited June 7, 2007 by djr81

[dodgybrooks]

i have the perfect solution. i'm going to move to japan. they have a shed load more tracks. better surfaces. better facilites. cars are plentiful, track days are plentiful. the drivers at these days respect each other and wont hold you up for 3/4 of a lap driving down the middle, then stand on the loud pedal down the straight leaving you with no option other than a banzai move, or another ruined lap.

as usual stupid australian farken law making regulation making weeners take the fun out of anything and everything they can. I want a country with far fewer laws and more leinient enforcement of them.

There might be a few more tracks here Baron, but most of them are only short courses. Real courses like Fuji, Suzuka, Motegi, Okayama cost a shit tin to get on, and 99% of weekends are booked with GT500 tests, Porsche cup races, etc. so you're taking days off work to get there. And the drivers might have more respect but they are still retarded, thinking that if they are not holding you up down the straights then they are not holding you up at all. It ain't all rosy.

Although the amount of drift parks and drift events should be enough to get you over here!!

[Beer Baron]

yeah I know. you're right, it's not all beer and skittles. even at some drift events I've been to I've seen people holding people up just tootling around like they were on a sunday drive, and it's even harder to pass someone on a drift course if they are not playing ball. but I still reckon it's an improvement on aus. and at least they are far more lax with all the freaking red tape.

[dodgybrooks]

Yea the rules and regulations are definitely not stifling anyone. And stewards never get in the way, because there aren't any!

[Roy]

I tend to disagree Troy. When I first started doing these day in '04 the number of entrants was around the 50 car mark since then these days have about 70-80 cars in attendance and instead of 5 group there are around 7. Setting aside silly rule changes and the like I can see these club days lasting a lot longer than 3 years.

This is the most obvious thing that entrants see. Its getting more difficult to run these events. I help (grunt level) with running some rallies and this year CAMS introduced OHS related requirements. Basically every volunteer/entrant is seen as an employee, and the organisers are therefore burdened with the same responsibilities as your employer has for you in the workplace. Now its a training thing, and infrastructure.

Motorsport is dangerous...so there have been a few old school folk scared off by this (warranted or not). So you have ever inreasing expense of facilities, insurances and legislation making it harder to run these days. You have owners of cars scared to drive the perfectly safe weekend club car on the street....i could go on.

Its just a general trend, the interest may be there, but the 50-65yr old crowd who volunteer their time and experience so we can have fun are moving on, and its hard to find younger ppl to fill their void. But yeh, fark it. Cars suck anyway

[Ant97GTR]

This is the most obvious thing that entrants see. Its getting more difficult to run these events. I help (grunt level) with running some rallies and this year CAMS introduced OHS related requirements. Basically every volunteer/entrant is seen as an employee, and the organisers are therefore burdened with the same responsibilities as your employer has for you in the workplace. Now its a training thing, and infrastructure.

Motorsport is dangerous...so there have been a few old school folk scared off by this (warranted or not). So you have ever inreasing expense of facilities, insurances and legislation making it harder to run these days. You have owners of cars scared to drive the perfectly safe weekend club car on the street....i could go on.

Its just a general trend, the interest may be there, but the 50-65yr old crowd who volunteer their time and experience so we can have fun are moving on, and its hard to find younger ppl to fill their void. But yeh, fark it. Cars suck anyway

Sorry mate I thought you were referring to entrant numbers. You know the industry I work in and in the last 10 years I have seen things drastically change in regard to OHS....some good some bad. Personally I think its a shame that Australia seems to be following the US lead of lack of personal responsibility. We all know that motorsport is dangerous and if you consider that risk to be acceptable and decide to participate, so be it.

Anyway at the end of the day if these new rules etc start turning people away I think it will be a real shame but it is also upto the younger generation to step up and start to replace the void left by the errr more experienced folk

[260DET]

At Morgan Park Supersprints in Q the cars line up on the track and are flagged away in pairs. At QR there are hardly any CAMS sprint events anymore, QR run AASA 'sprints' and get big numbers too, lots of good street cars that otherwise would not be seen.