The Observers Stand / December 07, 2019

The Observers Stand 1

The times they are a changing….

The Observers Stand

The End of the Line– 2019 RE Report

Its been fun. No really it has. Despite way more visits to the doctor and hospital than anybody should have in a lifetime these last two years really were fun. My second two years as your Regional Executive brought many highs and many lows. For a low how about despite being the RE I didn’t make it to the track this year once. Nope nary a single day spent enjoying SCCA race cars. No road racing. No solo. No rallycross. In fact thinking back I only remember getting to Mid-Ohio once back in 2018. Its been that kind of past few years for me. I can only hope the future treats me a little better. Now I did get a chance to go to one race this year and that was the Daytona 500 as a guest of Hendrick Motorsports and that was very cool. I watched both Gander RV Duels sitting on Jimmie Johnson’s and Alex Bowman’s pit boxes with Mr. Hendrick. Pretty much a once in a lifetime experience. I got to watch the NASCAR Xfinity Series race from the France Suite–the owners of Daytona and NASCAR with Dale Earnhardt Jr sitting next to me until his car won the race. The Daytona 500 was pretty cool too from the Ally Bank Suite with all the food and drink you could ever want and a police escort to and from the race itself. Highlights of a lifetime.

Yeah I guess my year wasn’t so bad after all. Despite my best efforts I fell short of my goals for a variety of reasons. None of them matter now. What OVR needs most is for more people to step forward and help. We’ve gotten excellent efforts from so many new people but we need more. If you want this club to continue at the levels we’ve had new people need to step forward and take part. There are so many things you can do to help. I hope you’ll consider spending some of your spare time and energy to keep us great. So my time is up and I hope you’ll welcome Suzy Hardesty as warmly to the RE position as you did for me. I’ll try and create some content as a temporary editor of this new online venture.

Thank you OVR!

Dave Brown

You have no doubt noticed its been a long while since an edition of The Observers Stand was published. We’ve asked and begged for someone to help resurrect our region publication to no avail. It takes an enormous amount of work to put out even one issue of the magazine. The past editors are to be commended for their extremely hard work in putting out countless issues. For quite a while now the OVR Board of Directors has talked about trying a newsletter and this will be the first edition of our email based newsletter. My hope is to be able to send out shorter newsletters in a more frequent manner to communicate to the membership. For even more timely communication see our Facebook page, website and be sure to check out the OVR Solo Facebook group as well as the OVR Rallycross Facebook page.

For this format to work we will need content. Thats where our membership comes in. Do you have a story to tell about your last event? Did you have an amazing road trip that you think others may enjoy? Do you need help on your car? These are the kinds of content I’d like to publish for you. I’ve agreed to work at this for a short while to get it up and running. Hopefully with a more manageable format someone will step up and take the reigns as its really not hard to put this together with the free tools on mail chimp and other email building sites.

To submit content please email sccamail@mail.com.

OVR Awards Banquet
January 11, 2020 5:30pm

LaScala
4199 W Dublin Granville Rd
Dublin, OH 43017

click here to register

Registration closes January 2nd!

Message from your 2020 Regional Executive, Suzy Hardesty

Sports car fans! 2020 is a perfect year for you to continue pursuing your love of all things “sports car” and to explore new opportunities with sports cars. As always, our Board meeting, 7:30 the 2nd Wed of every month, is open to the public and will be at the Rusty Bucket in Gahanna. Then we start our year with a look back at 2019: the Banquet on Jan 11 at La Scala!

One of my goals as your RE, as I’ve already shared with the Board, is to encourage cross-subgroup participation. I would love to see Road Racers at a RallyCross and Autocrossers at a Track Event. We will do our best to avoid scheduling multiple events on the same day so that our members can support each other.

I challenge each OVR member to do 2 things to help our club:

1. Attend 1 event outside of your normal schedule.

2. Bring 1 non-OVR member to an event – a coworker, a neighbor, a friend of your child…

OVR Membership

Membership totals:

Family 230
Regular 380
Life 19
Total Members 629

Did you know SCCA has a membership referral program?

OVR will host 3 events at Mid-Ohio next year
July 17-19
September 5-6
October 17-18
Mark your calendars NOW!

Thanks to your input and support OVR will host 2 Track Events (formerly PDX) next year at Mid-Ohio
September 4
October 16
Race (test) groups for many closed wheel classes available

OVR SCCA Solo would like to welcome two new faces to the Solo program. Alex Speight and Jeff Marjarian are stepping down from their Solo Chair positions and handing off the reigns to Randy Tackett and Dan “I Like Go Karts” Michael for the 2020 season. OVR Solo will running all events at National Trail Raceway this season. Be on the lookout for updates in both our forums and our Facebook page and group. The OVR Solo program is also in need of up to date helmets for our loaner pool. If you have any SA2010 or newer helmets that you would like to donate, please contact us at ovrsolo@gmail.com.

Solo schedule pending. Please see the Ohio Valley Region website for details when available.

OVR Rally Cross state of the union

2019 was the year that almost wasn’t. For almost every event we had rain issues, which caused re-scheduled events. This year Orion is taking a break from Co-Chairing the program. This was planned and he will be back. We partnered with the NEOhio region for their first ever rallycross. The event was very fun and there was a good turnout. Another highlight of the year was hosting the largest turnout to a National Tour event. Our event brought in almost as many competitors as the other two combined.

2019 season trophies

Due to the shortened season (rain) and minimum qualifications needing to be met. Not every class had a trophy awarded.

The following people will be receiving awards that the OVR Awards Banquet on January 11^th at La Scala. Please register on motorsportreg.com by January 2^nd.

Stock All – First place – Duane Simons

Second place – Trever Taylor

Modified All – First place – Jeremie Snyder

Stock Front – First place – Scott Bitzer

Prepared Front – First place – Alex Ashbaugh

Modified Front – First place – William Ehrman

Stock Rear – First Place – John Voegeli

Modified Rear – First Place – Evan Arthur

Driver of the Year – Pete Remner

2020 Brings new a new Co-Chairman Sidney Scott. Who will be working with John England to keep the Rally Cross program heading in the right direction.

We are hoping to bring the National tour back to OHIO. We are sending a proposal to The SCCA Rally Cross board for consideration. We are also working on updating equipment with a goal of having live timing.

John England – jengland788@gmail.com

Sidney Scott – spdrcr.ss@gmail.com

Rallycross schedule pending. Please see the Ohio Valley Region website for details when available.