The Observers Stand

Awards Banquet Report

By Suzy Hardesty

The Annual OVR Banquet in January saw lovely weather for a change. Held between the monthly Board meeting and the annual convention on a lovely Saturday evening as LaScala in Columbus, we had over 100 members present to celebrate another successful year. In addition to our yearly awards, delicious food, and hours of bench racing, the banquet had a few surprises.

Pictured here is a special award created for Dan Hodge by several grateful Spec Miata drivers. The “5 minute” award came about after a miscommunication last summer at OVR’s Majors weekend at Mid-Ohio. A group of front-runners were not on grid yet by the 5-minute warning so Dan Hodge, as Steward, put a hold on the race, hopped in the golf cart, and sped up to the upper paddock. As soon as he was in shouting distance of the group, he held up the 5-minute hand and encouraged them to get a move on to grid.

This probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but the Rally Cross contingent couldn’t leave a perfectly working flashlight alone. Perhaps they were testing it’s ability to survive a jolt? Perhaps they wanted to make some performance modifications? It looks like this flashlight will have to go home in parts instead.

2020 National Convention Reports

Coming right on the heels of the awards banquet several of us traveled to Las Vegas for the 2020 SCCA National Convention. This year OVR sent several first timers and part of the fun is getting to see how overwhelmed they tend to be. This years crop handled it easily! I flew out via JFK airport in NY and while I saved the club some coin this made my travel days way too long. I arrived and picked up my rental car– a 2019 Mustang GT which was fun other than the fact that the tires had no grip in the cool temperatures and while it made the right noises it was probably not the best rental for the weather.

Having been to several conventions I focused this time on sessions that would help with making this newsletter better. I found that many regions have ditched printed magazines and are going with digital publications. I also learned that despite not really paying attention in Journalism class back in 1983 I do have the skills to put out a digital format of The Observers Stand. We had great presentations from Hagerty which is a new partner with the SCCA and our own Jack Baruth presented an excellent session early on Leveraging Content Across Digital. As I get more familiar with the tools of our current email publisher (Mailchimp) I hope to be able to present a more polished product. Grassroots Motorsports publisher Tim Suddard had a fantastic presentation on building a magazine and so much was applicable to what I’m trying to do here.

The big not so good news was Pro Racing losing another large chunk of money last year approaching $750,000 and it was disheartening to see the members having to fight to get them to admit that. Other big topics were the meme war on the SCCA Members Facebook page. Times they are a-changing.

Speaking of time I spent a considerable amount of time with the fine folks from Vet Motorsports and our own Pete Cline is CEO. The SCCA Foundation has partnered with them and they are making a difference for our veterans. Please consider a donation or at the very least check out their website and Facebook page.

The Convention wrapped up with the Hall of Fame Banquet and induction ceremonies. It was a great time and it was about that time I started feeling a little under the weather. The flu bug bit me hard not too long after that and it was a VERY big challenge to make my 6:00am flight back thru JFK… By that time I was quite sick and traveling was not what I wanted to do. Fortunately I slept all the way back to NY and then from NY to Columbus. Should I ever go back to a convention I hope to not deal with that again. I now have a new regime of lots (more) Purell and Clorox wipes for every doorknob and light switch and every possible spot on a plane to not have to deal with that ever again. Many thanks to the BOD for the opportunity to represent OVR at the Convention!

By Dan Michael

The 2020 SCCA Convention was a great experience that will be helpful in my first year as Solo Chair.  From the sessions to the socializers, I had a blast and learned a lot.  My favorite session was definitely Jack Baruth’s session about how social media is a necessary tool in which each region should be utilizing.  It showed me how our region should really look into getting a social presence on not only Facebook but also Instagram and Twitter.  We can use these outlets to bring in more people and grow our memberships.

The socializers were a lot of fun and gave me a chance to get to know other regions.  The Kansas City region told me about how they have switched all of their registration over to computer based and did away with paper forms for walk ups.  This was great to hear since we are looking into doing the same thing and hearing how a region successfully accomplished that made me very optimistic about our work.  I also got the chance to meet with Motorsport Reg and Proton timing which will help us as we are transitioning out timing software over from Axeware.

The convention was truly an excellent time and I want to thank the Ohio Valley Region for allowing me to attend.  It was great meeting people from all over and learning things to help with my first season as chair.

By Suzy Hardesty

Thank you to OVR members for letting me be one of your representatives at the SCCA Annual Convention. I learned many things as a first-year attendee and as your new RE. I was able to compare our region to others in the club. I learned about marketing and Road Rally.  Be sure to look for changes relating to those areas in the coming years. Finally, I gained many networking connections to help us in all areas of our region and it’s continued development.

There are times when I can be nostalgic about the SCCA because I’ve been a member since 1987. I have seen a lot of changes in the club over the years. Being at the convention showed me that our club will continue to evolve. I learned that in several areas, OVR is ahead of other regions in how we are adapting to the latest changes. I also learned some great strategies to help us evolve moving forward. I felt a renewed sense of patience that changes will invariably happen over time and that the core value of SCCA – a family of car enthusiasts – will remain.

I left the Convention more enthusiastic than ever to do my part as your RE to help shepherd OVR.

One thing that I want to take the opportunity to mention is how inspired I was by the enthusiasm shown by our youngest delegate to the convention. Dan Michael attended representing the Autocross side of our region. By the end of the final awards dinner, he was just as excited as the first early morning breakfast. Here is a photo from the closing banquet to prove it.

By Alan Garside

This was a different year for me as I was a presenter for Road Race Tech.  The setup of the convention does not change much for the most part but this year they added a lot more meetings on Thursday and an Autocross day on Sunday. My presentation went well. We had a lot of input from the other Scrutineers in the group. There were a few new scrutineers in the group that got together with me after to ask questions. Also had some nice feedback on the new Annual inspection form that has been redesigned by a few of scrutineers with the help of Rick Harris, the Road Race Technical Manager for the SCCA.

Saturday morning started early with a 7:00 am meeting with MSR to go over some issues we had with our races last year. This was a very good meeting as we went over the new set up that is going to be released this year.  The way we can set up the registration form that is on MSR to make it easier for everyone. They were able to find and fix the problem that was causing an issue with our set up in MSR. We have them looking into sending someone from MSR to our spring training in Fort Wayne on March 7, 2020.  A couple of the other presentations that had a lot of good information were How the FIA Governs and Officiates, SEDIV Endurance Series, Car Racing A Family Journey or Professional Career, On-Board Fire/Cooling Systems, New Frontal Head Restraint Devices, and Road Racing Town Hall.

I would like to thank Ohio Valley Region for sending me to the convention this year. I got a lot of useful information out of the convention that I can use for setup and during our events. Anyone that is going to the spring training in Fort Wayne, I will be doing the same presentation there as I did at the convention. It would be great to have some new faces and outlook in the discussion that goes with the presentation. Thank you again for your support of sending me to the convention this year.

The convention this year was very busy for me. I arrived a day early to do National RallyCross meeting. We had about 13 hours of meetings before the convention started. We were busy going over rules to working on new rules for a new class of side by side UTV’s that should be introduced in the near future. We also chose the club’s and Venues for the RallyCross National Tours for this season. OVR was a backup for the Atlanta Event in the case that they could not get everything together. And it so happened that the National Tour is coming back to Ohio after some scheduling issues. So June 26-28 the Great Lakes National Tour will be at Ross County Fair Grounds in Chillicothe.