I am the guy leading the USAC analysis committee at Cumming, so I provide first person testimony, with no opinion or heresay...
One thing that must be said about the North GA Cumming track is that the membership is very passionate about doing the best thing for the club's continued existence given the situation of having 2 R3 clubs go with USAC. Cumming is one of the nicest QM tracks being on fairgrounds property with electricity, grandstands, lots of bathrooms, pavement, right in the city, and a whole bunch of racing families that will go out of their way to make sure visitors are welcomed.
If you want a great racing experience for your team, then come on down... click here for the schedule
http://www.ngqma.com/schedule.htmThis situation is not very different from when the Metro club got their track only 45 minutes away from Cumming, car counts immediately went down as some racers chose to join Metro. To race both tracks consistently would mean 35 consecutive weeks of racing, which is a lot for most teams, so most teams choose to stay at one track and race the other 2-3 times per season.
The loss of car counts due to the region split puts the track in jeopardy, as the fairgrounds management cannot continue to lose revenue due to reduced car counts.
So the $64 question is 'what should Cumming do to keep the car counts up?' USAC or QMA? The fact of the matter is that there is no obvious answer to that. There has been tremendous vibrant debate at the club meetings, all driven by our passion to do what's best for the club's car counts on regional/district races. We just don't all agree on what is 'best'.
The driving factor in the 2010 decision is the schedule, as the fairgrounds tells us what dates we are given to race on, since they rent the fairgrounds out for other events during the year.
Unfortunately for 2010 our dates are immovable, and 7 of those dates conflict with USAC National and/or District events. Were NGQMA to go with USAC charter, on those 7 dates we would have even fewer cars, since some of our members would be racing the national/district events. Cumming has also picked up a 3rd Region 3 race, and a states race, which will help 2010 car counts.
We continue to explore solutions to insure car counts don't go down, such as
a. dual chartering
b. economic recovery and cost reduction
c. hoping harder
So for 2010 Cumming will stay with QMA, with continued energy invested to find the best solution for the club's future health going into 2011 and beyond.
We have a great class of Jr Novices coming in with heavily leaded right feet, so it is up to us grown-ups to make the best choices... for their sake.
All fact-based suggestions are welcome.
Mark Mackie
Training Director, Webmaster
Owner, Mackie Bros Racing
markmackie@rocketmail.com