Club Manager’s Notes – January 2024
January 1, 2024
Vice President’s Corner
January 1, 2024
Thanks to the magic of our digital newsletter and our hard-working editor, I get a second opportunity to wish everyone a happy and healthy Christmas and New Year!
2023 was an eventful year for our club. I think our race season was marvelously successful. We had few incidents, plenty of close competition, a great crop of rookies, and full corner stations. I hope we can look forward to 2024 being just as exciting. Our paddock repaving is on schedule, the re-contoured runoff area in turn 2 should help keep cars off the fence and we have a new facilities manager to keep everything running smoothly.
This is a great segue into the virtue and the necessity of volunteerism. The loss of Annie, Jerry S., and Jerry P. is devastating, not just on a personal level, but in the loss of their contributions to our success.
Although Jerry Pintar was a paid worker, I include him because of his tireless advocacy for our sub club. That wasn’t part of his job description!
Everything that must happen before a race weekend event starts is brought to you by volunteers. They run the driver’s school, keep the track in amazing condition (a herculean feat!), open the Paddock Shoppe and put on an awards banquet despite significant health issues, and deal with the rules and regulations that seem to be in place to prevent our success. Volunteers fill the corner stations so that we may have a safer place to race. They make sure membership and registration is up to date. They check our cars and safety equipment. They monitor the action and our behavior during the actual races. They sit up in their room timing us so we can measure our own success. They run the “business” part of racing. They make sure trophies are ready to be given out when racing is done. They make our Vintage race a worthwhile destination for a racer with a “treasure” to share with us. They represent us at the parent club.
On a given race weekend, we have about 90 entrants. Eighty of us owe a debt of gratitude to the other ten! Please consider becoming one of the ten.
I will soon post a sign-up sheet to man the booth at Autorama. It will be held March 1, 2 and 3 this year. If you aren’t too busy making your car way faster than last year, come spend some time at Cobo!
Brian Murphy