Team Autocross for 2008 Summer Series

[Jamie]

Team Autocross had a fantastic debut during the 2007 Summer Series. At the upcoming Chief's meeting on Saturday, Dec 10th, we'll be discussing it's future. I would like to see it continue and be officially recognized with the club budgeting money for year-end trophies. I have heard great feedback about Hank Derr's efforts and would like to ask the membership to write some of those comments down. Here some questions to get you started but, please share anything you wish! I will share your feedback at the Chief's meeting.


Do you wish to have Team Autocross continue for the 2008 Summer Series?
Do you think there should be year-end trophies award to the top 1/3 team members (same award ratio as for classes)?
Would you be willing to contribute $5 per team member to offset the club's trophy cost?
What was good about Team Autocross?
What could be improved about Team Autocross?


Thanks,

[RAB]

Nice questions Jamie, everyone post comments sooner rather than later, the chiefs meeting is Nov. 10th
-I think the rules and structure of team auto-x have been refined for fair competition.
-I think competitors in team auto-x should indicate their team name in the sponsorship section, I know some teams already do this.

[tronic]

Do you wish to have Team Autocross continue for the 2008 Summer Series?
YES


Do you think there should be year-end trophies award to the top 1/3 team members (same award ratio as for classes)?
NO. How about just 1 for the team? Or trophies for all members of the top team or top 1/3 teams. That's the point, it's a team effort.


Would you be willing to contribute $5 per team member to offset the club's trophy cost?
Personally I don't take this seriously enough to want to contribute more $ to make it happen. I wouldn't boycott it, though.


What was good about Team Autocross?
It's a fun way to add a little extra competition to the events. Any extra excuse for good natured trash-talking is a good thing.


What could be improved about Team Autocross?
I don't want to see this turned into a super-serious rules-laden official effort, personally. Just make it fair to all the types of groups that are participating. Some of us with existing "teams" (like mine, Apex Racing Group) already have a full roster and really aren't interested in changing things just to fulfill a Team Autocross requirement, while other teams have been formed just to partipate in this extra competition and have different ideals.

If there's a year-end award I'd like to see just the best 7 events tallied, as it is for individual year-end awards. Results could be plugged in to the current system rather than Hank or whoever manually doing it (thanks!, BTW). It would be cool if Team Results could be announced/awarded at the end of each event like normal trophy awards.

[Van]

It was fun. I'd do it again.

Couple things. Do we keep same teams? I assume so since we have already preformed teams (generic, awdpirates, lefthand, apexracing).

I am against retroactive points. If you weren't on the team when you got your 990 or whatever then they can't use it when you join the team 3 events later.

If your team didn't exist during events 1-3 then you can't go back and pick the 5 highest point getters who aren't on a team and make one so you can retroactively "win" that event.

Not saying this has been done. I just want to prevent that from happening next year.

Other than that, I thought it added some extra fun to the days events.

Thanks again to Hank for all the extra work put into this.

Van

[LoCore]

I would recommend *not* formalizing the team autocross beyond what Hank and the captains did this season.

That was part of the fun of it, IMO. No, I wouldn't contribute more money, because, no, there shouldn't be trophies.

Let's retain it's original social focus, and not (over)emphasize the competition/results aspect.

[Jamie]

Do you think there should be year-end trophies award to the top 1/3 team members (same award ratio as for classes)?
NO. How about just 1 for the team? Or trophies for all members of the top team or top 1/3 teams. That's the point, it's a team effort.
My apologies, my wording was a bit off.

I meant for the question to read: Should members of the top 1/3 teams receive trophies?

I was trying to emphasize each member of the top 1/3 teams would receive a trophy as opposed to awarding the team with only one trophy.

[hderr]

Thanks to those who have responded to Jamie's note, but
I think she was and I was also, hoping for a few more responses for her
to take to the Chief's meeting about continuing the teams!

Anyone, anyone, ...Bueler?

[hderr]

Couple things. Do we keep same teams? I assume so since we have already preformed teams (generic, awdpirates, lefthand, apexracing).
Van
I think the teams can stay the same, change, do whatever,...


I am against retroactive points. If you weren't on the team when you got your 990 or whatever then they can't use it when you join the team 3 events later.

I agree, and we didn't transfer points if a member moved from one team to another or if a member joined a team after the second event, their previous points did not count. I would suggest a rule change that members not be able to switch teams.

If we do this again, we will have lots of time to get the teams lined up, not like we did this year at the last moment.

[Captain_Solo]

Even though I'll be in a different class next season, I'd personally like to see the class restriction lifted. Everyone said how unfair it would make the competition, when in reality having a class restriction proved to be a huge handicap to my team, while not affecting the others. I realize that the spirit of this team thing is to encourage people to "branch-out," but the current class restrictions effectively negated the presence of a team formed by very enthusiastic individuals...I'm not sure that's within the spirit of the team competition either.

Ok, I'm done with the dead horse now... :)

[Dylans]

First, I thought the team autocross was pretty cool and like most of the rules how they stand.

The only thing I would change, and I think this has been brought up before, is doing GP style points where the winner for the day get 10 points, second gets 8 points and so on. I personally think that would be more interesting than the ending season points pretty much being the sum of every racers points from every race. I also think this would make it so missing one person one day would be less of a handicap than it is now. If you're missing a person you could get third and only be 4 points down (which is made up by two days of winning) rather than 950 points down that is impossible to make up if the other team always has perfect attendence.

[Bob Klingler]

Thanks to those who have responded to Jamie's note, but
I think she was and I was also, hoping for a few more responses for her
to take to the Chief's meeting about continuing the teams!

Anyone, anyone, ...Bueler?

First, thanks to you for carrying the ball on Team AutoX. Although I haven't participated, I personally concur with LoCore that this should continue as fun, social, and low key.

The Chiefs Meeting is usually tasked with an excess subjects to be handled in a limited amount of time, so I would anticipate that "Team" would not receive priority over any of the "Solo" issues which need to be handled. Rather than involving the Chiefs, maybe a meeting of your team captions after the next event would prove to be a more effective venue for discussion.

[GingerGSR]

With the '08 Summer Series fast aproaching, it's time to start thinking about the AX teams again.

I for one, would very much like to see it continue.

I wouldn't mind contributing toward trophys but I'd bow to the majority on that.

The best parts were the social aspects. Being a novice last year, getting to meet others and make friends was great. Also being able to take the course walks with veterans was a huge help for me.

I think what we did last year was fine and worked well.

[47ford]

How does one go about joining a team? Will there be a "registration" or just contact a team captian or what? Oh BTW I would like to join a team for '08 and have NOT been on a team before, so I'm wondering how it all works.

[Mark C]

Same for me. Since I should hit the majority of the events this year it would be fun.

[SubaDrew]

I'm with Dylan (maisel) on this one. Our team sucked last year cause almost ALL of us were in 1 class. It looks like Dylan and I and going into different classes this year so it helps, but it was hard our first year with the restriction in place. I didn't even follow our team progress since it was essentially a moot point.

[hderr]

How does one go about joining a team? Will there be a "registration" or just contact a team captian or what? Oh BTW I would like to join a team for '08 and have NOT been on a team before, so I'm wondering how it all works.

Glad you are interested in joining. There is no formal structure for joining a team. You can form your own team or talk to one of last year's captains and
see if they are going to do it again for this year. If you need help with it you can email me and I will try and help you find a team. The captains are looking at a couple of changes in the scoring and team makeup for next year. So stay tuned in that regard.

Here's a link to the results from last season which includes the name of the captains. If you search the Members List you may be able to find an email or send them a pm. Again, if not, let me know and I will try to help.

http://www.rmsolo.org/TeamAutox/Rosters_Results.htm

[hderr]

I'm with Dylan (maisel) on this one. Our team sucked last year cause almost ALL of us were in 1 class. It looks like Dylan and I and going into different classes this year so it helps, but it was hard our first year with the restriction in place.

Stay tuned on this, we are looking at changing the team structure to help with this problem.

[Styluss]

SUE-WEET!!! I am so reayd for this agin. And I agree, the best part about it was the social aspect.