ERC Race Series - Euro Saloons & Sports

[ERC]

I don't think I have ever criticised your group Dale, or your philosophy. But you keep harping on that our cars do not confirm to any rules. So wrong my friend, so wrong.

It's a great pity that you weren't at the Auckland driver's meeting that Crunch referred to a few years ago. There were about 110 or 120 drivers who turned up. We challenged various aspects of the CoD system and I presume, the T & C "rules" to which you allude. Crunch threw out a challenge to the meeting to rewrite the T & C rules to make them more acceptable and we then spent a lot of time and effort conscientiously going through the T & C rules, line by line, word by word.

What we then presented to the Commission was a set of rules under which Alfa Trofeo and ERC specifically agreed, with some input from BMW.

Crunch and Tony and the Commission did indeed take some of our suggestions on board but within the commission, I'm sure that Crunch will agree, they are still somewhat divided on some issues, just as we may be on here.

Our philosophy then and now was that we have the Appendix & Schedule K rules for the purists, therefore the T & C rules by default should be a slightly looser set of rules, BUT, series organisers could tighten up those if they saw fit.

HMC has elected to run a tighter set of rules under the current structure, but several of the issues we raised way back then have not been changed, though they may have been addressed.

To accuse us of "not having any rules" is just the sort of statement that can only come from total ignorance and a biased opinion and is a cheap shot at a series that first and foremost, caters for what the drivers want. What is so wrong about that?

Our thinking back then, as now, was that T & C was initially drawn up and a CoD system implemented to enhance the provenance of the cars racing in NZ. However, many cars racing neither need nor gain from a written provenance.

It may seem to you that drivers are the only ones with opinions, but just remember that the Festival, more than any other local event has spectators who pay - and in some cases quite a lot. They also pay a fair bit in travel costs and their opinions are just as valid as those of the drivers. You may have a ball dicing with a couple of others, but if the rest of the track is empty, you don't seem to care - we do.

Having some professional experience in polling, I know only too well how the results and conclusions can be skewed so regardless of what you take from the Ferrari Festival feedback, I know that you learn far more from genuine criticism than praise and I have copped a fair bit of criticism over the years, some of it totally unjustified and some of it totally valid.

What spurred us to approach the Festival committee was feedback from those who had negative views of the Festival, but who desperately (and genuinely) wanted to see the Festival grow and be successful. The poll may give you the warm fuzzies but if you took the time to talk to those with less positive feedback, you'd have a different picture. I am sure that the committee took on board the results of our driver poll which consisted of a mix of competitors and event spectators.

Because you elect to only do 4 events a year and abhor any form of points, doesn't mean that others are happy with that format. We are still a chocolate fish series but what we need is some form of commitment and when people mention sponsorship, fronting up with just 4 cars at a meeting - and there are only 4 meetings, isn't really a good return for them. Considering our longevity, we have only ever had 4 sponsors (plus in the first couple of years, a donation from the MGCC Wellington).

So yes, numbers are important to many of us, even at the expense of running some cheaper but rarer cars of modest performance as a field of same or similar cars is not what we are about.

As for Angus running with us. You forget that both he and AMCO72 have run with us in the past without incident and having been overtaken by Angus going into the down hill hairpin at HD, I knew he was coming up behind me (that is what mirrors are for) and I left him room. No problem - nor with any of the other drivers in that grid. We welcome Angus with open arms and he knows that if he is quicker than the guys in front, they'll make room for him. We treat him no differently from any other driver and he will be handicapped only on his lap times as will everyone else.

This is just one grid out of a two weekend programme so if people don't want to watch, there are plenty of other races to entertain them, but I sincerely hope that ALL cars emerge at the end of the weekend with zero panel damage and big smiles and that the spectators leave with big smiles and Nigel Watts has to take spare memory cards and that the Festival is profitable...