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Originally Posted by rshelby
Should SAAC conventions remain on 4th of July?
I have heard a variety of people with concerns about the heat and holiday traffic and/or having other plans for the 4th so I just figured I would post a poll to see what others think. I would prefer a non-holiday weekend but I can understand others wanting it to be on a holiday weekend.
Randall
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Well here’s my 2 cents worth on the subject. I have only attended the 2 West Coast events so I don’t know anything about the happenings at the other locations. I have a street Shelby but went to see the racecars. That was the most exciting thing for me. I can always see the show cars at other events. I have been told the July 4th date is used because of track availability and reduced cost of renting them. However I also think that making a profit is an overriding factor. Rental rates have to be lower in the dog days of summer than at any other times. I also pay more for SAAC track time that at any other event I go to….again gets back to the profit motive. I was always curious of how Rick could continue to run the club AND have an outside job….unless he was independently wealthy…which is always a nice thing to be. Reading a post about SAAC on here cleared all this up for me. I know if I were wealthy I would do that kind of thing for the love of it.
Hearsay has it that Larry Miller of Utah Jazz ownership fame donated the use of the Utah location to SAAC. I cannot confirm if this is true or not but it came from a reliable source close to SAAC…..and it makes very good business sense to me. Here you have a new track that Larry wants to have exposure…what better way to do that than get a whole lot of high dollar race cars and driver’s over to see the layout. Which other wise they may not see it in their lifetime. And what better way for SAAC to make a bit more money. I know they will still charge for track time….I don’t think it will be reduced any…do you? And the real clincher is why would SAAC have an event in an area where hardly any SAAC members reside? So I think the no cost aspect of the deal is very compelling. The really big unknown in this is how big will the turnout be?? I would imagine some of the eastern guys won’t make it but then a lot of them didn’t come to Fontana either. Could pick up some from the Midwest and South and Northwest. Will be interesting to see how it all comes out.
Now don’t get me wrong….I will definitely be dragging my trailer the 730 miles and going at any price. To be able to drive on a track of this quality will be a wonderful experience…and I would think this track has to be a WHOLE lot better than Fontana…which in my opinion is the most boring track I have been on. It can’t hold a candle to Willow Springs, Sears Point or Laguna Seca.
The first event at Fontana, along with other encouragement, is what got me interested in getting a track car. By the 2nd event at Fontana 2 years later I had the car and was really looking forward to getting on the track. I was sort of new to running so I picked the beginners run group even though I had maybe 5-6 track events under my belt by then. There were a lot of cars in that group as well as ALL the other run groups and even for a newbie like me it was just about intolerable in the corners. Coming off the back straight into the infield everyone just about came to a complete stop and that corner was about a 50mph corner as I recall. I didn’t begin to even be able to use the correct line in the corners until Sunday. It boiled down to just too many cars in each run group. I know SAAC wants to accommodate everyone because it is a for PROFIT business. Sunday was a LOT better…many cars had gone or were entered in the car show.…so there was much less on track traffic. The best thing about Fontana was it was only 50 miles from me…now that was great. So its off to Utah next summer….dry heat and just under 5000 foot altitude….I’ll need to rejet.
