RE NEWS – APRIL 2025
Hi Everyone,
The overall feeling about the event was absolutely great. Probably the nice racing weather you could ask for, sunny, no wind, mild temps. We had a great turnout for both the test day and the Major/Regional. We had targeted 150 for the race and we beat that number by about 15. We ran 8 run groups with the 8th Group being Vintage Formula Ford Crossflow.
We used the “follow by” schedule which made running 8 groups possible and it worked well, I want to thank all our Workers and the Thunderhill staff for making the schedule work. Going one after another all day long is not a walk in the park. I’m sure everyone slept good Sunday night.
Speaking of the follow by schedule we provided a group time “estimate” which I think helped everyone know about were we were in the schedule. In addition, we had Mike King announce the call to grid. The cost of having the PA system at Thunderhill is affordable. unlike Laguna (last quote was $8,000 but they’re working on it) and Sonoma. We did not do any texting. The reason was we just didn’t have enough people in Timing to do it. Since we’re at Laguna in June we’ll try to run the text process along with announce at Thunderhill in May, please when you register opt in for receiving texts
Going back to the Formula Ford Crossflow folks, what a nice group of people. They were friendly to work with and provided some great racing. We’re going to start working on the 2026 schedule in June and our plan is to ask them to run with us again.
In Timing we figured out Race Monitor so we had both Rmon and Speedhive running. The only glitch was unlike good old Race Hero the programs do not know if it’s qualify or racing so, we must make a switch on the transmission manually. The feedback we got was Rmon worked much better.
As you know this year, we have been using track supplied ECrew. We’ve put a special effort into integrating the Track Crews with our Race Control team, with the goal of an ECrew operational response that is fast and effective. We’re happy to report that our efforts have produced good results. Thanks to all who worked to make this happen!
One very important item we need your help with is late registration and changes. With around 160 entrants we had 30-40 new adds or changes. It’s almost impossible to update the MyLaps timing database so we ended up chasing our tail for much of the day Saturday. Our Region invented Express Registration, with the concept that you have everything buttoned up and all you do is check in. In the past when you entered late or made changes you had to fill out a runaround form and take it to timing and tech. Now it’s easy to have Race Admin do the work. We have made it possible for you to make updates to your MSR entry online up until two days prior to our event so please help us and have everything in MSR match what your racing including the transponder number.
On the last session on Sunday at the very end of the FF Crossflow race, a driver spun in turn3 and ended up in the around the hill in middle of the track with barely enough room to get by. We watched with some level of anxiety as the Flagger in the T3 box “vigorously waved the yellow flag while the second flagger motioned to move to the outside of the track to on coming race traffic. It could have been bad, and it demonstrated the value of a high-quality flagging team. Thanks for being out there.
Overall a very nice event, hope everyone had a good time, we’ll see you at Thunderhill on May 16-18,
Mike
PS: Want to see your race video on SFR Facebook, TikTok. Instagram? Just send you video to socialmedia@sfrscca.org!