Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Petch
Seriously Stu, please, please put your brain into gear before you write such post's.
Lastly whilst its very disappointing for all concerned, don't think that there wont be 3 Supertourers racers over the weekend well worth watching, some serious talent out there and at least 6 of the 8 drivers will be planing on winning, and rightly so when you look at the pedigree.
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Mark, with all due respect, I do not appreciate the patronising tone of some of your recent replies to some of my posts. This is an open forum and everyones opinion is valid, including mine. In fact I will take time to answer a question you posed to me some time back that I did not answer. I said that I think the entry fee for punters should be free, or close to it. I still stand by that because, who in their right mind is going to fork out $50 - $60 for a weekend pass? if you want to bring the crowds back, then you have to make it financially viable for them. The current level of 'show' at these (and NZV8 meetings) is not that great to be honest, so why not advertise free entry and then work off selling merchandise and maybe getting something back from the food stalls. You have been in this game for donkeys years, I do genuinely appreciate some of the things you have done for motorsport in this country. We all know you have 'been there, done that' with just about all aspects of the game. You simply cannot replicate experience. But something has gone drastically wrong here....and for this particular series to survive, something has to change. Maybe the fact that NZST does not own any cars is a bad thing? Maybe if they bought a few (hell, there must be a few going cheap at the moment) then they could, in tough times, 'lend' them or lease them at a very cheap price to attract either drivers that have been and gone, or new ones wanting to get into the series. In fact I can't think of a better thing for the category to do. Instead of teams bringing in drivers for their test days, why doesn't the category itself offer 'free' or close to it, drives for some of these people? They would get to race them in anger (insurance would have to be there of course for any damage) and I think that would lure in a few more.
But I also can see the counter argument to that, which is teams whinging on about the fact that driver X got his/her drive dead cheap. But if you look at the big picture, which is the survival of the category, then maybe its worth looking at?
But I don't know, I really don't. You my friend are the expert here. You and a few others created this series and it was great. You and others then sold it to Ray (and yes I know how much for) and its just gone downhill since then. What has happened between the times that you were the CEO to today?
Now I have no doubt that once again I will get a 'pull your head in' type response from you, and that's fine. But as someone who is a newbie to the sport, it just rips me up seeing it go belly up like this. I was looking at some old FB posts from 2012-2013 last night and my god its a polar opposite to what we see now. If you had told me back then that at the start of 2015 we would see 8 cars, I would have said your dreaming.
Now don't get me wrong Mark, I am looking just at the state of affairs right now. I do have some confidence that the series will get its act together and form a NZ vs Aus type series for next season. Well I hope so anyway, for Rays sake. I wonder what his P+L reports look like right now?
And heres the rub, even if the TLX's joined up, or vice versa, right now we would have 13 cars on the grid. Even that is pretty rubbish compared to the times where their were 19 of these things blasting around NZ tracks and setting a new benchmark for this style of racing.
We hear all the time that it costs too much. Why does it cost so much? especially when you learn that a TLX is about the same, and the older TLs in their day were costing shedloads to prepare and run a half decent car. The series was always about cost saving, thus luring in all the big names from the NZV8's. Why have these people bolted?
And please Mark, I will repeat, all the above is with the utmost respect to you. I am no expert at all when it comes to the management side of racing, but people like you are, so people like you (and others) should be the ones that come up with the answers.
I do 100% agree however that the 3 ST races will be good. I am going to be there of course as it Andres last go, and he is genuinely a podium contender. In fact I think the only driver that could dislodge him will be Simon in the Smeg car, or D'Alberto.