Good News

[BP125V]

Follow up to this summer's promo activities here in the Midwest.
Scott Elmer (MRC driving school) raced at Rochelle and PP and is working on getting a Yamato rig for next year.

Kev's promo Merc J was sold at Oshkosh to a father/son team and they were testing J at PP.

Paul Pittman's daughter went for her first boat ride testing JH at PP and liked it.

Bill Carter (MRC) is going to build a CSH and sponsor one of the MRC driving school students (new name).

Jake Schallcross and Mike Frazier are making their return to racing and have already ordered a 302.

Shep is going to take a 3rd generation Switzer out testing this fall. They saw the JH's racing at K3 and liked it. They also came to watch at PP.

MHRA - Dean can fill in the details since he has nothing else going on right now, but 2 families have bought rigs since the Grass Lake school this fall and the first family raced at Big Rapids.

Maybe Tony Perman can fill us in on some follow up about SOA's driving school.

This type of activity does work, too bad that the sport forgot how to do it for a while.

Support your local club and local races.

Bill

[propnuts]

That is truly awesome news

I will have to give the big update after Lake Lawrence, but I have one bit of good news already, we got the decks put on one of our SOA/HARM J boats last weekend, and we're hoping the builder of that boat is going to show up for a ride this Friday during testing. We had at least one driver, Dave Lemmon (sp?) race with us the weekend following the driving school and I hope he makes it to Lawrence too. Great job MRC, this is how we're going to make this sport continue. Restrictor plate sizes and talking about appealing to the theoretical "new racer" are minutae compared to actually getting potential new racers in boats.

BTW THANK YOU to the PRO commission far paying for the ambulance during new folks testing. The SORC needs to seriously consider what they can do to support these programs as well.

[Kev43V]

Thanks for the updates Bill and Tony
Tony's post reminded me to ask. Did we take advantage of the pro's offer for help on ambulance cost for our drivers school? As Bruce S told me at the region meeting. We think it is great. we just do not feel it actually fits our program very well. So we are making this offer to help a great cause. (or something to that effect)
but if we do not use it, how long will they keep offering it?

[hydroracer25]

MHRA racer school

Bill/All,

As stated MHRA hosted its second racer school of 2010 at Grass Lake with 11 new name participants. We had 2 at Constantine in June. As of this writing 4 have raced in 2010 and 1 other is actively pursuing equipment for 2011. At least one other is firmly considering racing in 2011. So all in all we had 6/7 out of 13 racer school participants end up in racing. We don't expect that level of success in all years, but our school has proven it works to attract new members (retention is now key). Each time we hold a racer school we try to improve upon the last and feel we are finally, getting pretty proficient at running them.

Additionally, we had 2 people at our race in Big Rapids last weekend contact us about the next racer school in 2011. Now that we have the product and some ways to get the word out we have found that quite a few people are seeking us out.

We've had the fortune of getting some equipment donated by ex/current racers and have generally had a solid group of instructors and helpers. I would recommend that every SO/MO club try to organize some type of racer school at at least one of your events next season. I plan to be at the National meeting in Detroit in January and if there is a time slot available would be happy to update everyone on our racer school presentation and some of the more recent lessons learned to help make sure other clubs have more information then when we started.

As you stated, support your local club races, and offer to lend a hand in programs like this.

Mark

[Kev43V]

Thanks Mark,
Congratulations on all you people have accomplished.

[reed28n]

Now that is backing up you rap!

Good hard work fellas..... congrats!