The Current State of Improved Touring

JeffYoung

JeffYoung

New member
I am (slowly) working on the "declining entries" perception, which appears to be that. Since 2010, entries appear to have been slightly up across the country and up dramatically at some individual tracks.

The perception of "IT is dying" appears to be the result of three things:

1. Actual, real declining entries at some tracks, and in particular in the Atlanta Region and with the ARRC.

2. The vocal presence of Atlanta Region members on internet forums.

3. The switching of some competitors to STL.

Hope to get these numbers over to Ron sometime in the next week, but the gist of it seems to be this:

ITS and ITA remain the non-spec classes with the highest participation nationwide, after SRF and SM.

ITS participation in the SEDiv and NEDiv remains strong, and decent in the DC Region. Struggling elsewhere. ITA is strong in Florida and the NEDiv, and reasonably strong elsewhere primarily due to SM double dipping (with triple dipping in STL driving STL numbers).

IT participation took a hit after 2008, but so too did all club racing classes. IT has rebounded and, relative to other classes, retains its popularity despite STL, etc.
 
Saved me a post Jeff, I was just getting all those numbers together. IT is strong compared to most classes and many new cars are being built, old cars put in new owners hands, and many drivers getting enough money together to race again after some very tough years on the home front.

Common sense changes like the washer bottle and letting drivers fix a real wiring harness are good change, just keep the core items left alone.

We will lose some drivers in the next year or 2 with runoffs coming to Daytona, but it will level out.
 
Totally agree.

The numbers are very interesting. The area that has taken the biggest hit in terms of IT participation is Atlanta, by a LONG shot.

I think that, and the declining numbers at the ARRC, drive the perception that IT car counts are down. They aren't. Big, stable fields at Sebring and Daytona. Actually increasing at VIR and CMP. CMS up and down a bit. In our area, only Roebling is down some. Lime Rock steady. Pocono steady. NHIS steady. DC Region down some but the highs there were really high, and the numbers still strong.

I think the Atlanta folks are more visible and "louder" (I mean that in a good way), so declining entries at the ARRC is perceived as declining participation in IT when in fact that is not the case.
 
Atlanta IT has not recovered from the mass defection of drivers and shops to SM. Add to that the tender, forgiving nature of the walls at Road Atlanta and it is hard to see why. :rolleyes:
 
Steve makes a great point about SM... any idea how much/many of the ITA entries are double dipped out of SM? I'm guessing that would be just about impossible to figure out barring a ton of extra entrant info and parsing.
 
For stuff on mylaps, I can't get it. FOr stuff at VIR and other places where I can get actual pdfs of results sheets, I can get car makes.

Even in ITS, SM double dipping helps fill the field. 3 double dipped SMs in last October's VIR ITS race with a 15 car field.

My guess is the numbers with ITA are similar or even more SMs.

But they are still IT entries and what I've found is that double dipped cars are usually guys trying IT because they are tired of something in SM and looking to come over.
 
A fair point about perceptions. I'm guilty of using the ARRC as a bellwether.

It's no question that ITA is benefiting from some SM crossover, just as STL does. Jeff's right that it's not possible to tell "spec" from entry lists but the ITNT results show A numbers profit from the presence of a lot of Miatae.

http://itnationaltour.com/images/downloads/2013itntpoints.pdf

K

EDIT - and +1 on the idea that those crossover SMs can honestly be counted as "IT cars." In some ways, I'll bet a lot of those cars are a throwback to the Old School, low-tech IT ideal that some folks really like.
 
Topic too important to let flounder on a washer bottle thread.

Perception is extremely important to the life of a category or series. If potential racers perceive a class to be waning then they're likely to seek other venues in which to participate.

I feel that ST is on the rise and believe other racers think the same. But to what extent is ST(L) actually waxing if non-ST cars are eliminated from the car count? Remove the RX cars and the ITA/SM Miatas, then perform a count of ST cars that remain. It'll be interesting to see how that shakes out.

I'll be interested to have a look at the participation numbers for IT once gathered up. Be happy to make graphs, perform statistical comparisons, and so on as needed.
 
I see that Jeff has some numbers and stats, but I anticipate some discussion on this on the next ITAC (Mon 1/27).

Shoot me a PM with real specifics of what you'd like to compare, and I'll see what info I can gather. The more specific, the better the chance of getting it. You can also ask JeffY, but I didn't want to volunteer him without offering myself.
 
http://www.scca.com/assets/2013_Regional_Participation_FINAL.pdf

This tells you a lot of the information you are looking for. After exporting it to excel and dividing each attendance number by the number of races in the division, you will start to see why IT looks like its on the decline when you just randomly arrive at a race. A lot of the races at Sebring and Daytona have between 10-15 ITB cars at each race, however the overall SEDIV average for ITB is 2.5 per race, that is 5th best in the division. So that tells me a huge number of the 74 SEDIV races goes unattended in ITB. Same is true about ITA and ITS but with a better overall attendance (average 6.7 and 6.3 per race). For reference SRF averages 7.4 and SM averages 20.2 per race.
 

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I have the car count numbers for SARRC all the way back to 1996. There has been an overall decline in IT numbers since the late 1990s, but that doesn't tell the whole story. The big drop took place in the 2003-5 time period, when SM appeared. All the classes took a hit then, dropping by maybe a quarter. Since that time, ITA and ITS have remained about stable, with ITA entries up a bit (probably due to double-dipping SMs.) ITB and IT7 have steadily declined to about half the entries from 2004. ITC has taken the worst hit, going down by over half until this year, when it dropped off to less than a third of what they were ten years earlier. ITR was introduced in 2007, but its numbers aren't enough to offset the drop of even one of those three classes.

So parts of IT aren't looking great, but overall IT is doing better than most classes. I think a majority of classes are down by 50% or so in the same time period. But the strength of the best attended classes (SM, SRF, ITS and ITA), plus the addition of new classes like ST have kept the overall numbers fairly stable in the last few years. There was about a 20% drop in entries in the couple years after 2007, but things have been fairly stable since then. And regardless of the ups and downs, four of the top six classes this year are still IT (A/S/B/7).

I suspect that part of the perception that IT numbers are down in SEDiv is driven by the fact that per race numbers are substantially down. The number of SARRC races has grown from 24-25 ten years ago to 36 this year. Total IT entries are down around 20%. but per race entries are down by nearly half. The issue of the number of SARRC races is a problem to me, but I know the people who actually have to put on races feel differently. And all classes have lower per race entries for the same reason, so it's not an IT-specific issue.
 
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I agree there is a perception that IT is declining. I bought an ITA car last year and have questioned the decision as the fields that I've seen haven't been significant compared to the past. Hopefully I'm wrong. (Tracks I am talking about are primarly LRP and the Glen.)

I also fall into the ARRC trap. I mean the ITB attendance was pathetic.
 
In the last 4 years here in SW-Div, I have only seen one ITS car entered, and that's a guy that moved to Dallas from Sebring with an ITS Mustang build already underway. (FLATKITTY on here when he posts)

There's another ITS 240Z that's come out a couple times, but only because it was in ITS trim when it was purchased by the current owner and the current round of required maintenance is going to push it out of ITS-trim because OEM parts are becoming unavailable and there are cheaper & stronger go-fast parts available.

ITA and ITB have regular entries, but the vast majority of ITA are again the SM double-dippers. I think 2 or 3 cars are real ITA cars and the rest are SM.

8 or 10 years ago, IT was quite strong in the area, but they have essentially disappeared. It's not just the drivers moving to different classes, but drivers leaving SCCA altogether. I knew several of the ITS guys that raced here in the past and they had to sell/retire due to personal reasons (health, lack of money to race, etc), but they're still leaving.

Edit.. My first edit was intended to mention that we have a pretty significant SRF and SM following around here- each gets their own run group and we routinely have 30+ of each class at each national-level race. calling them a national-level since I don't know WTF they're calling them yet this year.
 
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TomL said:
I suspect that part of the perception that IT numbers are down in SEDiv is driven by the fact that per race numbers are substantially down. The number of SARRC races has grown from 24-25 ten years ago to 36 this year. Total IT entries are down around 20%. but per race entries are down by nearly half. The issue of the number of SARRC races is a problem to me, but I know the people who actually have to put on races feel differently. And all classes have lower per race entries for the same reason, so it's not an IT-specific issue.
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+1

In the SEDIV during 2013 for ITB there were 9 SARRC races out of 35, with only 1 racer, and 2 more with zero ITB entries, but 10 races with more than 4 and Sebring in Feb had 16 entries.

For ITA there are 10 SARRC races with 3 or less entries, however
ITS seems to be more evenly spread out.
 
JeffYoung said:
I think the Atlanta folks are more visible and "louder" (I mean that in a good way), so declining entries at the ARRC is perceived as declining participation in IT when in fact that is not the case.
Click to expand...

Did the ARRC entries take a drop when the August event at Mid-O started?.....
 
Here are the SCCA total country car counts from 2004, 2007 and 2008. I don't recall why national did not have car counts in 2005 and 2006

2004 2007 2008
ITR 0 1.06 1.35
ITS 9.78 6.01 5.84
ITA 9.66 9.98 8.53
ITB 7.07 5.05 3.88
ITC 4.51 2.30 2.02

Looking at the current entry counts I don't know how we can say that IT has not seen a meaningful decline in car counts. The question of why is what you are after!
 
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Jeremy Billiel said:
Here are the SCCA total country car counts from 2004, 2007 and 2008. I don't recall why national did not have car counts in 2005 and 2006

2004 2007 2008
ITR 0 1.06 1.35
ITS 9.78 6.01 5.84
ITA 9.66 9.98 8.53
ITB 7.07 5.05 3.88
ITC 4.51 2.30 2.02

Looking at the current entry counts I don't know how we can say that IT has not seen a meaningful decline in car counts. The question of why is what you are after!
Click to expand...


What are those numbers, average cars per event for each year? If that is the average number of cars per event each year then it does not tell you the total number of entries per class.

ITS entries could remain constant from 2004 to 2008. And, if the number of sanctioned races increased as Tom pointed out, then the average cars per race would decrease which some would view as a decline of interest in the category. However that would be an improper conclusion.


TomL said:
The number of SARRC races has grown from 24-25 ten years ago to 36 this year.
Click to expand...
 
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never been to the ARRC but there are some big name events close to the ARRC as well as halloween. I thought about doing the ARRC this year, but when I saw there was only one ITB car and it was a car that due to classing had no chance of beating it there.. I figured save my money and go run against bigger fields else where.

as for SARRC in general We have alot of tracks and alot of races.. I think that plays a role in total numbers.. I.E. not all races at sebring and Daytona have high counts. This last year a few of the sebring races and the last race at daytona before the SIC pulled less than 4 cars, atleast in ITB.
 
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