GT3 wrote:Find $500 bucks somewhere and hire full time corner works so no one has to anymore, charge $10 more per entry if you have to, that should cover it, people are paying $30 now.
I COMPLETELY disagree with Alain Stad and Tom Tweed on paid cornerworkers for the following reasons...
In my opinion (and per the SDR instructor written test by-the-way) cornerworking is a) a great way to watch and learn the right way through a portion of the track versus the wrong (or less efficient) way,
b) a good way to contribute back to the club/event and c) a necessary part of each event for it to run.
Every two or three years this issue comes up and some yahoo says something like “I don’t want to cornerwork anymore - it’s boring and any idiot can wave a flag” (and YES I do realize that is NOT what Alain and Tom said here)!!
My counter to that is you can learn more by one good corner working session watching good versus bad lines than you can from driving a track badly all day.
Personally, I don’t think that the paid student cornerworkers are a good option because they often show up after the drivers meeting and miss the cornerworking safety meeting, and as a consequence are often not trained in how we (SDR) do it.
As a result I have personally experienced several occasions where an untrained or uninterested corner worker has failed to behave in a way that keeps them or the drivers as safe as they could be. To this end I have reported it to the autocross chairs and have been pro-active in giving paid student cornerworkers specific safety training and said if more of your buddy students show up during the day they do not go out on track without specific cornerworking training - send them to me.
To me the problem with paid cornerworkers is they are not autocrossers and also have no skin in the game.
I feel if you are too big to knuckle-down and do a stint of cornerworking , you are missing the intent of what our club is about ( once agin I understand that is NOT what Tom and Alain are advocating here) - we’re all volunteers remember?
Maybe someone else has expressed this thought more eloquently somewhere else on this forum, but you have my immediate reaction to the two posts I read.
I know I am not alone in my opinion from over 20 years in this club. If that makes me an old geezer so be it, think about students not cornerworking with their instructors .... woulbn’t they be missing out in a part of the whole learning experience?
I feel if you really don’t want to cornerwork...... go to the track - this is autocross.
OK rant over. Bring it on.... KV.