Board of Directors Meeting Minutes

Monday September 14, 2009

Meeting by conference call
Present: Peter Nosler, Joe Riley, Ed Railton, Mike Smith, Jim Petrek, Sherry Grantz

Not present:  Morris Hamm, Blake Tatum, Viet Tam-Luu

Lisa is now on board on a part time basis as our Volunteer Recruiter. Lisa has begun the process of meeting with the various specialties to identify their needs. She has meet with the Ambassador Chiefs to understand their tour process and what role she can play in the process.

Sherry has documented an “on line” voting process through Motorsports Reg. We reviewed the procedures and felt they were very good. We suggested she contact Bruce Brunner and have him review procedures as well.

Entries for Laguna are looking light; both below last year as well as below budget. We think having a two week span between events has not helped out entry counts. We noted the two week period was due to the late date change required by Laguna Seca, originally there was a three week span.

The 2009 Spec Miata Festival was a very successful event. Thanks to Ian Cook (massive logistics and getting prizes donated) and Dan Mairani (dinner) for making the off track festivities happen.

Group 2 continues to have issues with on track contact. We spent 1 ½ hours talking about: why drivers are not filing protests, Gary Meeker’s idea of split qualify and split start at the Laguna event, what added penalties we might ask the Stewards to enforce, where the problems are coming from i.e. a specific class, slow cars, etc. We have two races left this year and we agreed we would support the Stewards in their escalated penalty strategy and review options for Group 2 at our all day Saturday December meeting.

Peter Nosler brought us up to date on the Formula Ford Honda engine proposal by National and the CRB. We all agreed that keeping the existing FF/CF classes and making the Honda engine car a new class is the right thing to do. Peter will pass on our thoughts to the CRB. We also discussed the options to have a SFR Regional only class structure that would keep the three classes separate including sealing the Honda engine.

Ed Railton moved and Morris Hamm seconded the motion to move FC to Gp4 for the first half of 2010. This will give us a chance 1) to see if the FC class will grow, 2) how FC merges with FV/CF/FF. The vote on the motion was unanimously approved.

Notes prepared by Mike Smith