Hello!

Thank you everyone for a successful race day this past Sunday. There was a lot of anticipation over this long winter leading into racing season and it was awesome to see everyone out there racing passionately but also respectfully.

I want to give everyone a short reintroduction of myself and what some plans are for this season. My name is Alec Perez and I will be working at Michiana Raceway Park as your Race Director this year. I’m from Chicago and I’ve been involved motor racing for the last 10+ years. I’ve been traveling to MRP to volunteer in various positions for the last 4 years. I’ve gotten to witness and also take part a lot of good racing here and I gotta say, it makes the 2 hour drive and the time zone difference well worth it! I work as a Director of Operations for a restaurant company in Chicago where I focus most on team building and internal structure. My goal in this role at MRP is to simply help us continue building a foundation that will create safe, fair and competitive racing.

The goal is simple, though it will require some time and effort from both MRP Staff and Club Members. I will be working closely with David Berger and the rest of our track team to focus on creating consistent practices and efficient communications across the entirety of each race event moving forward. This should allow us to provide club participants with better feedback, advance news, updates and clear rules for future racing.

While we are working to provide all club participants with what they need for a good, fun, and safe season, there will be periodic reminders and requests of our own to better ensure that happens as well.

Even though the weekend was successful, I did notice a few areas for improvement that I have to advise everyone on here and also for our next Driver’s Meeting. Topics that we plan to discuss will be the following:

  • Retirements:
    • If a driver suffers from a mechanical failure or a race ending incident the first response should be in regards to safety. If you have retired from a session please safely exit the kart and seek guidance from the nearest track marshal who will assist you to a safe zone until the session is complete.
    • If a driver retires from the race, recovery of their kart is not to take place until after the session is complete unless the kart itself is a hazard, marshals will help clear the incident.
    • Anyone that is not an employee of Michiana Raceway Park is not allowed on track during a live session. It creates an additional hazard on track and puts others in danger, regardless of why they may be entering.
  • Safe Re-entry
    • If a driver is off track during a race, they must re-enter in a safe and responsible manner, meaning it is not acceptable to re-enter the track directly in front of other karts that are traveling at full speed. It heightens the danger for all parties involved. If you’re in the grass or gravel and waiting to safely re-enter, it must be once a reasonable gap is available in order to make entry. We don’t want this to become an issue that requires discipline so we will stay observant of it and repeat this topic at the driver’s meeting.
  • Grid sorting
    • If a driver plans to drop out of the race it’s going to be required that you let the Race Director know in as far of advance as possible so we can sort the grid appropriately for the remaining field.
  • Rotax Heavy class will invert the top 6 positions for the 2nd race along with the other classes moving forward.

There has been other feedback from some of you that is currently under discussion amongst the MRP Staff. We will be working through these topics internally in order to try to provide everyone with better racing and will eventually discuss during our drivers meeting ahead of the next races. 

Friendly reminder: If there are any comments, suggestions or requests for review please submit them to me in paper at the race event so I can address them properly. There will be time to discuss some matters during the drivers meeting but I want to make sure that I have an opportunity to address any topics of concern.

OTHER TOPICS

To come:

  • Ahead of the next race I will be posting a program format here for all club race events which will include fixed times for practice, qualifying, meetings, race sessions and of course, lunch!
  • Scoring! I will be working to see how I can get updated scoring and race results posted so everyone can see where they are in the season.
  • Track Layouts! We will also be working to determine to the layout for the rest of the dates this year. We will get those sorted and posted the calendar for the remainder of the season soon.

New Drivers: This season, please remember to mark the back of your helmets with a “X” to signify you’re not only a new force to be reckoned with, but all also you’re still getting familiar with our circuit.

FLAGS:

  • Green: At Start/Finish, Used by the Flagger to start all track sessions and races
  • Yellow: Track wide, Any YELLOW flag is a signal of danger of any nature at or beyond the station displaying the flag.
    • Yellow Motionless: Take care, Danger, Slow down. NO PASSING FROM THE FLAG UNTIL PAST THE EMERGENCY AREA.
    • Yellow Waved: Great Danger, Slow Down. Be prepared to stop. NO PASSING FROM THE YELLOW FLAG UNTIL COMPLETELY PAST THE EMERGENCY AREA(S).
    • This will be communicated clearly with all track marshals working with us.
  • Red Flag: At Start/Finish And Red All Posts Should a decision be made to stop any track session, including a race, because of an accident or an incident, a RED flag will be shown at the Start/Finish line
    • During a practice session it is the responsibility of all drivers to immediately slow down, no passing is allowed, exercise extreme caution, be prepared to stop if instructed to do so, proceed to the pit lane and STOP.
    • During a qualifying or race session it is the responsibility of all drivers to immediately slow down, stop racing, no passing is allowed, exercise extreme caution, be prepared to stop if instructed to do so, proceed to the start/finish line or the inner and STOP.
  • Blue Flag: At Start/Finish, Blue Flag Waved: You are about to be lapped by a faster kart(s). The driver is going to get lapped and must hold line on straight; at that point it is up to the faster kart to make a safe pass. Also when giving the blue flag let them know how many karts are coming by holding up that number of fingers along with the flag.
    • Failure to obey the BLUE flag may result in the BLACK Flag for the slower driver.
  • Rolled up White and Checkered flag held crossed: At Start/Finish, Half way point in race session
  • Rolled up White and Checkered flag side by side: At Start/Finish, 2 laps left in session
  • White Flag: At Start/Finish, One lap left in the session
  • Checkered Flag: At Start/Finish, Racing is finished, all drivers must slow down and return to their pits or other designated area
  • Black Flag: At Start/Finish, Informs the driver to complete the current lap and stop for consultation at the pits
    • A driver who fails to obey this flag after it has been displayed twice will be excluded from the results and additional penalties may be issued.

That’s it for now. Thank you everyone for taking the time to read. We will go over some of this again in the next drivers meeting but please consider these debriefings as a good resource moving forward since they will cover everything much more thoroughly.

Looking forward to the next event!

Alec