CLUB CHAMPION AWARD AND THE COMPETITION CHAMPIONSHIP
Over the past few months we have been considering changes to
our existing Competition Championship and the basis of our most prestigious
member’s award, the Club Champion.
Briefly, we have made the following changes to both
programmes;
The Competition
Championship as we have known it in recent years has been based almost
exclusively on low impact road events. The Competition
Championship will in future be focused only on the track competition as is
currently overseen by Rod Vogt, our MSCA
Representative. The Team Healey group will be competing for the Competition Champion award.
Our road based competition
events will in future be incorporated into the Club Champion Award, as recognised on our Honour Board. The Club Champion will be awarded based on
points earned in three ways;
One point for Attendance
at an club event, such as --Monthly Meetings, social events such as early
morning, breakfast, lunch, picnic and dinner runs, theatre nights and such
like.
Two points will be awarded to members who partake in Participation events, such as
Motorkhana’s, Night Trials, Observation and Economy Runs. Similarly, we will
award two points for attendance at our marquee events, the Presentation Night and
the Concours D’Elegance.
Use of one’s Austin Healey, whether it is in an Attendance or Participation event, gains an extra one point towards the Club Champion Award.
Over recent years the Club
Champion Award had moved from a quantitative measure of points awarded for
attendance to an award bestowed on a subjective basis for services rendered to
the Club.
The above change returns the award to a basis of
quantifiable engagement with the club and rewards those who support the club
more fully whilst enjoying their car.
Now, let’s look a little more closely at the Competition
Championship.
Administration of the
Competition Championship scoring system will in future be a “desk job” in that
the championship points are calculated from results published on the Natsoft
website. Here is how the championship works.
When a member competes in any event for which results are
published in Natsoft, those results are taken into consideration, provided the
member is competing in their Healey.
The Competition Secretary will score the member based on
their four fastest laps in their best four events/race meetings each year. (Each
event will be looked at and after four events have been participated in, the
worst will be dropped off)
The event scoring system is based on the member starting
each meeting with 1000 points, from which we deduct one point for each 100th of
a second variation from the member’s fastest lap in the other three laps to be
scored. These are not necessarily consecutive laps.
One member at an event/race meeting can earn points based on
the consistency of their individual results, just the same as 5, 10 or 15
contestants can driving against each other.
There is no handicap system based on the type of Austin
Healey driven.
When a member has competition results published on Natsoft,
they are automatically in our AHOC Competition Championship.
Now let’s look at the benefits of our changes;
This will reward Drivers who drive fast consistently on the
race track….not just one fast lap.
This will give the driver who has a standard Austin Healey
the same chance as someone with a highly modified car. It is all about the
consistency of the individual’s results, not outright speed.
This will encourage anyone who has never been on the race
track to come and have a go without having to spend a lot of money on preparing
their car for the race track.
As a sporting car club, this will return our Competition
Championship to something more akin to the name of the award and put meaning
back into our Honour Board.
The first item in our Statement of Purposes contains the
follow words: “To promote, organise and conduct competitions and motor sport
events for Austin Healey”
Finally, we reviewed the Competition Championships of many
sporting car club’s, but the competition within the Jaguar Car Club of Victoria
is the one that so closely addresses the concerns our review panel had when
looking at the position of our Competition Championship.
We are grateful that
the JCCV have their material published for public assessment and inspiration.
Now let’s look more closely at the Club Champion Award
changes;
Despite making our Competition progressively more “soft” over
recent years we have had dwindling numbers of participants.
By removing the progressive points scoring system from our
Participation Events we hope to reduce the tensions that sometimes emerge in
the cabin of an Austin Healey when one is focused on achieving a result and the
other is sitting in the passenger seat in the expectation of something akin to a
relaxed social event. Everyone get’s two points for participating in the
event….no more – no less.
The new order of Participation Events recognises that our
Austin Healey’s are generally purchased as a “lifestyle vehicle” more than as a
“sports car”, and that the value of the cars is rising just about as fast as
the average age of our members, thus we don’t put them “at risk”
These changes have been implemented with retrospective
effect to the beginning of the year. Over the coming weeks we will advise
members of progressive scores in both subject areas.
