Open Letter To All Summit Northstar Team Finals Competitors:

I wanted to reach out to all the competitors who attended this past weekend's Summit Northstar Team Finals in an effort to clear up some rumors and inaccurate information that have been spread around since the race was completed. 

Obviously with a race of this size and with a team oriented format in place, there were several track operator meetings held that weekend.  This is customary at the Team Finals since all the tracks have a voice in what the rules and procedures are at these events.  The track owners/operators or designated captains represent their team in major decisions. 

I have received e-mails from six competitors as of today and I'm sure more will follow.  I was disturbed by the inaccurate information in the e-mails and responded to those e-mails with an outline of what went on during the process of determining what to do with an event that had gotten rain since Saturday and showed no signs of letting up until Thursday.

Most competitors at that event probably have the same issues or feelings, so I wanted to send everyone the same information as I sent those competitors and make sure that any interested party can get the factual information right from the source.  

Let me start by saying that no one liked what happened.  That includes myself, Jon O’Neil or any of the track operators.  Summit Team Finals are not supposed to be decided on a practice tree.  For those who didn't like the format, I don’t expect to change any minds with this information, only present the facts and the information we had at the time a decision was made.  It doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t like what happened and neither did the track operators.  

We had a track operator meeting Saturday in the tower.  We looked at the weather services and could see we had little to no hope for Saturday.  We decided at that meeting two things:   First - the race was going to be run 1/8th mile with no time runs on Sunday.  We are looking at a 3-4 hour dry time and 7 hours to complete the race (based on our run data from the gamblers races). Second – Sunday’s forecast was horrible (60% chance of rain for most of the day) so we had to discuss the very real possibility of not getting on the track Sunday.  We decided that we would meet again Sunday at 9:30am to re-look at the weather and discuss what we were faced with then rather than jump to a premature decision on Saturday. Sunday morning comes and it continues to look bad.  We meet at 9:30am and are now discussing the fact that we are probably not going to get on track and if we do we won’t have enough time to complete the event (in a best case scenario).  But the reality is that it is going to start and stop raining most of the day and we’re going to erase 3-4 hours of dry time with the first shower and start over.  Essentially Sunday looks bleak.  So we start discussing what our options are.  They are all bad options. The result of lots of discussion among the track ops were basically boiled down to the three options below.  The track operators were charged with presenting these options to their teams just in case.  Again, all of these are going to be bad for someone.

1)    We stay and run the first available day.  This is what the contract says we do (as voted on by the track operators).  The problem is that Monday’s forecast is 80%, Tuesday is 60% and Wednesday is 40%.  We've run on Monday's before, but have never been in a situation that the race was not started and the forecast looked that bad for Monday.  First good day looks to be Thursday.  That’s not realistic.

2)    We pull cards via blind draw.  No realistic answer there either.  

3)    We run a practice tree race.  Lots of issues.  Bottom bulb guys have problems, how would we have everyone practice, some don’t have a full size tree, everyone would need to adjust delay, etc, etc.  Not practical by any means but it was a way to at least compete and award round money and prize money.  

No one has hot feet to stay and wait out Sunday until we make a decision.  Lots of teams are not from just down the road and people are looking at leaving because they have to be home Monday for work.  We need to make a decision now (Sunday at 12 Noon) was the sentiment of most operators. The track operator meeting breaks and everyone goes back to discuss these options with their team.  We are also looking for any ideas any team members might have. 

We have another meeting scheduled for noon Sunday to discuss what the teams had to say. Our noon meeting starts and it is now in the pouring rain and rigs are pulling out (we haven’t made a decision yet, but we can see them go by the tower as we are having our meeting).  We debate the options above, plus discuss rescheduling the event for both later in the year and next year (lots of tracks have issues with this due to distance, races they have scheduled at their own tracks and the availability of PRP again).  We discuss running it between racers at their home track and sending back a few representatives later in the year (many issues with this as well).  It still boils down to waiting it out with a horrible forecast for Monday or the practice tree idea. 

All major decisions/rules at the team finals are made via a track operator vote.  No one decision can be made by one person because of the cause and effect it has on the local programs.  So the track ops simply voted on the options at hand.  The majority of track ops voted for the tree obviously.  Majority ruled, as it always does in these meetings.  The tree was seen as the only realistic option at this point considering Sunday was lousy and Monday looked worse and teams wanted a decision made now rather than later.  If Monday even looked remotely good at this point I think waiting it out would be the obvious choice, but it did not look even remotely good at that point.  Monday looked worse than Sunday and we were in the rain on Sunday at that point.  The weather service had been very accurate up to that point and the current radar confirmed what the forecast said. The thinking was there is no way to do this event since we had not completed a round (again, we have finished these on Monday before, but never been in this situation).  At the very least, the chance was given to win or lose based on some skill and not blind luck.  Some finality would come of this for those who couldn’t stay or couldn’t come back.  We couldn’t just tell everyone “sorry” and send them home with nothing. 

A track op asked me point blank what I would do (I did not vote, nor do I ever vote.  I break ties).  I said that I would wait it out.  As it turns out I would have been wrong.  I stayed at the track in my motorhome Sunday night and Monday morning.  Monday early afternoon it was raining.  It rained from 6am until I left at about 10:30.  I drove back in rain and high winds until I hit Ohio.  The reality was that we would have been in the exact same situation on Monday only we would have killed another day for those who would have stayed only to be in the same spot.  No way to do the race.  We would have waited till Tuesday, then Wednesday and eliminated whenever we could with whomever stayed.  That didn’t sound like a good or fair or realistic option either at the time.  Even while we were conducting the tree tournament it rained again during the Mod race, so waiting it out even Sunday would have been wrong as well. 

Sunday had breaks in the rain, but nothing realistically we could have used to do much with.  Monday it was dry in some places but the track got rain again.  There are a lot of "experts" who may claim we could have raced, but not with the cold temps we were looking at along with the still lingering humidity making track drying tough at best. 

As I pulled out the gate Monday morning with the wipers on high, I turned on the radio to hear "I want to soak up the sun" by Sheryl Crow.  I had to stop and regain my composure before venturing out on to the highway with my rig.

The thinking and decision making is on a wide scale at this race because of all the teams/racers who can’t come back.  We are not going to have a team finals between Beaver and Pittsburgh and it looks like that was going to happen if we waited it out till Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday. No one is happy with any of this.  I’m not happy about it and neither are you, but put in the situation we were in, we had to create options and vote on them so that every team had a voice in this.  It was the only fair way to determine the fate of this event after everyone had spent all year busting their tails to make the team. 

No one has a crystal ball and no one person could possibly make this decision.  We had to make decisions for the mass and as a group based on information we had at that time. I am also a bracket and class racer and I would have hated this as well.  I would have also hated waiting till Monday and having no recourse then either.  No one wins here and for that all I can say is I’m sorry and I hope we never have to do this again, but I don’t know what we could have done any differently in this situation.  This isn’t meant to be a buck passing deal, just an honest account of what happened and how we got to the point that we had a practice tree race as an outcome.   

The competitors are and remain our primary concern.  We recognize that this race is the culmination of a season filled with a lot of hard work and expense.  That doesn’t change the fact that no one had control of the weather.  We are all good at playing Monday morning quarterback, but we didn’t have that luxury at the time a decision needed to be made.  We just had the track operators vote as their team wanted and chose what the track op/teams decided would be the least worst of all the bad options.  The easy decision would have been to stay (which again, would have been the wrong decision based on the reality of Monday at the track).  The hard decision was to run the tree race, pay out all the round money, prize money and contingencies knowing no one on the grounds wanted to run the Summit Team Finals in that fashion. 

No one liked the end result.  We all wanted to race.  The track ops did what the majority felt was best and I applaud them for having the courage for making the tough choice.  In the reality of what Monday’s weather was, that choice turned out to be the best choice of the other options. As I said above, I’m not trying to convince you to like it.  I just want you to understand everything that went on, considered and debated and ultimately how the decision was made. 

Below are the final results of the Summit Team Finals.  The most lucrative practice tree tournemant in the history of Drag Racing.  Complete reusults will be posted as soon as the results info dries out.  

Skooter Peaco

Vice President

IHRA

2009 Summit Team Finals Champions - Dragway 42 

54 Points: Dragway 42
50 Points: Quaker City Dragway
48 Points: Pittsburgh Raceway Park
47 Points: New York International
45 Points: Dunn Tire
30 Points: Beaver Springs
22 Points: Greg Chandler Motorsports
20 Points: Thompson Dragway
13 Points: New England Dragway
9 Points:   Skyview Dragway
1 Point:    Toronto Motorsports Park