FCA/FCRA Relationship

No arguments there Rob -- and the race would have run smoothly with FCA at WGI, as it did in Georgia with the half dozen FCRA members who turned out.

So why did FCRA pull out? We can't figure it out. Honestly, it makes no sense.

Don Ambrose
Chair, FCA

Don:

The reason is because the FCA refused to allow the FCRA to run the race. The history goes back 3-4 years. John Huribell originally wrote to me years ago when I was organizing a preliminary FCA challenge race that I was not to require FCA members to have licensing standards. He said any FCA member could run that was approved by the track chair. I disagreed and suggested we should have licensing standards. I then wrote rules for the FCRA to be a self licensing body, with licensing standards similar to Grand Am, HSR and Nasa. I took out 6 million dollars of insurance and created the racing licensing and organizing body and announced that we would host races. I announced that we would attempt to organize, host and insure races at in conjunction with several popular FCA events, including the national. I used the phrase, if we must all of FCA chapters can have an FCA event and then do a separate FCRA race, we'd have an "event within an event" I said several times.

After I did that John H, and Denny Austin then wrote rules which stated that the FCA will not allow association with any club and will not allow "and event within an event", several members including myself, took that to mean that they were going to be hostile to the FCRA and the FCA working together. They were.

They also reversed their position and specifically stated there would be licensing requirements and listed several bodies, (leaving out the FCRA licenses despite the same criteria as these organizations, and stated there would be no exceptions to this rule). When the georgia national event called me to come, I said, I think they just wrote rules that will exclude us. Many of our guys are licensed by the FCRA with the same standards as the other organizations but do not have current licenses in those organizations listed by the FCA because they expired or not running in those groups. The locals for the national event in Georgia panicked because there was no one to recruit outside of the FCRA members. I told the local to go to the national and have them either let us run the race under our insurance and indemnity, or to honor our license requirements. They said no to both and then the FCRA was forced to move elsewhere. The FCA national board members claimed they were championing safety. The same board member that rebuked me for having standards.

This same board when faced with the fact that no one was showing up to their event, figured out a loop hole. They tossed their safety card out the window, and had a guy from NASA rubber stamp people with licenses that showed up. Six people showed up.

Fast forward to the Glenn. Same issue. We said, allow us to host the event. "Our rules say you cant run an event within an event, our hands are tied, we cant change the rules" Of course this was a rule they made to exclude the FCRA from hosting the race at an FCA event in the first place. "we want to be safe and make sure the people are licensed" they said. (despite the fact they threw this out the window at the national) Ok we said, then look at our licensing requirements. We just ran at a Grand Am event. And HSR (a license they honor) honors FCRA licenses. These licensed and insured racers have run 14 challenge races so far, and the exact same FCA members who want to race, raced two races at the FCA Glenn in 2009 and 2010, races organized by the same identical FCRA/FCA members. "sorry rules are rules" Of course, they were not interested in safety, the merits of the licenses or the fact that the FCRA carried more liability insurance, had licensed drivers, and could have run the race separately during a separate FCRA hour. Even the Glenn suggested that the FCRA just run and organize the race at the FCA event. They stated "sorry we cannot run an event within an event".

It was all BS. And so the FCA members who decided they wanted to race that weekend moved to a different track.

 

Al

I appreciate your response and tone. I believe, as Franco Valobra expressed to you, that you have not been aware of the history of the conflicts between certain FCA members (who wished to race challenge cars) and certain members of the board that are appointed by you.

The fact is that two members of your board have been overtly hostile to myself and other FCA members who wished to race our challenge cars at FCA events. I, along with Jeff I, wrote rules several years ago and submitted those rules to the FCA for consideration of FCA club racing. I along with other FCA members spent time and money (tens of thousands of dollars) to organize and promote several proof of concept races for the FCA, under FCA permission. During this period I received a cease and desist letter from the FCA legal counsel, which threatened me. Despite being very upset by this I and other FCA members continued to work with the FCA regions to organize, promote, prepare for and run races.

When we received indication that our efforts were not supported by the FCA, several FCA members, including myself created an independent club, the FCRA. After doing that we reached out to the FCA board members, John H, and Denny A, in an attempt to collaborate with the FCA. These board members were openly hostile to me and other FCA members who were FCRA members. We asked them if they would attempt to interfere if the FCRA and FCA attempted to do joint events. They refused to answer. Later we saw by laws written with input from these two which had language that was contrary to previous FCA positions and which, in the minds of several FCA members, was specifically written to prevent FCA/FCRA joint events. Several FCRA/FCA members took this as a specific shot at the FCRA/FCA members.

Since that time I have continued to work with the FCA to jointly host events. I worked with both the local national board and the Empire region, and Charlie Scardina Jr. and his South Beach Classic FCA event, and all of these local regions wanted a joint FCA/FCRA event. The fact is, that FCA national meddling and politics prevented each of these events. Ask the local guys their opinion. Did it appear to them that the FCA board was hostile to the working with the FCRA? Ask them. The national organizers expressed to me extreme frustration that the FCA national board was unwilling to work with us. Because of this we had to schedule a different date at the last minute. The reason the FCA board expressed for not allowing the FCRA collaboration was soon solved with a loop hole, after the FCRA was forced to find another date.

As for the Glenn event, I have it on good authority that someone from the FCA called the Glenn and told them that the FCRA was unreliable and unsafe. Whether that is true or not I cannot prove. I can only prove that the Glenn was '"spooked" and changed their mind about allowing the FCRA to separately rent the track. I then worked for months to attempt to find a solution whereby the FCRA and FCA would work together. I offered different legal options, all which were within the authority of the board to accept so that we could run together. They were all rejected, under the guise the FCA had higher standards of safety and adversion to liability. All these reasons were BS. The FCRA members then presented me with a alternate venue that weekend. The majority of FCRA members had blocked that date for racing and wanted to race. I worked for over a month, not 3 days Al, to solve this with the FCA. They flat out rejected us. The FCRA members wanted to accept the option to race at another venue that weekend. Feeling bad for the organizers who had no control over the board refusal to work with us, I offered to personally write the Empire region a check if they lost money.

Then last week I got a call from Charlie Scardina Jr. who was organizing the South Beach Classic. An FCA officer called him and told him that the FCA would not be part of an event that the FCRA was running at and that he had to chose between the FCRA and the FCA!!! Did you know this Al?????? How does this square with your statement that the FCA wishes to work with the FCRA? In the past few months I have received calls and taken meetings with the president of FNA, Grand AM, Skip Barber, the president of HSR, the PCA, CHIN, and other sanctioning bodies, all of which have expressed interests in the FCRA running events with them in 2012. We are good enough to race with FNA, Grand AM, HSR, but the FCA has openly expressed they will not even be associated with an event we are part of??? If your statements are honest and true I can only assume you do not know what is going on below you. Absent elections, only you can change this.

This direct FCA action to attempt to cancel the FCRA race and presence at the FCA event was despite the fact that the FCRA had separately rented the track for the FCRA race (what we were told we could do for the Glenn). Charlie was placed in a position of having to cancel the race or drop FCA affiliation. Charlie saw the BS and recognized that the FCRA had more event insurance than the FCA, and chose, reluctantly to drop the FCA affilliation.

Al, you may have good intentions. I'm told you are a good president. If you truly wish the FCA and the FCRA to have a good relationship, I'll tell you, in this public forum, president to president, that I wish that too. I'd would be more than happy to have a good working relationship with the FCA. If your words are true, then we should be able to work everything out. But I will tell you that there are members on your board, who's word are not true, who have alternate agendas. They have played petty politics and personal agendas that are not in the interests of FCA members. This is the same type of small mindedness that took the SCCA down from a world class organizing body, down to where it is. The FCA has major problems. Officers in power are not organizing and running the club for the best interests of its members. It was for this reason that the FCRA went independent. Its also the reason why Bob Coates and others staged a boycott of an Empire event last year and officers changed in elections.

And maybe this is for the best as the FCRA has a more narrow mission. But there is NO reason why we had to go through this.

I pledge to speak with you personally and attempt to work out conflicts for next year. I will give it a good faith effort and report all of it to the forum and our members. If we cannot work it out the FCRA will have a calendar that will be completely separate from the FCA. If we can we will be happy to host joint events. If you words are not hollow, I will look forward to hearing from you.

 

Al

You state two things that are categorically incorrect:

As I understand it, the FCA and FCRA racing rules are essentially similar, with one notable difference being that FCA requires independent licensing of all entrants – a significant but not insurmountable activity. Working together, Bob Coates and Denny Austin were, in 2 short days, able to establish a workable licensing regime that would quickly and inexpensively allow all FCRA drivers to obtain independent licenses, at the start of the Labor Day weekend."

First, it is absolutely false that the FCRA does not require licenses for all of its entrants. The FCRA has very strict guide lines for all entrants. The FCA did not originally have these. And I was rebuked for suggesting that the FCA would require licensing guidelines for all entrants by your legal counsel when I was organizing FCA preliminary races. John Huribell told me that I had no authority to require licenses for FCA challenge races. Accordingly, under your board's direction the FCA races at the Glenn in 2009 ad 2010 were run by the FCA without licensed drivers.

I thought John Huribells position that drivers did not need to have licensed criteria was unwise. It was this exchange in part which lead me to take a safer route and organize a series that had licensing requirements. The FCRA has a strict set of guidelines for licenses similar to Grand AM and HSR. HSR recognizes FCRA licenses.

Despite this rebuking by John, and after the FCA board approved an FCA challenge race at the Glenn in 2009 and 2010 without licenses, John and Denny wrote rules requiring license guidelines for 2011 but which did not allow for the acceptance or consideration of FCRA licenses.

When Denny was faced with no one being able to run at the national event, he came up with a loop hole, and had a NASA guy rubber stamp "licenses" on the six people that showed up to the national.

In advance of the Glenn event Roland and Bob Coates both went to Denny and asked him to look into the merit of the FCRA licenses and the members scheduled to run. They explained every single person to receive and FCRA license met similar if not identical criteria to receive licenses by organizations that the FCA honored. They pointed out the FCRA licenses were good enough for us to run with Grand AM. HSR honors our licenses. They pointed out to Denny that the drivers who held these licenses had run 14 Challenge races, and many of them were identical to the people that had run incident free at the FCA challenge race at the Glenn in 2009 and 2010. He still said no. It was not ok according to him according to how he interpreted the rules he wrote.

At NO TIME did Denny offer the rubber stamp to FCRA drivers that he did in Georgia. Anyone that told you we were offered this has lied to you. Ask Roland. Roland called me and told me Denny said no and there was no way we could run. We went to him over and over and over with options. Including that the FCRA would host and run the race under its insurance. I went so far as to pay for a million dollar certificate of insurance listing the FCA, and all its members and officers for the Glenn event, and it was presented and turned down. At no time did they ever offer us an option of licensing us, despite the fact that the rubber stamp would have been a joke.

We were presented with no option whatsoever. And I did not give Roland 3 days. We worked every day for hours and hours for a month. Ask him.

 

Al:

One last thing. Thank you for taking down our FCRA graphics on the FCA promotional page for FCA races.

I objected to the multiple pictures of my car, because I found it ironic that the FCA would use pictures of my car in a manner that implied it was FCA racing, when according to the FCA I am not eligible to race in an FCA race. If you want to use the picture of my car to promote FCA track events I have no problem. But I do have a problem with the FCA using pictures of my cars on a track implying it was part of an FCA racing program, when the FCA will not allow me from racing at FCA events. At best the advertising is misleading. at least its ironic.

I request that my pictures be taken down because it was not of an FCA race as it suggests. I suggest the FCA be more truthful in the depiction of the races under its program and use pictures from the one FCA race that the FCA hosted in Georgia.

 

FCRA Saturday September 3rd dinner has been moved to LAVO www.lavony.com, 39 East 58th Street, New York, NY 10022-1617 (Telephone: (212) 750-5588) 8:30pm.
LAVO seemed more appropriate to preempt and celebrate the success of FCRA as a dinner venue considering the ambiance suits the occasion best. I apologize for this late notice. My Regards, Anurag Dandiya