Eastern Motor Racing Association

Cory Canzone & Jon Katz - Chairman / CI & CTO / Marketing for Eastern Motor Racing Association (EMRA)

EMRA Time Trials give motorsport enthusiasts a place to push their cars to the limit and compete in a safe, controlled environment. Events are held on full-size race tracks across the Northeast throughout the year. Drivers compete against the clock and each other, battling for their fastest time of the day. At the end of the day the results are compiled

Contact: Cory Canzone & Jon Katz at info@emraracing.org | N/A | Visit Online!

            

• The long legacy of EMRA – Who/When/Where — and explain the history (started as a NYC car club, 50+ years ago?)
• Key differentiators from other clubs, ie: SCCA, NASA, etc – WHY EMRA?
• EMRA offers: Club Racing, Time Trials, and more!
• What is EMRA’s HPDE program like?
• How do you find, and where do you register for EMRA events? What’s involved in getting on track with EMRA?

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motorsports podcast, break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related. A little over 50 years ago, a few local car clubs joined together with the vision of building a better place to race in the Northeast. Since then, the Eastern Motorsports Racing Association, better known as Emera, has grown to become one of the premier sanctioning bodies on the East coast.

Em. Emma’s Wheel to wheel racing series is designed to deliver close competitive racing for cars of all makes and models, and their goal is to provide top competition without sacrificing any of the enjoyment. Emra members race hard and always have fun. That’s right Brad, and with us tonight is Cory Canone, chairman and Chief instructor of Emra, along with John Katz, the cio, cto, and marketing for Emra to tell us all about their new and improved program.

So welcome to the show, John and Cory. Hey, thank you very much. Happy to be here. All right, guys, like any good [00:01:00] story, there’s always an origin and we’re talking about a 50 plus year old story here. So tell us about the who, what, when and where, and explain the history of Emera and where you guys came from.

Well, I guess it was around the mid sixties. There was a bunch of guys who were sort of street racing around New York and Long Island. They all belonged to different car clubs back then, depending on the kind of car you had, you know, was the club you belonged to. So there was a bunch of different clubs, like all the British cars, you know, the little Roadsters, and they were always trying to race the Corvettes and stuff.

So the clubs, they would organize sort of street racing. They kept getting in trouble and they decided, well, listen, why don’t we, uh, fight this out on the track? Um, that’s a good way to do it. Yeah. You know, the, the legal way. So they joined together, they created a club called Emera. The club consisted of the seven different car clubs.

And they would [00:02:00] hold monthly meetings to organize it, to figure out the rules and to create a system that they could go in and race their cars legally. And some of my research, you know, kind of looking back over the history at Emra, it seems like they were one of the first racing organizations to really kind of splinter off of S C A, which is the oldest sports car club in the United States.

You guys are very closely tied in terms of being like, let’s say, second place there for the oldest car club or racing club in the us And I was looking over it, to your point, the British Car Owners Association, the Long Island Corvette Owners Association, long Island Sports Car, south Shore Sports Car and Beer Drinking Society.

I was like, there’s some really kinda interesting clubs that make up the original four of Emory. I wanna hear more about the South Shore Sports Car and Beer Drinking Society. That sounds like it’s right up my alley. That’s actually the shirt that I have on right now because I have been a member of that club since I started with Emera.

Dating myself back in the [00:03:00] mid nineties, the clubs were a big part and there was volunteers coa, the Long Island Corvette Owners Association is still around today and they’re still a part of us. A lot of the other clubs, the membership sort of fell away because you had Liverpool. There’s not really a lot of those cars that are easy to come by anymore.

And Bosco and, and the others, the membership kind of dwindled as you know, the members got older. Absolutely. Um, the South Shore Sports car and Beer Drinkers Society was open to any car the same as Scooter X. Uh, the other clubs, they, they kind of catered toward a specific model or a specific make. We tried to keep that going as long as we could.

We still have a representative and now we’re the board of directors. Used to be few of the main players that needed to be like the chairman and the race director, and then [00:04:00] you have secretary and treasurer and that kind of thing. Then you had a representative from each of the seven clubs. And so now we have a, a representative who covers most of the clubs and then we have F R C C A as well and like OA that still join our meetings, you know, because they have a vested interest in what’s happening with the club and their members.

They wanna have a place to be able to take their cars out to drive on the track or race or compete in time trials, how, however they wanna do it. So for those that don’t know, the F R C C A is formula racing, mostly open wheel cars, et cetera. And it’s kind of funny because. We’ve had a few GTMs that have joined our ranks that have come from Emra, and so there’s, you know, obviously it’s a small community and there’s always cross-pollination and things like that.

You know, we’ve heard of Emra for a long while, but then when we came on the scene in the, you know, 2018 season, let’s call it, that, we noticed that Emra. Was embracing other [00:05:00] groups and seeming to kind of continue to foster that idea of adopting smaller clubs. Cause when we got there, you guys had the 86 group, which was the B R Z FFR S guys.

They had their own class. They were competing against each other in the same way that this started 50 years ago. So, you know, that’s actually really cool and it’s very rare to see that anymore because most organizations want you to bend to whatever they got. Right. If it’s a Corvette club, you gotta drive a Corvette or a Porsche Club, you gotta drive a Porsche, S c a and nasa, obviously, they’re so big that it doesn’t matter what you drive, they figured out how to class everything and make it work.

Sort of. I’m gonna put an asterisk around that. Yeah. But uh, but yeah, I think it’s really cool because this is very unique and I don’t wanna call it an old school mentality, but. It’s very inviting to bring in these smaller groups that are trying to find their way. And em, Emma’s a great home for them to either launch their program or, I hate to say, get absorbed into the greater emra itself.

Yeah, I was gonna add also, and it’s the same philosophy with trying to bring on new drivers. So what we try to do is create a, [00:06:00] I don’t wanna say safe place, but kind of a safe place for new drivers that have never been out on track before. Come take our student program, get involved, you know, the same way that we take on smaller clubs that want to come and may not be able to rent a track.

Come join with us and we can all, you know, do this for the greater good. Since you, you were made up or you, you, you started from splintering from many or you’ve got a group of many different clubs. What if, for the new, I guess, leaders of some of the smaller clubs that might be listening to this today, what do they need to do if they want to get involved with emra, like the 86 group and, and, you know, and have their own class or whatever, like what do they have to do?

emera.org/contact. Reach out, reach out. We’re always speaking with different clubs, always speaking with people who want to join forces and, and come run with us. You know, we’re, are ever evolving and, and growing and morphing. Again, we’re just looking to push this to the next season and, and get more people involved and, you know, just get more people out there to join the Emer family.

The cost of [00:07:00] renting tracks is growing exponentially year on year, and it’s, I understand it. I understand that they are running a business, that’s what they have to do. But it gets more difficult for smaller clubs to come up with six digits for a three day weekend somewhere. This has been happening to other clubs as well.

And because the community is small, we get to talk to a lot of different people about where they’re running and people who want to step up from autocross to come and experience what a track event is gonna feel like. It’s easy to say that, uh, we’ll just take anybody, because there’s so many people that are, that are out there that don’t know.

What to do or how to begin. And so these small clubs, you have to integrate correctly. It can’t just be anyone you know on track etiquette and safety. Of course, that’s always the, the most important things. We’ll talk about that later with, with instructing and what we do with students and [00:08:00] classroom and all sort of stuff like that.

But the groups also have to fit. You can only run a certain number of cars on track at a certain time. What is your end goal? Are you looking to compete or are you just looking to get some experience to start to see if that’s something that you want to continue or, or aim towards? Speaking about Emira, what are some of the key differentiators between you all and some of the other clubs that still exist today?

The CCAs, the NASAs, the PCAs. You know, as a, as a participant or a driver or even a, a small club, uh, I guess leader. Why would I want to choose Emera? What’s your elevator pitch at the expense of sounding cheesy? We’re, we’re a big family. We really are. You know, I, we keep in touch with each other on track, off track, always looking to help each other.

I had an aha moment. It was my second season out, so I started, I’m, I’m relatively new in the, in, in the Motorsport industry, but I’ve been doing this about a little over three years now. The first day that I trailered my, uh, car to Pocono by [00:09:00] myself, no friends or anything, I get there, I go to unload. My car is stuck on the trailer.

What am I gonna do? I’m by myself. I don’t have any tools. I, my lip was hanging over the trailer. I couldn’t get the thing off. I’m about to pack up and go home. Everybody was like, stop. People were running over with tools. I mean, we had five guys in a matter of 10 minutes taking apart the trailer to get me off of the trailer to compete against them.

It’s unbelievable. The, you know, that, that was my aha moment, like right there. I was like, wow, these people actually care. Like coming from kid growing up drag racing, it’s like, everybody’s like, Hey, like I’m hiding this from you cause I need to be a 10 faster. It’s like, no. Here. It’s like, we, we wanna help you get a 10 faster.

Why don’t you try this in the next corner? Yeah. It’s a family atmosphere. It really is. I could say another differentiator. We, we don’t make you run PDE for three, four years before getting into time trial. If your instructor says that you’re capable at this point to put a transponder on the car and start running against the clock and, and start competing and with other people in your skill range, [00:10:00] yeah, let’s do it.

Let, let’s get you starting to compete. You know, we basically, we give drivers the opportunity to grow and really with their comfort level on the track, just start competing. Besides that, we’re a not-for-profit. So at the end of the day, We’re not looking to pad our pockets, we’re looking to break even at the end of the season just so we can push again for the next season and do it again.

So we try to keep our pricing, you know, as, as a dead break even. Breaking even for us is a win. That’s what we look to do. I could say our style of time trial, you know, we align with global time attacks, time trial style where, you know, get out there, you have a few sessions to do it, but run fastest time of the day on one lap and post your time up.

And we’re not breaking this out into two separate days. We’re not breaking you out into, uh, you know, a half track sprint and then averaging times and stuff. It’s very similar to the global time attack style, who we’ve aligned with. You know, what we’re looking to be is. The premier regional time attack organization to prep people to potentially compete on the national level.

And that’s [00:11:00] really what we’re looking to do. You know, John touched on it before. The people that come, they realize the atmosphere and it’s nice because it is competitive. Rob and, uh, Randy who, who helped John get his block stuck Cadillac off of his trailer, you know, they, they get the car off the trailer and then they say, all right, now I’m gonna go kick ass.

You know, but, but there’s, there is, there’s that competitiveness. Is there, but at lunchtime we’re everybody’s flipping burgers. And I do. I think that’s an important part of it because that’s what really has kept me around and made me wanna keep Emma around and to help out. I mean, we’re all volunteers. We do it because we love it and we want other people to love it the way that we do.

To John’s point, I think it was a great segue talking about becoming the premier Time trials organization. I think you guys have a massive foothold in that. I think there’s a lot of other organizations that are trying to catch up in that [00:12:00] respect, and I’m, I’m not gonna name names, but some of them will do it in conjunction with their DE programs.

Some of them will do it in conjunction with their club racing, right? They need to fill the spots to pay the bills, as you say. But there’s not this dedicated. Vision and direction and target of we wanna be time trials. And for me especially, I came from the autocross world, from the proso world, you know, grew up in that and everybody makes fun of the tr trialers sometimes, especially the club races like, well that’s just qualifying.

And I’m like, great, I’m gonna qualify at the front. Where are you gonna end up? Right? So think about it that way. Time trials is awesome for that one respect because sometimes the race is determined on where you started and so it’s really, really important. So it is Eastern Motorsport Racing Association.

What is the footprint? Define Eastern, I should say. What are some of the tracks you guys run at? We have run at a lot of different, I was gonna say, we have to break this up cuz we’re in a rebuild year right now. Being a not-for-profit last year hurt us. Because again, we run at basically [00:13:00] zero because we want to break even.

We don’t want to make money. We want to make sure that we’re giving back to the community, making sure that our pricing is in line with what we’re paying. So the problem becomes when a year like Covid hits, our down payments are gone. So we’re basically in a rebuild year right now. We aren’t able to run the tracks this year that we used to run.

So, yeah. Sorry Corey, I interrupted you there. No, it’s all good. Started out very locally to the tri-state area. We ran Bridgehampton Limerock. You know, we used to go to the old Breyer, which is now New Hampshire, you know, and we go as far as South as Summit Point. Summit Point is, you know, one of our favorite places to go.

And we have a, a good group of guys who love the track, and we end our season there. We’ve been to Watkins Glen, we’ve been to Beaver Run, which is now Pit Race, which that’s a little, it’s a little far, it’s, it’s a little bit of a stretch. When we’re going to do an event like that, we try to coordinate with another group, or we’ll reach out to some of the car clubs that are local out there and, you know, just to [00:14:00] get the word out.

But we’re excited about Palmer. We started Palmer three years ago right before, uh, the Pandemic. And we had a great event there. We had great, uh, weather. And the turnout was nice. Then we had to cancel in 2020. You know, going back this year was tough, but we had a, we had an amazing event there. We had a lot of new drivers showing up from oral crossing route, but that actually gets us into a conversation about Emera and the services that it offers.

So when we joined with Emran came out during the 2018 season, it was still kind of this mixed bag of, there was club racing time trials. And de all at the same time. So is that still the case or has it now shifted in 2021 as you guys are rebuilding? It has shifted a little bit. Our focus was always on the time attack.

We like to have the club racing. That is a session and it’s fun for everyone to [00:15:00] watch. Our club racers are, are very dedicated. I, I am one of them, but the global time attack is where the community is moving towards and we’ve been noticing that. I mean, back the way it used to be. What Emera would do is we would have a weekend, it would be Saturday was time trials day and Sunday was race day.

There started to be a shift. As times changed and the cars sort of changed and people wanted to take their street cars and bring them to the track and go compete for a trophy, it’s a little harder to police. Uh, I’m not gonna lie about that, because you’re a street car, you’re changing it all the time.

You’re driving it every day, you’re doing little things. And so every time you come to the track, your car is a little bit different. So how do you, how do you really keep tabs on that? You know, whereas like a race car or a, a dedicated track car will have a log book. So we’ve tried to adjust and uh, [00:16:00] John hates it this way, but the way that time trial is used to happen, you would practice for the day, you would have your two or three sessions for the day, and then at the end of the day you would line up, depending on the track, three or four cars that were on track at the same time to do two time laps.

That was actually like, really like qualifying. You would just go out there and lay, lay it down. You know, for your two labs, all your practice for the day, you could have ran three seconds faster earlier in the morning, but it doesn’t matter. It was before transponders. And transponders made it easy to track everything you were doing all day long.

Mm-hmm. So we had volunteers with stop watches and so I, I thought it was fun and, and I thought it really like, it, it sort of defined the day, you know, you were aiming towards something, which I don’t like. I’m with you on that. I’d rather Yeah. Listen And I want consistency. Yeah, consistency. You’re learning throughout the day.

You’re getting potentially faster [00:17:00] all day. You know. Cory, you mentioned Palmer. I could tell you again, I, I’m a very new driver, so for me, the beginning. Of Palmer to the end of the day at Palmer was night and day difference. I learned so much this season just from that like weekend at Palmer that I could tell you.

Yeah, I may have been, I was probably faster at the end of the day, but the, the track is getting greasy or something, you know, something goes wrong with the car. Like I, I’m all about like, Hey, if you got out there at, at first session, nine in the morning, You just ran a killer lap and you can’t touch that for the rest of the day.

That should be your killer lap. Like that’s where I’m at. I hear you on that. Cuz when I came to Emra to do time trials, I had already been trialing with S E C A. And what funny is somebody from Emra, one of the veterans that was there, he said to me, and I was kind of like, I kept talking about how I was reaching.

I had this target time in my head and I’m keep reaching for it. Yep. You know, I’m just burning gas and tires at this point. And he goes, he says to me, if you can’t do it in nine laps, get off the track. I was like, wow. And you know what’s funny? [00:18:00] I still hold that true to this day. Even if I’m at a DE and I’m just playing around with the car, if I can’t get done when I need to get done in nine laps, I’m off the track.

That’s it. I, it’s not worth it at that point. Cause you’re just, you’re wasting time, fuel and energy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I thought that was funny. But those are the things you pick up, right? Every organization, every discipline of motorsport brings something different to the table. And this is one of those things I, I, you know, I’ll never forget.

So this is great. So there’s like three different offerings here. Club racing, we kind of get what that is. A bunch of cars going out, class, running for points, time trials. It’s you against your buddies and your class against the clock. It’s qualifying. That’s right. It’s like autocross, et cetera. Then there’s H P D E and I don’t think a lot of people realize that Emra offers high performance driver’s education.

And to John’s point earlier, your guys’ goal is to transition people into more competitive racing. Either time trials, Or club racing. Let’s talk about the de side of Emra for a little bit, because that’s where a lot of people are going to wanna get their start. I think people may be a little bit arms length to say, I want to go [00:19:00] racing.

There’s a few of us that are nuts, like me and Brad that would say, all right, let’s just do it from the word go. But you know, you gotta ingratiate people into the system. So let’s expand upon your DE program. Let’s talk about it a little bit and get people familiar with what you offer. So basically what we offer is a student program.

Student program does consist of classroom sessions and one-on-one instruction. In car, what we do is start the day with track etiquette. That’ll be your first classroom session, safety etiquette, understanding that you, you know, you need to see flaggers and flag stations and what the flags are. Your first time out with the instructor, you’re now seeing this first hand on the track.

You come back in, we go back into the classroom session and. Let’s start working on your line and how you’re gonna drive on the track. You go back out with your instructor and they’re, they’re showing you that firsthand. So what we like to do is a one-on-one instructor to student in your own vehicle. And it can be anything from a stock lease through a, you know, a prepped race car.

If it’s your first time out, we’re gonna stick you in the car with an instructor to go through [00:20:00] this program. And we do this for a while. You know, we wanna make sure that the instructors say like, Hey, you’re okay for me not to be in the car. Now you understand weight transfer and, and, and lines and, and etiquette, and you’re looking at the flaggers and you know what the flags mean and you’re getting more comfortable on the track.

They’ll take a step back to say, okay, you know, maybe it’s now time for your, for your novice license. What that means is you can go out by yourself. We’re gonna watch you obviously, but you can get out there in our student group without an instructor in the car. We will eventually allow you to have a transponder in the car and you can start looking at your times and saying, Hey, you know, I’m beginning to get faster on the track.

I’m beginning to understand how to drive. And that’s what we try to do is, is mold you into a better driver. To eventually start running real time attack or time trials. And if you want to get into racing, we can sponsor you in our race program as well. We talked about track etiquette and that’s kind of a loaded term, which I like it.

It’s a great term, but I think inside of that, especially at ra, the stress that I saw as a coach [00:21:00] was on passing. Passing is the most important thing because of the way your guys’ events are structured, especially when you move into competitive racing. So do you want to talk about that just a little bit more?

You know, in our red student group it’s basically red is our novice in student group point, the pass in designated zones only, and obviously, Look out for a blue flag, you’re holding up the crowd, you know that, that’s etiquette as well. Yeah. What we do is in, in our driver’s meeting and in the classroom sessions at, at each track we say, Hey, these are the designated zones that you’re allowed to pass in.

It has to be a point to pass. It’s when you move up into the white group, which is your intermediate, there’s other passing zones on these tracks, but we wanna make sure that people are following where they’re supposed to be passing and point to pass when they’re supposed to be pointing people past. If you’re pointing somebody past, don’t drag race them to the end of the, the straight, let them pass.

So these are the things that, that we need to police and we do police because it’s important, obviously, safety on the track and for. All of us to learn, but eventually you move into open passing and passing with no point buys as well, correct? Correct. Yeah. [00:22:00] Once you step past that intermediate group into the blue group, that’s the advanced group.

Yes. That’s open passing. We recommend having some sort of safety in the car. We’d like to see more than just a three point harness and you know, we’d like to see a, a, a harness bar, you know, at the very least with some sort of Hans device because factory cars are getting really, really fast and you’re turning some real fast lap times.

It can be dangerous and so we want to keep it as safe as possible. We, we are recommending Han’s device or something similar in harnesses and keeping it safe. We like to know who’s in the blue group. They’ve been around us for at least a couple of years so that we’ve seen them on track. We, we know how they act and the people in the blue group.

All those advanced drivers, they know the other advanced drivers who are showing up to the track that day. If there’s someone that, that you’re passing in an area [00:23:00] that you, maybe you know that person, you’ve seen him before and you say, you know what? I know this guy’s lying through here and I’m not, I’m not gonna try it right now.

I’m gonna wait until the next straight away and I’m gonna pass him over there. And I think that’s part of that learning process. And it’s super important to take the car home in one piece. It’s mutual respect too. You know, you, you mentioned the, the drivers know each other. I can tell you, even in, I, I race in the, in the white group, and I can tell you that I know the people I’m competing with.

I know who’s faster than me. I know where they’re gonna overtake me in what corners. So it’s mutual respect. You see someone coming up on you, you let them by again, especially in the time trial world, they’re trying to lay down a fast lap. You don’t want to get in their way. Same way, if I’m running a great lap, I don’t want someone in my way.

So when you see someone popping up behind you, you give them the point by it’s mutual respect. And you give it to ’em early. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, you stay on your line, you point ’em by, they go on the outside. I mean, if you lose a 10th on that, you’re golden. You know? Keep going. Exactly. I wanna clarify something.

For [00:24:00] those that are listening, John, the instructed group, the coached group, the DE group is red. Correct. Once you transition out of red into white, now you’re in a trials group, is that correct? That is correct, yes. The red group is both student and novice. It’s the same people that are sitting in the classroom sessions on their first, second, third day out there.

Yes. Are gonna be the people that are racing for their first season in the same group. So we keep the novice group together. If we notice somebody is getting more comfortable, we notice somebody is, is really pulling times, you know that they’re, they’re getting better, they’re learning. We may approach them and say, Hey, it’s time for you to bump into.

The white group, it’s a little more aggressive in that white group. So maybe let’s get an instructor to, to jump in your car for the first session and see if you’re okay with that. If you’re not comfortable moving, you can stay in the red group. You know, it’s all about how comfortable you are and, and how safe you’re being.

And again, it, it’s about respect on the track as well. So this means that your guys’ progression model is a little bit different than the standard de organization because as you move from that introductory group into intermediate, [00:25:00] as you guys call it a white group, now you’re racing, it’s you against the clock, against the buddies in your class, right?

As you said, you know who you’re competing against, you know, who’s fast on track. So how does somebody then progress from there up into, let’s say, blue group, the advanced group, or even become an instructor with an emera? What’s that model look like? Because it is slightly different than the way everybody else handles it.

It definitely still takes some time. We feel that the people who are coming to Emra know that, that we are a time trial group, that our focus is on competition. We like for the students to have at least two instructors ride with them. If the first instructor signs them off, then we say, Okay, let’s see how another instructor feels.

You are in the car just to get a, you know, a different sample when you get signed off to run solo, we wanna see you have, you know, no incidents, no infractions for three events. Then you’ll get that novice license. So after that year, we’ll see how you feel, how comfortable you [00:26:00] are, where you’re at with your car.

A lot of the thing that is difficult with the intermediate group is that you have guys who are fresh out of the red group and then you have guys who are in there, or you know, guys or girls who are in there who are ready to step up into the advanced group. It’s a really big gap between the driver experience sometimes, you know, you could have a, a car in there that’s a, a spec Miata.

You know, and then you have a car in there that’s a Z oh six Corvette. That’s hugely faster. And so that’s the multi-class type of thing, is what you really are learning in the lower classes. I’m gonna jump in and also say that certain tracks drivers may be in different groups as well. When I first started running in the white group, if we went to a track that I’ve never been at before, I’m not gonna run in the white group my first session out.

I’m gonna run in the red group. I’m learning the track, I’m learning the corners. I don’t need to hold anybody else up in, in the white [00:27:00] group while I’m learning the track. But the same regard, I’m not gonna be flying up on people in the red group cause I know they’re students. That makes absolute sense.

Yeah. Yeah. And maybe you wanna request, uh, you know, an instructor, Hey, you know, can you show me the line? We like that one-on-one and we like for everybody to have an instructor. And then, you know, so after that first sessions, you, you come back to the classroom, you talk about what happened, you, you discuss it and.

Were there anything that you thought that was maybe alarming or you weren’t comfortable with? Or were there other things that you were surprised that you acclimated so quickly to and what they, what your experience was? Because you know, you, you talk about it and you’re excited about it, and that’s all part of the learning process.

People will stay in the white group, some people will stay in that group indefinitely. They like it there. They don’t want to do anything else to their car. They really, they don’t feel that they need that added safety because they’re not trying to [00:28:00] go much faster than they’re already going. We’re, you know, we’re okay with that.

That makes the group sort of gel because there are veterans there that the new guys can talk to and say, you know, what are, are you seeing anything from me? And everybody’s pretty open about that family type atmosphere. Everybody’s open about, oh, well this is what I’m seeing, you know, this is when I came up on you, or when you came up on me, and.

You know, you’re maybe breaking a little bit too early for this. I think you can go deeper, and so that sharing of information and that camaraderie it, it really helped. To get back to your question, if you wanna become an instructor with us, you’ll need to be at least with us for a couple of years and we need to, to really know how you drive on track.

We’ll have instructors sit with you and then we’ll have you sit as the instructor with one of our instructors and then play that back and forth. Our new classroom [00:29:00] instructor, bill O’Brien, he’s super good. He’s down from your guys’ area, actually. Summit Point, he’s a spec Miata driver and he’s huge PowerPoint with so many different points and we go over so many different things.

It’s hard to really take everything from the classroom session in on one day. You know, I mean, they go over everything from the green flag to the moss line. It’s like, it is so broad. You’re like, holy crap. You know, this is too much information to take in. So we recommend what, what we think what new drivers should do in sitting in on the classroom a second time.

To me, more information is always better. It’s a very difficult day when when you’re on that first day, you’re learning so much and you’re so amped and you don’t know what to expect. That I feel like sitting in on that classroom session, the next time you come or the third time you come, you’ll pick up even more information because you know what to expect.

You’re not thinking about [00:30:00] what’s gonna happen with my car when I get in my car, who’s my instructor gonna be? All of these different things. And you can really sort of focus on the information. And I think you’ve got a lot more, and I think there’s a couple really good points you made in that, that we need to unpack and clarify for people that are listening to this and kind of comparing it to a standard de type of organization or even a club racing organization.

When you move into that white group, you, you made a comment about how some people seem to stay there forever. The first thing that came to my mind was it makes a hundred percent sense if you’re playing the points game. If you’re in a class in a competitive class and you know that if you do something to the car is gonna move you out of that class, or if you move into this other group, it’s gonna mess up.

You have your target time that you know you can achieve. It’s messing with your points, especially if you’re competing for a championship. So when you get into that mindset on the competitive side of the house, it. It’s a big game of chess. It’s not about being the fastest car on track every weekend. It’s about being consistent.

It’s about getting your points, because you’re gonna beat out the guy at the end. [00:31:00] He had the fastest lap this weekend, but he only showed up for one event and you did three. Right? And so you’ve, you’ve nailed it at that point. So there’s a lot more dynamics to this whole, let’s call it game, than what you would have in a standard progression model where it’s like, I gotta get to advanced groups so I can just be left alone and drive it my fastest I can ever drive.

Kind of. Doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t really matter, right. From what we’ve witnessed, a lot of groups in Emra are actually based on how the person has prepared their vehicle. Like you said, is it a streetcar or is it a full on race car, you know, t tu car or s TM car, or something like that, where it’s like, yeah, it’s fully prepped.

It doesn’t belong with pedestrian vehicles. You know what I mean? Let’s put it that way. Touch on a lot of different things. Even the coaching is different. Like when I was coaching for Emra in the 2018 season, I actually really enjoyed it because it was the time where I got to sit down and strategize with other drivers and say, this is how I can make you faster.

There’s still the safety aspect in all of this, but it’s very different in a standard organization where you’re just like, [00:32:00] okay, we’re gonna be safe, we’re gonna have fun. And if you learn something that’s awesome. Instead at Emra it’s like, let me teach you how to take turn 10 at Summit point, at 90 miles an hour, flat out right in a Miata.

You know, that kind of thing. And that’s exciting. That’s exciting for everybody because it’s a different way of teaching develops if you want to, develops you as a driver if you want. Absolutely. If you want to. Absolutely. But I’m segueing here. I know this is a long way for me to get there, but there’s always that safety aspect, right?

We need to be cognizant of that. You know, the growing trend nowadays in the de world is this idea of track insurance, and I only bring it up because. I wanna make sure that people understand we have had locked in on here. We had a representative come on and explain to us how it works. And so I want people to know that the minute you put the transponder on the car, you’re no longer at a de.

So it’s very important to understand that red group and how it works at emra. So if you’re there learning and doing the DE stuff, you’re not running against the clock, you’re [00:33:00] covered. But the minute you move out and you put timing on it, now you are racing. It’s very, very different. So I just wanted to kind of throw that out there so that people understand that.

But also leads to get another question, which is if I do wanna go racing, what kind of additional equipment do I need? Are transponders provided? What should I be buying? What should I be looking for? You know, things like that. No, but you’re absolutely right. It track insurance, once it becomes a competitive event, track insurance for the competitor is much more expensive.

Yeah. It’s more expensive for us as well to hold a competitive event. You know, our track insurance that we have to get. You know, it’s not like a non-competitive day. Like you can just kind of, oh yeah, we’re just gonna be out of the track. Or nobody’s competing. Like you said, once you put that transponder on the car and you are posting and times up and giving out trophies, it’s a whole different ballgame.

So there’s also people who run in white and blue that don’t use transponders. They’re out there, they’re competing, quote [00:34:00] unquote, but they’re not looking at times. They’re out there just to chase down people and enjoying just being in the faster groups. So that would still qualify for track insurance if there was an oops moment, let’s just say yes, because they’re not officially competing.

They just happen to be in a run group that has a lot of competitors in it. For those that want to transition to time trials, right to time attack, what do they need? We all know the safety stuff. We’ve gotta buy belts and harnesses and fire extinguishers and all that fun stuff that we should have Anyway.

If we’re really dedicated to this motor sport, whether it be club racing de, or time trials for that matter, but what extra do you need for time trials specifically? You don’t really need much If your car passes tech, all you need is a transponder. We’re gonna try and get you in the right class and you’re gonna be competing it.

It could be that easy once you start to look at the rules and people will come and they’ll, you’ll see a car in your class. They’ll just be so much faster than you, and you’re like, how the heck is that possible? [00:35:00] How can this be in my group? You start looking at the rules and, oh, well his tires have a 200 tread wear, or got a dedicated set of wheels and tires and taken some weight out or, or links across the car are replaced, which are free.

The rules were updated last year. We thought we needed a refresh. We worked with, uh, a guy, Mario, and we were able to keep the rule book short so that it’s not huge volume that no one’s ever gonna read. But RIS sort of created the improved touring type of classification, which is very minimal if any power modifiers.

Talking about just a simple intake and exhaust, you gotta keep all the mechanicals and the engine factory stock and the brakes factory stock and can’t move the battery around and different things like that. We had a little bit of modifications to that, like allowing fender [00:36:00] flares or rolling of the fenders and different lightning mods and stuff like that.

You know, suspension is pre as long as you use the dock mounting locations, but as technology progressed, you were able to get like wicked awesome stuff. In those stock locations. That completely changed. You know, the dynamic of the car where you were just putting a a Coney or a Bilstein up in there. Now you’re putting a three-way adjustable remote reservoir in the same thing, and you’re like, well, I bolted it to where the Bilstein bolted.

So, you know, that’s fair. Right? We’ve changed a lot and we got the car classifications list and it’s ever growing. You know, there’s always a new cars coming out and you have to have like 10 different classes just for cor Corvettes, let’s say, because even this year you have the c7, the Stingray, the Z oh six and the c8, [00:37:00] what the hell?

They’re all in different classes. You know, they all have different abilities and different speeds. It’s a difficult game. We have a good points system for it, and we’re confident that this year it has worked pretty well and the cars are becoming, you know, more fair. I think that based on some times we may start to require safety because we’ve seen a couple of bad incidents.

Not just within our own group, but within other groups with the community. There was a, a couple of bad crashes with NASA as well this year. Thankfully, everybody’s okay, but it, it really begs the question, you know, how much safety, how fast are you going, and how much safety do you really need in the car?

The cars are getting so fast now, so fast. Yeah, I, I always say like, Hey, a, a stock, you know, civic type R from the factory, change your brake fluid. You’re out on track and you’re going fast in that car. Yeah. I mean, your mom’s Camry makes 300 horsepower these [00:38:00] days, so. That’s right. Put that in perspective.

So going back to something you mentioned several times, Corey, you don’t need much to do time trials, but you do need a transponder. What our guests and our audience can’t see is I’m holding my, my laps in my hand. Nice. A lot of people are probably thinking, oh man, this must be some big old box. I got a mount in the trunk with antennas, so I look like a cop car or something from emsa or, you know, something like that.

And in reality, this thing’s about the size of an old flip phone and you mount it pretty much anywhere in the car. It’s, you know, remote charge. Remote signal, all that kind of stuff. And you put this somewhere in the vehicle and it reports to the tower at the track and basically gives you guys position and time off every lap of where each car is.

And so the investment in one of these, you know, depending on what you want to do, if you wanna buy one, especially one of the old school ones, you know, go on eBay, that the prices are really high for a hardwired one. Yeah, the new My laps, you know, they’re pretty much, I’d hate to say the only game in town for this sort of thing, but it’s what everybody uses for both motorcycles and cars.

It’s a [00:39:00] subscription based service. They almost throw this thing at your head. But you gotta pay the license fee for every year. And they do some promotions and whatnot. Let’s call it, I think the last time I renewed it was like a hundred bucks for a year or something like that. Yeah, but don’t quote, don’t quote me on it.

Right. So it, it fluctuates from time to time. So you’re in it for an extra, let’s say a hundred bucks, 200 at worst to go racing, not doing anything else to your car. Like you’re saying outside of maybe some safety stuff. Maybe you want to have a fire extinguisher with you, better tires, you know, brake stuff that you’d be spending money on at a de anyway.

Correct. So to be official, you need one of these little boxes. Right. And that to your point is all you really need to go competitive time trialing at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah. What’s nice also is with registration, we also rent transponders as well if you don’t own one. So we have a bunch of those that we pay the subscription on every year.

And when you get to the track, We assign you a transponder with a mount, a couple zip ties right onto tow Hook your front bumper, wherever you want to drop that and can start time in your car. [00:40:00] That’s right. Now, I will say in car is really up to you these days. There’s a lot of really cool options and we talked about ’em on our drive-through episode a couple of times.

You’ve got the new Garmin that just came out. You’ve got the traditional, the AIM solos. You’ve got guys using their phones using Harry’s and Track Addict and things like that. So for in-car feedback guys, just to understand that the My Lapse is not designed to give you immediate feedback. It is designed.

To talk to the tower at the racetrack and give officials your time and position on track. So if you’re looking for something in car, there’s a lot of different options and I can’t suggest one versus the other cuz they all provide a different feedback and different training. Especially the new Garmin was developed to give immediate feedback and give training and things like that versus some of the older like legacy tools that are out there.

So lots of other stuff, you know, once you don’t have an instructor in the right seat with you anymore to try to help you become a faster driver and a better time trailer. Absolutely. To be clear, we couldn’t accept times from [00:41:00] your. Solo. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We need an, you know, we need an official time scorer, and that’s what the transponder is.

So that’s for us, and you can watch it live. I mean, we have a few different dreaming, you know, race, hero and different things where you’ll be able to see your times as they come through. You know, once you pull back into the pit, it’ll have your session. It’s instant. Which is also hilarious when you have friends and family at home, especially your wife texting you going, well, that session sucked for you, didn’t it?

Yeah. Yeah. The race hero is awesome for that. You know that, that positive feedback. Yeah. Hopefully your wife’s at the track having a picnic though, while you’re out. Sometimes. Yes. But otherwise she’s on, she’s on race here or watching from home, but still, it’s kind of cool to have that ability, right. For still your friends tune and see what you’re doing.

It wasn’t that long ago where it was with stopwatches and Exactly. And writing stuff down and we had a bunch of [00:42:00] volunteers. Marty Barnett and Callie and Jenny and Caroline, and they, they would have their stopwatches and you’d be waiting, standing, waiting for them to come out with the sheet to see where you were.

And it’s so crazy how much it’s changed in in such a short amount of time. Technology has been a good thing for time trials, that’s for sure. I can’t say that for a lot of other things, but in this case it has really, really helped. But I think there’s one, one final question Brad has about kind of the structure of Emran and how you run your weekend and and how things work.

And I think it’s a little bit more in line with coaching before we transition to our next segment. So Brad, first of all with the coaching, so you mentioned before that you want to coach with Emra. You need to be with Emra for a while. So is that to say that you don’t accept certifications from reputable, uh, other groups like S C A or nasa or PCA or B BMW or even Motorsports Safety Foundation.

Do you take those credentials and and give them any way when you’re trying to decide if you’re gonna allow somebody to coach with you? [00:43:00] Yeah. Is there any reciprocity there, I think is what Brad’s getting at. Yeah, we absolutely accept that and we welcome it. The instructors that we get from, especially from the Safety Council, that’s, you know, that’s like first and foremost.

It, it’s just, it’s amazing. And those guys are, they’re, you know, they’re great. We offer, obviously, discounts and different things for instructors who come along. Typically instructors that come from other places. We’d like to know you a little bit before we would allow you into any of our run groups because of that, that whole safety thing and.

Who are you running with and what are you used to? Cause we don’t know how you drive, but you know, instructors can go out in any session if we know who you are, you know, hey, you’re here, you’re doing work for us, and you go out and have fun whenever you have the time available to you during the day to go and do that.

We absolutely accept all credentials and, and all licensing. You [00:44:00] know, even if you have a time trial license with NASA or even uh, H P D one or two, or three with nasa. You know, we’ll try to put you in the group that will we feel that you’re most comfortable with. And if we say, Hey, listen, we, we don’t really know you, you don’t really have a lot going on, but you know, we can see, you know, another thing for technology is we can see where you registered and, and who you ran with and when the last time that you ran an event was.

So it’s like, well, okay, so we’ll, we’ll put you in the red group for now and come talk to registration or one of the group leaders cuz e each one group has a, has a group leader that anybody in the group can go to during the day with any questions or concerns. And you think maybe you are a little too advanced for this group, or maybe the group is too advanced for you.

Listen, I’d like to step down or I’d like to step up. What do you think about that? And this happened just at New Jersey. We had a, a gentleman come to run with us [00:45:00] and we didn’t know his credentials and we had him in the red group and one of our other drivers knew him, said, oh, I, you know, I know this guy.

We’ve run together and we different events and stuff and I think that he’s ready for the white group. So we moved him up and after that first session, it was like, okay, the corner workers didn’t tell us, you know, Hey, that car number. Whatever was doing some crazy stuff. We asked him if he felt comfortable and, and he was, and so that was, that was where he stayed.

So most of the basic points are there with all the instructors. We would accept them signing off on people as well. But then again, we would have one of our regular instructors also go to sit in the car with someone before we would let them go solo and. Just to make sure that they’re on par with our sort of way of doing things.

Right. So I wanna pull a couple threads there for instructors and coaches that may be [00:46:00] listening to this episode as something you hit on and something I, I know I’ve experienced working with Emra in the past, everybody pays to play. So that’s really important because coaches have come accustomed to a certain way of being, I will put it that way.

I don’t mind it because to your point, John, earlier, it’s a nonprofit organization. The bills gotta get paid. So I don’t mind throwing in and saying, Hey, it’s gonna cost X for the weekend, even if it’s at a discount. But the upside of that is coaches get to go anywhere they want and they get to compete as well.

Right. So that that is correct. Yeah. So you are racing as well. So that’s kind of an added bonus is you’re giving back, you’re teaching, you’re prepping other, you know, potential racers and whatnot. You still gotta pay to play because you are a competitor as well. So that’s really important. But let’s talk about expectations of a coach during the day.

What’s the student to coach ratio? You know, things like that. Are there anything else special to Emra that coaches should be aware of coming to the organization for the first time? We expect the coach to [00:47:00] be interactive with the student most of the day, on track, off track as well. Answer any questions that they might have.

Go ahead John. Yeah, I was gonna say share the experience again. You’re learning something in the classroom, you’re looking at a, at a PowerPoint deck. When you get out onto the track, you’re experiencing it. To be able to share that experience and and to coach through that experience is what we’re looking for.

Yeah. And we want the coaches to make the students feel as though they’re important to them during the day. Cuz in the past it’s, you know, there’s been instructors who are like, oh I gotta, I gotta go, you know, my session’s coming up. Well listen, this isn’t your only session. You can go and run in any session you want.

Take the time and, and help to groom them. Cuz we want them to be happy and we, we want them to enjoy the experience and to get something out of it. If they want to continue, we want them to continue with us. And, and you never know that guy that you’re teaching might become your rival might end up in your class.

Right. And who knows, might actually beat you. Get that hot lap that one day, you know. [00:48:00] So, and it’s so it’s a one-to-one ratio. You, you’ve mentioned the ratio before. We have a, an instructor, one-to-one with the student that instructor’s assigned to the student all day. Very good. Yeah. We’ll go through the registrations and we’ll sort of see what the vehicle is that they’re bringing.

And what their expire experience was, if any. And then we’ll assign them and the instructor will have an interaction with them even before the event just to kind of say hello familiarize themself and you know, tell them what to look for when they get there. Like I had said before, it’s a, it’s a lot. In one morning you’re like nervous and you got all this tension and I’m going here, I gotta register, I gotta get my car teched, I gotta meet my instructor.

Then I gotta go to the classroom and it’s like, it’s just, you know, information overload. And so we want to try and make that experience as easy as possible. So one last thing about this experience. Are there student evals and are [00:49:00] there instructor evals, you know, vice versa where people are grading each other and if so, how does that work?

Absolutely. John, you wanna touch on that? You know the system better than I, but Okay. Yeah, yeah, go for it. Yeah. It’s an automated system where the emails will be sent to both the instructor and the, the student. For the day, as well as there is a sign off sheet for the student that the instructor and the student both will fill out together before they hand it in.

At the end of the day, emails go out, they’re basically surveys. They go out after the event, but the sheet gets filled out. The day of the event, it’s anonymous. It’s only anonymous because we don’t share that information with the instructor or the student. It’s really for us, and maybe if there are concerns and things, we’ll discuss it with the instructor and the student the next time that they show up because we don’t want people to hold back if something happened that you didn’t like.

By the same token, you want [00:50:00] people to also say what they enjoyed. You know it. You wanna have that positive feeling, that positive vibe that. Hey, you know, this was great. I had so much freaking fun. Instructor was great and I’m coming back. A couple of our instructors are super awesome and we always get great evals from them.

You know, they have great feedback and you know, what can you say? You just say, Hey, instructor of the weekend. You know, Randy, I think we’ve done a really good job of covering, to your point, the vibe, the field, the way Emma, Emma is, and the how you guys operate. So I think it’s time we transition a little bit and you know, we’ve got guys now listening to this going, you know what I, I wanna give Emma a go.

So now we need to get down to the nitty gritty. And so I’m gonna turn to Brad for some follow on questions. Yeah, so I’m new to Emera. I I’ve never run with you guys before. I mean, I have, I’m just pretending he’s role playing now. Yeah. Where do I find an Emera event? How do I register? Where do I register?

Yeah, so you can find us on [00:51:00] any of the social media channels, uh, at Emma racing on Instagram slash emma racing on Facebook, Emma racing.org on the worldwide web. But if you go to emer racing.org/events, we will show the events for the season included in your, your registration now is photography. You’ll see all the past event on the site as well.

But yeah, you can find us, you know, that way. Do you register through Emory’s website or do you use something like Ms. R or club registration? Yeah, so we’re. We’re using, uh, MSR Motorsports Reg for those that aren’t familiar, right? Yeah. And the link, the link for all the events, you know, on the webpage, it will link directly to Ms.

Reg. Most of us have a an MS Reg account at this point, and you just type in Emera All the events that are available to register for will show up. Okay. And then so what’s the average cost for a weekend at a, at an EMRA event? So it depends on the track. Obviously we mentioned before prices are going up.

There are more expensive tracks and less [00:52:00] expensive tracks. What we try to do is estimate the potential turnout based on previous years, divide that by what it costs us, and that’s what it’s gonna cost for the day or the weekend. Typical event’s gonna cost you between 2 75 to 3 25 for the day. Try to reduce that if you come for the weekend.

So anywhere between, let’s call it six fifty, seven hundred for the weekend. Certain tracks are cheaper than that, but we’re able to bring the cost down on top of that. Again, if you wanna, uh, rent a transponder. I believe it’s $40 for the day, 60 for the weekend. You mentioned that, you know, you’re concentrated in the tri-state area, you know, I guess up there in your near Lime Rock and, and you know, those type of tracks up there.

What would you consider your home track or your home base? Yeah. Where you have the most events per year, I guess Bridgehampton? No, no. Um, oh, I miss Bridge Hampton. So I think at this point it would have to be either Limerock or New Jersey Motorsports. I think at this point, our premier event of the season has become New Jersey Motorsports and we do [00:53:00] something unique there, which is Lightning one day, Thunderbolt the next day.

So we’re able to split that up. We now do go-karting on Saturday night. Try to, uh, break things up, get everybody in a, in a spec cart, you know, get everybody out there together. Don’t, don’t walk over to the go-karts with a beer in your hand though. Whatever you do. No beer in your hand. Oh my God. Everybody comes walking over with a beer and they’re like, you can’t go.

You can’t go, you can’t go. We’re like, what? Yeah. So that weekend is, it really is a, a great event. You know, I, I wish I had it on video, but man, it is funny watching everybody go from like lightning over to Thunderbolt with like half put together trailers, cars hanging off and like this train of cars and trailers coming through is, is awesome.

I would call that our premier event, but I do think that probably Limerock is our home track because we’re doing two events there a year and we’re gonna also incorporate the autocross and the skid [00:54:00] pad. The morning will be the autocross and the skid pad, and then we’ll go on track from one to six, a very quick day.

You’ll have five 20 minute sessions in that time, and we’ll run ’em quick. They’re gonna run like, like clockwork. It’s a lot of fun and it adds a, a bit of variety to the events. Say Lime Rock’s a little rushed, uh, with five 20 minute sessions typically get a little more track time. It, it’s closer to two hours of track time.

The, uh, the full day events. Good to know. Uh, I’ve looked at your schedule. I’ve picked n J and P because I like Thunderbolt, so I’m picking that Sunday. I’ll probably come out Saturday for go-karting. What do I need to do now? Do I just show up and I can drive? Do I mean, do you guys do tech? Not everybody does tech, but if you’re a racing organization, I’m assuming that you guys do.

And what’s involved with tech? What do the drivers need to know? So every car gets tech. That goes out on track. I could speak for at least the personal safety long sleeve shirt, closed toe shoes, long pants. Corey, you did Tech [00:55:00] Man, you should take over on, on this one. It’s a pretty rigorous test because the car is gonna be out there doing things it’s not normally doing.

You know, every day you have a race car or a, a dedicated track car that we issue a log book and we’ll do a season tech on that, which is once a year, and then you just kind of come over with your helmet and your log book and you say, Hey, I’m here. I’m checking in and get you a sticker. And, and you’ll be good to go.

But. For the other cars, you know, when you show up, you’ll go to registration and you’ll be contacted prior to showing up by the registrar if there’s any questions from him, or also just to give you the information packet to familiarize yourself with what the schedule of the day is gonna be and where you know where to go.

There’ll be a map of the track and the paddock and everything, and it’ll point out where registration and tech is gonna be. You’ll go through that. You can line your car up at tech inspection. There’s usually three or four guys [00:56:00] there who are looking over the cars, so you have to empty your car out, nothing in it.

We even require you to take out the floor mats, which some people have a problem with because floor mats today, they’re, they’re molded in and they got hooks, and if something happened, god forbid, a hook broke or something, and that mat bunched up under your brake pedal. You couldn’t get the pedal pressure that you needed.

When you needed it, something bad might happen. So everything comes out. If you’re gonna do some sort of incar video or things like that, you’re gonna need a tether on that camera. I know cameras are getting smaller and smaller, and probably if it’s gonna hit you in the head with your helmet on, you’re not even gonna feel it at this point.

But we still do require a tether cause we don’t want you to get hurt in that regard. So then, We’ll check the battery. You wanna look for any sort of open wires, we need the positive side covered that it’s securely mounted, and this is just for de sort [00:57:00] of stuff. Then we’ll check, you know, that the wheels are tight.

We’ll look for any play or listen for any sort of loose fittings or bushings in the suspension. As much as you can, you know, just in a static state, look for anything else that’s loose or maybe seems like it’s not installed correctly. And then all the glass, we need both the front windows down. And if there’s a glass sunroof in the car, you’ll need to have some tape on that.

And that’s really just to kind of keep the glass together in case something happens, it gets hit with something, or if it breaks since it’s tempered, there’s a plastic film in between the sort of glass layers anyway, so it’s really gonna stay there. But, We’d rather have it keep in one shattered piece instead of all over the track.

Then they gotta come clean it up and then 20 minutes goes by and go and, you know, you drop an oil and, you know, we look for leaks and, and oil and and things like [00:58:00] that. And then also we need your, uh, class designation and a number. I mean, that’s for the corner workers so that they can point you out when you’re naughty.

But you don’t, you don’t require someone to have their vehicle teched by like a mechanic or something before coming. We offer a, a sheet for you to have that completed. We are still gonna go over the car. Of course, we won’t go over it quite as rigorously because okay, we are gonna trust that this mechanic, you know, had looked at it, but we’re still gonna check the battery.

We’re still gonna make sure everything’s out. And also don’t forget your helmet or any other safety items cuz we have to check for dates and all of that. And tracks are starting to require their own sort of safety items. As far as helmets go open, face helmets are no longer allowed. At New Jersey Motorsports Park recommend that everybody get a full face helmet.

Even last year there was, uh, some delay with the 2020 helmets. [00:59:00] And so there was a ton of confusion about who’s accepting what helmets, you know, because you have to replace it every 10 years quite, they recommend that you replace it more often than that, but that’s the requirement. So the essay 2010 was not supposed to be good for this year, but because of delays in production and raw materials, they were saying, oh, we’re gonna allow it now.

So the tracks were flip flopping and other groups were flip flopping. So it, it was a really tricky year for that. After this year, the 2015 is gonna be, Your oldest rated helmet that you’ll be able to use. You know, you touched on something, going through that tech explanation about numbers and classing.

We all have our favorite numbers and that’s fine, but classing, you did talk about it, you kind of alluded to it earlier. So let’s just touch for a moment on how classing works at ra. So we’ve rewritten our rule book, as Corey mentioned, for this season. So what we do now is [01:00:00] we start a base class by power to weight ratio.

So if you’re running in a time trial group and your car comes out of the factory and it’s a hundred horsepower and weighs a thousand pounds, you’re set in a base. Class. On top of that, you have exception points. I always like to use that Honda Civic type R. You know that Honda Civic type R is sitting next to another Honda Civic type bar that has 40 tread wear tires on it.

It’s gonna be a couple seconds faster. It’s hard to put those two cars in the same class. So that’s where exception points come in. So what we do is we have your base class with exception points. You know, Cory mentioned before, you know, suspension is free as long as it bolts are the same. You know, mounting points and sway bars are free.

Certain things like power upgrades and Big Arrow will allow exception points, which may bump you into. Let’s say another class up. And again, you take that Honda Civic type R with those 40 tread wear tires, you put big arrow on there and and at tune, that’s a much faster car and it shouldn’t be in the same class as that factory stock type R.

So that’s how we class is a base class with powered weight [01:01:00] ratio with exception points on top. So guys, we covered a lot about what is emera, where you come from, how to get there, what to do, the track day, all this kinda stuff. I think we’ve got people really revved up to come out and try an vet here. And so what I wanted to ask is, is there anything we didn’t cover?

Are there any other services that folks should be aware of that Emera offers? One of them I I know about, and I’m kind of wondering if it still exists, is the annual endurance race. Is that still something that Emra puts on? And what other things like that would folks maybe not know about for turning in for the first time?

I’m gonna jump in and say we haven’t talked about award ceremonies. Um Oh, okay. After every event, not the weekend, literally every day. We do have an award ceremony and we do present awards to the race and, and the class winners of the day. The end of the season, we do an awards dinner. We’ve been teaming up with F R C C A for that, and again, we’re presenting the championship from that season.

Basically the point winners in in each class and race for the season. But I’ll let Corey take over for the rest, we [01:02:00] do not run the endurance races anymore. It was taking up a lot of time that we no longer had available to us on the track days. Unfortunately, we ran 50 years of the four hour night race.

Which was honestly my favorite race of the year. It was like the last hurrah of the season. You know, you would take whatever you had left and just put it out there on the track and, and see how far you can make it. I really enjoyed the event and if we have the interest, I would most certainly look at running the endurance races.

Again, if we had the interest, we, we would definitely consider doing that again, uh, I would like to approach Summer Point with doing that again, but you know, like I said, we, we need the interest and you know, with a e r and the different clubs that have sort of focused on that type of racing, we’re moving sort of away from that, whereas those groups are focusing on that kind of racing.

Absolutely. You [01:03:00] guys are hyper focused on time trials and you know, the times are changing and you know you’re giving. Time trials, it’s day in the sun, which is great, and focusing on that global time attack and all that. I think it’s the right direction and sometimes you just gotta let things go. I mean, to do things for tradition, just to keep doing it.

And to your point with interest waning, but now you’ve got all this new interest in something exciting like time trials and you’re building on that. I think you’ve got an awesome foundation to continue that going and you know, that foundation wouldn’t be there. Without the help of sponsors and, and other organizations of people coming to the table.

So is there anybody that you’d like to give a shout out to while you have the opportunity and you still have the audience listening, so I’ll turn to John in marketing for that one. Sure, sure. So first you mentioned Global Time Attack. We’d like to thank Jason. We do, we with him a lot and we cross promote events with him.

So definitely like to thank Global Time Attack. Couple of our sponsors. We have Metro Autobody Race, align out in Deer Park, ex Auctioneering Motorsports List Technologies, island [01:04:00] Motorsports, Otis Ford, fast Forward, uh, OnTrack Photography. Those are our main sponsors. K and s breaks, they certainly help out Dry shine, uh, wireless car care.

There’s a bunch of them. And I think something that we touched on before, we have a, a photographer taking pictures of everything all day. And this is part of what you’re getting now. As well. And, and go to the website and download any of the pictures of any of the cars or any of the paddock action, the trophy ceremonies, everything, you know, and, and I think that’s great because it helps you to sort of remember the day and go off a little bit to your friends too, like, dude, check this out where I was this weekend.

You know? And if I remember correctly, Zipkin is part of that car club and Beer Drinking Society we talked about at the top of the conversation. That is correct. He is actually our representative. Different beer at every meeting. Right. Love it. I just want to add to what Cory was saying. We actually have on the site [01:05:00] now a, uh, photo request form as well.

Any event that you, you know, you want photos from, fill that form out and we’ll go ahead and send you all the photos that we have for your view. Yeah, I mean, we’re taking drone footage and, and I mean there’s all sorts of video and, and everything and it’s all available. Well, folks, if you’d never heard of Emerin before, I don’t know how.

Because they have been doing grassroots motors sports racing since 1969. Can you believe that? Celebrating over 50 years of endurance club racing time, trials and de. So if you haven’t checked out Emera yet, you should emera racing.org. For more details, the Eastern Motorsports Racing Association, emra racing.org, follow them on Facebook and on Instagram at Emma Racing and use the online contact us form on the website to get ahold of John and Corey directly if you want more information or more details that were not expressed in this particular episode.

So with that guys, I cannot. Thank you enough for [01:06:00] coming on here and sharing the amory story, telling people what it’s all about. Getting people excited again, about time trials, you know, another flavor, another discipline of motorsport that maybe somebody’s just hearing about for the first time. I didn’t know I could do that.

Didn’t know I could compete against the clock against somebody else in my class. You know, all these kinds of fun things that we’ve come accustomed to in the time trials world. So I thank you both for coming on and, and, and sharing your story. Can’t thank you enough for having us on and allowing us to share, you know, the story.

Uh, amazing to be here and we appreciate the opportunity.

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