NASA Florida is also on its third regional director in like 4 years as well. I think I saw Jon say they are still hoping to add some dates at other tracks. It is definitely the exception to the rule although the NOLA region only has one track but does like 6 events a year at that track and does some shared events with NASA Texas and NASA Mid South. I actually like the three Sebring dates as it will let me run a full schedule in Florida and Mid South regions next year.

 

Jon has said that every year. I'll believe it when I see it. hopefully the new guy will actually give us what we want. More events at other tracks.

Just pick the group that has the class you want to race in. the licenses are reciprocal between the two.

 

When I did my first event with NASA Florida they had Homestead and PBIR on the schedule. They were also losing money quite badly I have a feeling hence the changes within the region. I do agree that if you know wheel to wheel is your goal, then pick a class and a sanctioning body and work towards that goal. It would be best to get your comp license with the organization you plan to race with.

 

Respectfully, I don't honestly think the length of the comp school is necessarily relevant. Due to my progression through hpde/TT, my NASA comp school was one day at Mid Ohio. What should be relevant to the OP is: how am I, and those I race with, being prepared to succeed. And by succeed, I mean be safe, situationally aware, and fast.

I think anyone who is turned loose to race, with no more experience than a 2 or 4 day school, has been shown a great disservice. I have seen people with little to no experience during my chumpcar racing. While it's true there's nothing like 90+ cars at once on Watkins Glen to gain some experience, there are some really scary moments mixed in. And it's not always the inexperienced causing problems, but they can often be caught off guard by what's going on, and react in unpredictable ways.

This is not a rant against SCCA or for NASA. I would simply tell the OP to take everything into consideration. Achieving a hard earned comp license is a journey you should enjoy and appreciate.
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I mentioned the length of the comp school purely to highlight convenience. It's very difficult to get time away from my obligations, so a condensed 4-day school to get my comp license is ideal in my situation. That's all. I'm sure both options are excellent and highly enlightening, but I will more than likely go with SCCA based on cost and convenience.

 

Agree! I built a civic for H1 and before finishing it, Honda Challenge down here collapsed. I hope the new president can revive it. Now I have a car that's "R2" in SCCA and there might be a field of 2-4 cars.......so , attend your local tracks that are holding races, base your decision on the attendance. If you don't have a decent size field, it will grow old quickly.

 

SCCA is one and done. They throw you to the wolves and your out there in a race car, racing with only sideline instruction. If you want to go racing and feel confident you can teach yourself the ins and outs of being fast and being racy. Thats the way to go.
NASA has the whole HPDE latter program which can take litterally years before your at the point of running the comp license school. As for the comp License school I never took it so can only speak from watching friends take it. (I went the SCCA route) It appeared to be more staged an in control. Less thinking for yourself and more do as your told. I can tell you from racing against people who have taken the NASA school and those who came up the SCCA route and I enjoy racing against the SCCA guys more. I just can't stand the way SCCA handles their classing and rules. So I race Nasa.

 

And in NorCal I prefer scca for exactly the same reasons.

 

To what Ian and Ricky said, I did my double Roebling school in one weekend in 200(7?). It's been a while, but I think it was a Friday-Sunday. Maybe Friday-Monday, don't recall.

I know of plenty of NASA folks who have done 30 days on track and are still 15 seconds off the pace at Sebring, for example. Or 10 at Summit. Spec Miatas running 1:40s. I don't feel safe around that type of person regardless of how many races they've run. They refuse to dedicate themselves to get any better. And they're equally prevalent within both organizations.

The fact that having had a comp license with one organization doesn't == time trial license with the other (lol) infuriates me. That barrier alone is what's keeping me from spending a lot less time autocrossing versus building a TTE BMW next year.

 

I went with NASA because that's where the field is for Honda Challenge in my region versus similar classes in SCCA. Took me a little over a year from my first event ever, but I didn't start out with the intention of a comp license. Sure I had >40 days on track by the time I did comp school, but then again I screwed around with every organizer that had an event nearby that fit my schedule. My second event was with NASA in DE1 and the next time I ran with them was in DE4.

As mentioned above, I don't particularly want to race with someone who got their license without spending an appropriate amount of time on track learning car control skills in an open passing environment where going 2 wide in corners was the norm. No offense to anyone who did a 2-4 day school with no prior experience but if you have and have since raced, think back and ask yourself if you really want to run w2w with someone with that level of experience?

 

I don't care how many seconds someone is off the pace as long as they have good car control, awareness, and are comfortable going two or three wide. Are you saying NASA wouldn't give you a time trial license with a valid SCCA comp license? They wanted you to run DE3/4 and get a checkout prior to approving your time trial license? I know I had to do one trial weekend before I was given my time trials license, but I didn't have my NASA comp license at that point. It would be interesting to see what a fully TTE prepped BMW E30 could do. I dyno reclassed my SpecE30 into TTE and ran one weekend with it before getting my comp license.