Run Groups

[catchacab]

I am bored.  The weather stinks.  The forum is quiet. Will spring ever come?

What am I thinking about? Track, track and track.

So I am thinking about lower attendance at some DEs and what can we do to increase our time on the track.  When a track event is not full, does it make sense to reduce the amount of run groups, possibly combining green and blue, or red and black or splitting white between blue and black.  We could even have events that are closed to one or more run groups (obviously not Red or Black).

Generally the track is hot for 7 hours (420 minutes) that will translate to

5 run groups having 4 runs of 21 minutes (84 minutes per day)

4 run groups having 4 runs of 26 minutes (104 minutes per day)

3 run groups having 5 runs of 28 minutes (140 minutes per day)

A rule of thumb ("rule of thumb" is taken from English common law that a man may beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb)  for DE is 10 cars/mile of track.  If we stick with this rule (funny how that came out).  Would you be info's of reducing the amount of run groups. while increasing each participants track time.  Of course, a higher registration fee would be adopted for those events to offset loss of income due to less participants.  For example, last year we charged each participant $120/day at Summit Point. Assuming the event would be filled for five run groups but we reduced the event to four run groups, then the new fee would be $145/day or if we reduced the event to three run groups then the fee would be $170/day.  Given the additional track time, we may want to reduce the amount of track days for three day events to two day events.  Or would having more track time per run group per day increase attendance in the higher run groups?

Let the debate begin!