Originally Posted by LloydLoar

Telling people that they must have competed at the regional level in order to 'win' at the national level seems absolutely asinine.

The point of nationals isn't to find 'the fastest guy who made the A main at nationals but also attended regionals.' The point of nationals is to find the fastest guy on that day, for any given class. End of story. Then Why are they only held once a year. What you are saying is we should crown a champion just because they win one race a year? To me THAT is asinine!

What about those who don't have regionals (and are thus unable to attend due to circumstances outside of their control)? What about folks who don't have enough funds or vacation time to attend both events, and so choose to attend the more prestigious of the two (Nationals)? What about guys who already go to so many races that they can't attend one more?

We need to be removing hurdles to competition, not adding more of them. I think on-road racing is already strongest at the local and regional levels, so why sacrifice competition at the national level, when we already have incredibly low attendance at those races?No hurdles, everyone is still welcome to the race. The prestige of winning the ROAR National Race would still be a big deal, but you should reward the racer that makes the attempt to win week in and week out and attends the local level events.

This is also why we shouldn't start requiring qualification for Nationals. Maybe if we had A through ZZ mains and the race days were going to be 18 hours long, we should be worried about reducing attendance through a qualifying structure. Right now, though? We should be handing out free handies, courtesy of FJ, just to get people in the door.This is what I am trying to accomplish, raise interest in R/C racing. You HAVE to do that at the local level, not the national level. Which is the entire point of a regional.