Food for thought:
The situation we have with classes and time in the Club Series is a microcosm of what is happening in electric offroad in general.
If we want to fit in more classes we need to reduce the amount of racing in other classes, and reduce the number of entries.
I'd like to argue that that is the opposite of what we should be doing. We want to concentrate the racers together in the same classes and give us all more racing, closer racing and better graded racing.
This does not mean I think we should stick with just the classes we have now, and spurn any newcomers. It does mean we should think seriously about which classes we want to be racing in offroad electric.
I'd like everyone to think about where we want to be as a sport in 5 years time. How do we decide which classes we should be racing? What criteria do we use?
The ultimate goal for any RC racer starting out should be the World Championships. Any budding young cricketer dreams of the Test team, Tennis players Wimbledon, soccer the World Cup, etc. Those sports all have structures set-up to feed talent to the top of the tree and make the dreams of those sportspeople come true. Of course, for most of us, somewhere along the way we recognise that we are never going to be Test cricketers and just look for an enjoyable game. Somehow these other sports cater for both groups within the one structure. This is what we need to aim for too.
We have two World Championship classes. Modified 2WD Buggy and Modified 4WD Buggy. It makes sense to have 2WD Stock and 4WD Stock to ease people into those classes.
We are free to do what we like with the rest of the space on the programme at CS, State and National titles (and club meetings to a lesser extent).
To fill that gap, we want the class that the most people are able to drive and that will get the most people into the sport. It also needs to offer something different to the other classes, there's no point splitting entries between two very similar classes.
In onroad electric racing the class that fills this thirdspace (if you like) is Mini. It's completely different to everything else in terms of driving style, the cars have realistic bodies (compared to other classes), they are relatively cheap, and they are slow enough for most people to drive. They are a little set-up intensive away from club racing, but that's pretty much the only criticism and it does attract different people to those who race some of the other classes.
So, what is the offroad equivalent of Mini? In 5 years time which thirdspace class do we want to be racing? And what steps should we be taking now to make that happen?