Throphies from the BMW event at Saint Cloud

[Rado Gerenev]

I was wondering when are they going to be awardeded and where? If anybody knows I will be greatly thankful.

P.S. The event was ok....There were a lot of sloppy parts of the design of the course and it wasnt flowing for me. It took a while to get 6 runs even though there were only 26 entries. Overall it wasnt that bad but it could have been more organized.


Rado Gerenev

[weidnerpaul]

Rado,
I believe the awards won't be awarded until the year end awards Met Council banquet in January. I overheard that they didn't get addresses for participants, so I don't think they can do it any other way. As far as being unorganized, I am glad that another club is putting on this type of event, they don't do it often and it's easy to critique BUT we did get 6 runs in on a fun longer safe course with two different groups involved that had not worked together before as MAC supplied the timing(and my inexperience in helping with that may have slowed it up a little too).
Remember, the set up/takedown & organization of the event still take about the same time, and if there are less people to do it ...
Paul

[Dennis G.]

The BMW club, in the past, had had the distinction of being the only club in the Met Council that refused to give trophies. This dispute (I think) caused some trouble back then because that was a requirement of a Met Council club. I'm not sure if any of the same people are still involved in the club, but their attitude was the WORST. The end of MY experiences with them were, on top of the trophy thing, was a horses rear end at the drivers meeting suggesting that autocross was rinky-dink and small time and if you wanted to step up to some MENS events, they had more events (probably at BIR) later that year. The capper for me that day was ....I ripped off a REALLY good run...one that I HOPED would beat Pete in his Titan....and when the numbers were tallied up, they had NO record of that run. From that day forward, I boycott BMW events and will continue to until someone convinces me things have changed. Dennis.

[Drew]

Too bad you're carrying such a bad impression of the BMW folks, Dennis. I was at their autocross on Sunday in St. Cloud; and they put on a very good event. Everyone was courteous. Overall, the event went pretty smooth. I heard a couple of people say they didn't care for the course. But I heard more people say it was better than they thought once they got out on it. It was different than most autocross courses I've seen in that I had to shift down to first at three turns on the course. But it's good to have the variety of a different club's approach to course design.

But in particular, Northstar BMW deserves compliments for putting on this Met Council points event. The Met Council Autocross Series has value for promoting commaradarie and interaction between the clubs. But it's been hard to get clubs to participate in the series the last two years. BMW came through and supported the series even though probably due to scheduling and location they had only 26 entries - most certainly not enough to cover their costs for the day.

But in any case, I think most participants thought it was a good event.

Drew Baumbach

[Darryl]

Ditto Drew! This was my forth Aotocross and as a novice I learned a lot. I think the BMW club did a good job in setting up the course. It was safe and for me a new challenge, shifting. A few more runs would have been nice. Regarding the location, what better than getting up on a Sunday morning and taking a relaxing 85 mile drive from the southwest metro to ST Cloud, having a great time for 6 hours, then finishing the day with a nice drive home with time to reflect on the days event!

Darryl Wrolson

[phile]

Originally posted by Rado Gerenev


I was wondering when are they going to be awardeded and where? If anybody knows I will be greatly thankful.

P.S. The event was ok....There were a lot of sloppy parts of the design of the course and it wasnt flowing for me. It took a while to get 6 runs even though there were only 26 entries. Overall it wasnt that bad but it could have been more organized.


Rado Gerenev

BMW club trophies? Don't hold your breath. They have owed me a trophy for about 6 years.

They kept giving dates in the future when the trophies would be awarded, but they never were.

[fitz]

I spoke to a rep from BMW this morning about trophies for this past weekends event so they do apparently intend to award them. When, I do not know. I suggest anyone who has concerns on this issue contact a rep from the BMW club instead of merely slamming them here when they can not defend themselves.

[kit]

i know i got one throphy from BMWCCA (2 yrs ago?) mailed to me.

[snelsonm5]

Hi guys, thanks to everyone for showing up, we appreciated the participation of everyone from MAC, especially Mike and Paul for running the timing equipment for us.
Trophies will be awarded this year at the Met Council Awards Ceremony. I apologize to anyone that has not received trophies in the past, if you would like to contact me off-line I will see what I can do to investigate the situation.

-Sheldon Nelson
North Star BMW autocross coordinator

[Dennis G.]

I stand by all I said as FACT. They (as you see) have access to this board too. If a current club rep. would like to meet me in person and tell me those things DIDN"T happen, I would gladly discuss it with him face to face. Dennis.

[weidnerpaul]

Dennis,
They are a volunteer club, and the current volunteers may not be responsible for what happened in the past. This was in the BMW Club response to all the preceding messages:


I apologize to anyone that has not received trophies in the past, if you would like to contact me off-line I will see what I can do to investigate the situation.

It sounds to me like Sheldon is willing to help, and in my opinion this event was not like anything you experienced in the past, I know I'd go to one of their events again.
Paul

[Peter Hsu]

I got mine from a dakota event 2 years ago.

I think I mailed out over the northstarbmw list.

Luckily I am such a throphy grubber...

Peter Hsu

[phile]

Originally posted by snelsonm5


Hi guys, thanks to everyone for showing up, we appreciated the participation of everyone from MAC, especially Mike and Paul for running the timing equipment for us.
Trophies will be awarded this year at the Met Council Awards Ceremony. I apologize to anyone that has not received trophies in the past, if you would like to contact me off-line I will see what I can do to investigate the situation.

-Sheldon Nelson
North Star BMW autocross coordinator

That would be a bit easier if I knew how to get your email address from this system.

The event I have in mind was held on 8/10/97. The following folks were to be awarded trophies. The class designations may look confusing because some of them are for combined classes.

T 1 AP 261 Scott Mayer 90 BMW M3
T 1 AS 41 Wally Mahlum 69 Corvette
T 1 ASP 7 Phil Ethier 70 Europa S2
T 1 BSP 54 Chuck Sr Olcott 71 240Z
T 1 BSpro 97 Randy Williams 94 Miata
T 1 DS 62 Lee Frisvold 97 Neon ACR
T 1 DSP 83 Mark Utecht 83 Dodge Omni
T 1 DSt 234 Jon Thompson 95 Neon ACR
T 1 ES 3 Gary Schmidt 87 Prelude SI
T 3 ESt 821 Chris Featherstone 92 Escort GT
T 2 GSt 213 Shane Metzger 94 Probe GT
T 4 HSt 475 Tim Malzahn 89 Integra
T 1 SR 6 Peter Jarosch Titan MK VI
T 1 SS 46 Tim Roberts 91 Corvette


The trophies were never awarded.

I can supply full results as a SYLK file.

Phil Ethier
pethier@isd.net

[Dennis G.]

I realize that those people are possibly not involved any more and I"m REALLY not holding a grudge, but like i said...those were facts. And if I keep reading and get warm fuzzies about their events, I just MAY go again..who knows!
Dennis.

[Drew]

I think you're going overboard with your approach, Phil.

Drew Baumbach