WHERE'S WALDO: Clueless class structure

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By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

On Monday evening (at 10:25 PM, because that made sense) I received the following wisdom via private message on Facebook:

“Hey boss. Liverc should do a segment on the level of chassis sponsorship. Like sportsman drivers can't run sportsman if there chassis sponsored. I think it would get pretty good attention”

It’s maddening to me that this is still a discussion, so I decided to overuse “air quotes” for the rest of this column to illustrate how silly this is.

Sure, “back in the day,” only the best drivers in a particular area were offered support, but that hasn’t been the case for a long time. These days, no form of sponsorship — even that of a chassis manufacturer — can provide a race director any indication of skill or experience. Instead, trying to police the muddy lines between different racing divisions based solely on the honor system of one’s ego leads to disputes over tainted race results of classes that, in my opinion, shouldn’t exist anyway.

The arguments for and against “sponsored” drivers in “Sportsman” classes are as old as the idea of separating slower drivers itself. On one hand, if the whole point of a Sportsman class is to give sandbagg— I mean, newer racers — a chance to shine at club races or trophy events without feeling like they’re in the way of the region’s elite, then removing those who are compensated for representing a brand makes sense. However, as the RC marketplace gets further saturated with manufacturers/resellers of everything from kits to battery plugs, and those companies are increasingly reliant on contracting direct customers with the added benefit of contrived social media evangelism, then it’s only a matter of time before even the most novice of drivers have some sort of deal.

Besides, the measuring stick of specifying “chassis sponsor” as the defining factor misses the point. If a driver is sponsored by companies that sell tires, wheels, electronics, batteries, shock oil, shock towers, shock pistons, bearings, pit mats and tools, but doesn’t technically get a discount on kits, shouldn’t that be enough to bump him out of a class protected for beginners? What about a company that actually makes optional chassis, not full kits?

Where do you draw the line? What about the 30-year veteran who was a national championship contender decades ago, took a bunch of time off, and came back to find old friends willing to send him boxes of stuff? What about the employee who works at the company and isn’t technically “sponsored” but gets his stuff for free? What about the family member of a sponsored racer? What about the driver whose sponsor offers him wholesale price, which might be slightly more than 50% off the arbitrary retail price? What about the pro racer’s friend/part-time mechanic who only gets free stuff through some sort of “bro” deal?

Should manufacturers maintain and disseminate lists of its drivers so that race directors can see who should and shouldn’t be racing Sportsman? How far should this actually go?

And what about the driver who doesn't feel like he needs to be part of a "team" to justify the time and money he spends on a hobby, but could drive circles around 90% of the people at the track?

I've attended racing events where the debate over who should or should not be racing Sportsman start before the cars ever hit the track for practice - and last through racing, through the main events, and even disqualify the overall winner mere moments before the trophy presentation. Doesn't that sound like so much fun? What a healthy system that encourages more participation!

If letting drivers choose what class to enter isn’t “fair” enough, and companies themselves don’t care to monitor which classes its own drivers are entering, and race directors don’t feel comfortable governing their paying customers without a sanctioning body/unspoken agreement among neighboring tracks/news media editor/some other third party drawing a line in the sand, there is only one way to determine who should and shouldn’t be racing Sportsman:

By using qualifying times recorded by a scoring computer as completed on a racetrack. What a novel concept, right?

We could use seeding times from practice to determine who should be where. We could wait until after the first half of qualifying is complete to say “okay, any driver slower than 10 laps, 5:08.17 can race Sportsman.” We could have everyone qualify together for the whole event, then pick the “C” main as the cutoff for the Experts/Pros and have everyone else try to bump up to the old D-/new A-Main. We could run everyone together all weekend, including the main events, and then try to sift through the results to pick out the non-sponsored drivers and perhaps award “Sportsman champion” to the driver that finished sixth in the E-Main. We could try, for like the fourth time, to get all tracks across the country to maintain a database of where each driver finishes in club races and then develop some complicated algorithm that attempts to compensate for regional differences so we know what class a driver from one state should race when he travels somewhere else. Or we can accept that the whole idea of separating classes in RC racing is an inherently broken concept altogether, that it guarantees sandbagging for bragging rights, and that it never has been and will never be “fair.” Take your pick.

By the way, that Facebook message came from a “regional team manager” for a kit manufacturer that has struggled for a decade to find retail shelf space at local and online hobby shops, and regularly advertises on social media and online forums that they’re “looking for sponsored drivers.” I couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect example to illustrate how stupid the rules governing "Sportsman" classes are, and why they'll never actually change.