mattm

Local race promoter is joining NABRA and leaving USAC/our local association ("NCNCA"), but still holding races. He puts on a lot of office park crits in addition to some other racing.

Even before this he's been a polarizing figure locally for many reasons - some people thing he's somehow ruining racing by putting on a ton of races of varying quality, people think he charges too much as is getting rich (the first part is true, I think, but not the second part).

The new drama is an allegation that he stole money from NCNCA ($4 per racer per race) for some time period - depending on who you ask he's a thief or just a hard-working promoter.

On top of all that he's been blocked from the local FB group run by our LA, which is super lame.

Overall I think joining NABRA is a dumb move, but it sounds like he's had enough with the LA and vice-versa, and is ready to take on this experiment. I talked to him about this on Sunday at the race and he likes the "grass roots" thing NABRA has going on (e.g. you're not paying for a jr to race in Europe), and better infrastructure like FinishLynx cameras. I think for him it's overall cheaper to put on races under the NABRA umbrella.

Fwiw NABRA does have an upgrade "reciprocity agreement", so people will still get upgrade points (or should), but not sure about 2->1 upgrades. Oregon's OBRA is the same deal - not USAC but they have racing and get upgrades and can race nationally.

So here we'll have a hybrid USAC/NABRA thing going on for at least a little while - probably until the NABRA experiment ends and it's all back to normal.