| VARAC February 2011 President's Newsletter |
Hello
Here's the latest VARAC Newsletter - sorry it's been a while since the last one, but I hope you'll think the wait has been worth while.
As I write, its just over 9 weeks to the start of the season with the Test and Tune Day at Mosport (details below), followed by the first Regional a few weeks later.
This means that, if you haven't already done so, you are going to have to renew your License with CASC - but before they do issue a new license, they will check that you are a member of the VARAC, so, if you haven't already done so, you might like to renew your Membership for 2011 (details below).
You may know that Ted Michalos is the CASC Treasurer this year, so VARAC is represented at the highest levels of CASC. Ted will provide some notes of interesting things happening at the CASC BOD - you can see his notes of the latest meetings below.
Anyway, enough of the commercials - let's get stuck in...
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VARAC Off-Track Insurance
VARAC has arranged a very beneficial Off Track Insurance package for trailer, tools and race cars for our members. we introduced it late last year and several members have now been through the application process and have reported it is "smooth as silk".
One of the questions frequently asked relates to the value of your car and whether an Appraisal is required. I'm pleased to say that I've heard from the Insurers as follows:
Underwriters are happy to reiterate their previous agreement to accept self declaration for agreed values on the basis that each risk must be referred to and agreed by Underwriters, but Underwriters reserve the right to refuse values if deemed over valued although this would only be in very exceptional circumstances
In other words, they will accept your word as to the value of your car and no appraisal is required. If there is a claim, they reserve the right to ask you for evidence of value if they think you might have inflated the value a bit - but they have agreed to accept as evidence Ads for similar Cars for Sale.
We all know there are loads of race car sites on the web (race-cars.com, racecarsdirect.com etc.) so finding an ad to support your valuation of the car should not be difficult.
There is one other clarification, as well, and that relates to carrying spare engines. While the policies automatically include $8,000 for trailer contents coverage, this does not include spare engines. However, these are covered at an additional premium of $9 per $1,000 engine value - i.e. a $2,000 costs $18. Again, it is up to you to give a realistic engine value.
This really is a good deal - we've used the strength and numbers of VARAC to negotiate a really sweet deal. I recently did some checking and the premium is about 1/3 to 1/2 of comparable policies. - and I urge all VARAC members to take advantage of it so we don't have any sad stories such as we heard last year of Dino's trailer and car going missing.
The details of the policy are here - DETAILS HERE
If you are interested in applying, and note that this policy is only available to VARAC members (how many more hints do I have to drop to get Membership renewals in?) please use the Application Form that you can find here : APPLICATION FORM HERE
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Test and Tune Day - 22 April 2011 at Mosport
We've managed to get the main Mosport Circuit this year for our Test and Tune day which will be held on Good Friday, 22nd. April from 9:00 to 5:00 p.m.
We'll set up a Tech Inspection station in the Main Paddock, and will have use of the Circuit for testing - yes, the Circuit will have Corner Marshals and an Ambulance available. In order to stay within the Circuit's Insurance Policy, we are limited to no more than 10 cars on track at any one time - but that shouldn't be a problem for us and I suspect we can all get as much track time as we need.
So - for a bargain price of $175, you can get your car through its annual tech, get in some track time to "blow off the cobwebs" and get a gourmet hot dog/burger! What a deal!
I'll send out a link to a Sign Up webpage where you can register for this event. Please, do sign up in good time - we need to make sure we have enough Scrutineers to look after our cars and enough food to feed the hungry masses.
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Eligibility Forms
The Eligibility Form system is working really well, and thank you to everybody who filled in the forms last year.
For those new members here, we fill in an Initial Eligibility Form and return it to Joe Lightfoot - Joe and his Eligibility Committee then check you car against that Form throughout the year. If you haven't already filled in an Inital Eligibility Form, you can get them here:
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2011 Schedule
In case you haven't seen it, our 2011 Schedule is available by following the following link. There are 8 events on the schedule - we count your best 6 events for the Club Championship.
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Club Championship 2011
As you know, we've revised the rules for the Club Championship to switch the Vintage/Historic Cars onto a displacement based system.
The G70+ championship is still based on the "break out" system of earlier years with a slight "tweak" that Class H now has a breakout time of 1:32 to bring it into line with the GT classes (this makes Mosport's timekeeping easier for them).
This means that all teh V/H cars will need new class stickers, and these will be available at Test and Tune on 22 April. I've also ordered new Class stickers for the G70+ cars (even though your class will probably not change) and a load of new VARAC decals in black and white - some of the ones I saw on cars last year looked a bit "tatty" so we're smartening ourselves up! Again, they will all be available at Test and Tune.
You can get the 2011 Championship Rules here:
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February Vintage Racer
Jeremy has been slaving away on a new Vintage Racer that looks stunning - you can download it HERE - FEB. 2011 VINTAGE RACER
Many thanks to Jeremy and all his contributors for their great efforts on behalf of our Club - they are leaving an invaluable record of our antics and history!.
We archive all these VR's on our website, so you can find this and earlier copies of Vintage Racers, Pit Signals etc.
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Welcome new members
We've recently had an influx of new members into VARAC, and I'm sure all members would like me to extend a very warm welcome to: Stephen Hamann Robert Racki Andrew Atkins Steven Hill Jason Huddy Robery Murray Melissa Molson (Matt's daughter, coming along to keep her Dad honest!) Frank Rattasid. Among the new cars we can look forward to seeing with these new members are a Lotus Europa, IMSA Camaro, Mustand Hatchback, Lynx FV and Mini - although VARAC is, as we all know, a Mini Free Zone! Several of our new members are still on the lookout for cars, so I think we might have some even more interesting grids this year.
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News from CASC
As I said above, Ted Michalos is now Treasurer of CASC so attends their BOD meetings. Here is his report on the latest meeting held early February:
Last fall, when Perry Iannuzzi became the CASC- OR president, he set a goal of improving communication with the member clubs. With that in mind I thought I'd share with you the highlights from CASC's monthly Board meetings... The BoD meets on the second Tuesday of every month - most recently Feb 8 - at the CASC offices in North York. Those members that cannot attend in person do so by teleconference. Big news for CASC is that the new website should be up and running sometime in March of this year. When it goes live I will send an e-mail to the chat group so people can have a look. Items of interest to VARAC's membership: Open wheel cars on the vintage grids - Walter asked Perry to put this item on the agenda to see if we can get a definite answer from ASN on the status of our open wheel cars. A number of the Board members have been around since the ruling was made at CASC so they tried to bring Perry up to speed. It appears no definite answer has been received from ASN - at least that was the consensus around the table. Perry undertook to "push them on the point" and will be corresponding with ASN directly. It seems a meeting was planned/to be scheduled in 2009 to discuss the point with VARAC, CASC and ASN. The meeting never took place. I suspect the plan will be to hold such a meeting before our season commences. Insurance for volunteers vehicles at the track - not surprisingly, it appears volunteers vehicles are not covered under the CASC insurance rider for events if the owners have their own insurance. The concern is that many insurers will deny coverage for incidents on the track, leaving a volunteer in an accident footing the bill. We're going to look into this further, but the short term suggestion is for all volunteers to contact their insurance carriers and make sure the carrier is aware of the track activity so that their coverage will be valid. The alternative is we may have to rent support vehicles for regional weekends and pass the cost along to the racers. Ageing/declining volunteers - the average age of most of the officials (marshals, stewards, support crew) appears to be even older than the average age of VARAC's members. It is becoming quite a concern and if it isn't addressed will have a dramatic impact on our sport. No volunteers - no racing. This wasn't on the agenda, but came out while we were discussing other business. In my opinion, we'd better all give this one some thought or the only racing we'll be doing in the future will be on our computers... If anyone has an area of specific interest or concern feel free to post it on the chat or send me an e-mail directly and I'll see what I can find out for you. Ted. Walter adds... I should add that the comments about VARAC in Ted's note arose because we are STILL arguing with CASC about getting our open wheel cars back on our V/H grid. We were initially told their ban was due to insurance reasons - so we asked to speak to the insurer to change his mind. We were then told it was not an Insurance issue - it was actually an ASN issue. So we asked to speak to ASN - the fact that the ASN meeting did not take place was not because we didn't want it - you join the dots! |
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Finally...
If you have any questions about anything in this Newsletter, please don't hesitate to contact me. See you on the 22nd April Cheers Walter |
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