SCCA vs. NASA Survey Results Part 1

When you've done a fair amount of wheel-wheel road racing, you hear drivers say a lot of things. We've run extensively with SCCA, NASA, SVRA, PCA, BMWCCA, PWC and SCCA Pro. And we've always been a little surprised at the vehemence with which drivers talk about the NASA and SCCA experience. It feels a little bit like Ford vs. Chevy or the Hatfields and the McCoys or some political discussions, where two rather similar things are seen as radically different. An outsider has a tendency to think "really?"

But we thought we'd go to the source an ask our readers what they think. Here are some key findings from our SCCA vs. NASA drivers survey.

First of all, about half of SCCA and NASA drivers have raced with the other organization:

Of course that means that half the people offering views of the "other" organization are doing it based on hearsay, not experience. Keep that in mind.

Relative Age of SCCA Drivers

There is one area of agreement about SCCA:

And very few drivers on either side think SCCA drivers are younger. But things diverge from there.

Friendliness of Drivers and Staff

Old-Fashioned Attitudes And Procedures

Drivers Considerate And Clean On Track

Rules Are Fairly Applied

I Feel Welcome

As we suspected from our conversations with drivers, the participants who mainly drive with SCCA take a fairly dim view of NASA. And the drivers who generally run with NASA take a slightly dimmer view of SCCA.

There could be many takeaways from this:

• if you want to help grow the sport, many of us drivers could do more to be welcoming and friendly to "new" drivers
• if you hold strong opinions about the sanctioning bodies, your experience might be limited, outdated or just wrong (because there seem to be a lot of people who have the opposite experience)
• organizations that are divided into regions and use volunteers may not be delivering a consistent customer experience, something that HQ might pay more attention to (e.g. if you run SCCA in a strong region, your NASA region may be weaker and vice versa).

Add your thoughts in comments, if you wish.