Question about BMW HPDE events
 

I heard many times that the BMW Club events are some of the best. I am considering the upcoming event at VIR on Mar 30-31. As of today, there are 226 registrants and registration is still open. The events runs in 4 groups and 4 25-sessions per day. That is 55 cars per group on average and still counting. Is this normal for this club events? Isn't this too many cars on the track at once?

Thanks,

I'm not familiar with how the BMW CCA runs their events on the East Coast, I am HOWEVER familiar with how MotorsportReg list their attendees in the attendee's list.

FIRST. Check with the organizers. They are much more likely to be able to answer your questions than a bunch of internet keyboard monkeys. Believe you me.

On the MSR attendee's list, unless the organizer setup the backend to show group assignments, the list includes EVERYONE. That is, volunteers, instructors, key workers...etc. And since BMW CCA rules MANDATE that an in-car instructor needs to be available to every single paid participant, that means based on how the run group is structured you can have about a 2-1 student to instructor ratio. With 226 total attendees, you can safely assume that about 45-50 out of the list are instructors.

These events take a tremendous amount of man-power to run. If they include the volunteers in the registration list, you're looking at anywhere between 10-15 volunteers to make this work. Add 1-2 Chief Instructor, 3-5 tent leaders, 7-10 corner/key workers, you're looking maybe about 70-75 of the 226 are none-participants. Assuming instructors get their own run group, you're looking at about 30-35 per group of students, which isn't terrible on a track like VIR (I assume).

Then again...I AM just your average internet keyboard monkey. You really should contact the organizers to get to the bottom IMO. And, at the end of the day, how crowded a track feels has more to do with the group you're assigned to, not the number of cars on track IMO. We once put about 50 cars on a 2.8 mile track (15 A+ students, and just about every single instructor available) and while I had to work through SOME traffic, there were at least 2-3 laps out of the 25 minute session that I didn't get bogged down. Not ideal, but not terrible either. Then, there's the famous beginner's run group a while back, were we only had like a dozen cars on a 3.1 mile course, and even with just 12 cars there's constant traffic due to a huge disparity of speed/car/skill and 2 overwhelmed beginners that didn't know when or where to let cars by.

I received a response from the organizer, and my assumption was wrong. The actual number of driver is far less than the number listed on the event attendee. "The Hack" was right. I am planning on attending this event.

I am registered as an instructor for that event. Planning on being there Friday through Saturday. I have been instructing at Tarheel Chapters events since 2014 so if you have any questions I may be able to answer them. It it rains as much as it has over the last several months I may decide not to drive my car although will still ride with students. Driving in the rain improves your driving skills but is somewhat of a miserable experience if it is pouring rain.

Bill

Agree with Bill, I’ve instructed with Midwest BMW more and always well run as are Audi events. At VIR I used a 12-15 cars per mile (of track) for my run group totals. It worked well and other than first timer trains once in a while that seemed like a good rule of thumb.

I send you a PM