The California Micro-Racing Association (formerly the Central California Racing Association) will be starting it's 2007 season in February. We are limited to H.O. Scale cars based on the Aurora Magna-Traction and Round 2 X-Traction cars because of our track size and program.

Founded in 1985, the CCRA has been continually racing for the last 26 years. With the new name comes a new Outlaw Late Model class and the reintroduction of our Midget Class. A website is being developed that will have all of the details regarding class limitations and other details.

http://home.earthlink.net/~cmra/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/yosemitespeedway.jpg

We will also be building a brand new track, the 4-lane Yosemite Speedway will be laid down shortly after Christmas and will host the first race of our season, the California Classic. This annual event drew 26 cars last year, only 18 of which made the program. Margin of victory in the 60 lap "A" Main was only .035 seconds, this with cars that were all first made almost 30 years ago.

We invite other California private track owners to contact us and join our network of mico-racers in the area. And visit our developing website at CMRA (http://home.earthlink.net/~cmra/).

In all the talk I've seen of HO I've never seen an oval before. Cool! :thumbsup:

I like the idea of running races with a certain number of laps, but you can't do that without equal lane lengths so a lot of people don't do it.

One question about your group..

Founded in 1985, the CCRA has been continually racing for the last 26 years.

Did I miss five years, or is this a message from the future? :confused:

Opps...my bad. The explaination is that we as a group have been racing for 26 years, the CCRA itself was established in 1985, which as we all know was 21 years ago. Before 1985 the CCRA was the Western World Championship (WWC) which was lifted from a local area go-kart series, and we actually raced lexan go-kart bodies on our cars.

The oval is small, and as such laps go by really fast. The advantage/disadvantages are; shorter distance around for the inside lanes compared with carrying a faster speeds around the outside. It actually evens out pretty well, with the M/T cars we've had wins in every lane in every event. Some cars actually work better on the outside because of gearing.

Hope that clears things up a little. :X

That makes sense. Do guys get to choose their own lane, or are they assigned?

Our program has three parts;

1. Every car is time qualified in the same lane, in our case we use lane 3. Depending on how many cars are entered we either take the top 12, 15, 18, 21 or 24 cars. We only run the inside 3 lanes, the outside lane is considered a cushion for lane 3.

2. We run three rounds of heats with the lanes randomly drawn. Each round is redrawn randomly so you may not get the same lane each time and you more than likely won't run against the same cars. 1 point for a win, 2 for a second, 3 for a 3rd.

3. Once the heats are over we arrange all the cars by point totals, a car with 3 points has a perfect night. Once set by points we then look at the times, and the fastest low point car gets lane choice in the A Main, second fastest gets second choice in the A Main and so on. Only two cars per main are set, the final 3rd spot for the car transfering up from the previous main. In a 15 car field there would be mains all the way up to G Main, which is the first main to have all 3 spots filled. Sometimes you may have 2 cars in the same main, that's when you "hire a driver" and make deals for which car you want to finish first. Sometimes you'll put your hired driver between you and a competetor for them to block. Hey, it's racing.

We run the mains, the winner transfers, 2nd and 3rd place go to the trailer. Points are usually awarded to the top 12 cars unless it's a double points race, then we go to 18.

This has worked well for :::counting::: 25+ years, and there have been instances where a car did crapy in the heats and would come from way back in the mains and win the A Feature. It's pretty much adopted with the World of Outlaws and the original go-kart program we stole our first name from. Over the years there has been talk of unfairness because of uneven lane advantages, but one look at the past races and really it's a matter of drivers skill. I do the records keeping, and of a 16 event season a car came from as far back as the D Main to win 4 times. A lot of things can happen with these old cars; they can bicycle up and de-slot, there's always the "bump and run" where you slap a competetor in the corner just hard enough to turn him a little sideways and get by, and then there's the outright "my car wasn't running right until it warmed up" excuse.

Now that we're adopting a full body class I expect that some of the pushing and shoving on starts won't have the same impact was before. We've had some really spectacular crashes too. One of our tracks is very well landscaped, and cars have gotten over the fence in turn 1 before. I even got completely out of the park (off the plywood board the track sits on) during the last event. I'm getting a digital video camera for Christmas so I hope to have some video sometime this spring.

Sounds like some good stuff. I like the idea of qualifying on the same lane, I wish more people would adopt it in all scales.

I preffer a round robin style race where all drivers rotate through all lanes, with a set time for each(example 3min. per lane, with 2min. between each lane to change lanes clean tyres etc.). After all drivers have finish you compute the number of laps the have ran, with the highest total being first, next highest second, next highest third, and so on. We have found this to be the fairest system.

That sounds like a blast!

yeah...some videos are definately requested... :thumbsup:

Sometimes it’s good to get the word out. After our initial posting I received mail from 6 local area guys who race HO cars, one of whom I raced with some 15 years ago and lost contact with. He is now coming onboard with us and going to build several cars for our series. He has also donated 3 brand new 75 ohm Parma controllers with adjustable braking to the new track.

We had our point’s awards presentation at John's Incredible Pizza here in Fresno on Friday, December 22, 2006. We had 10 drivers compete and six wound up in the points after the fall season's 6 races. First place through third took home a nice trophy, and all 6 drivers received cash ranging from $20 to $5. Not bad for a 50 cent per car entry fee, and with sponsorship from Lithia Ford-Lincoln-Mercury we will continue to offer this kind of driver support.

For 2007 some major program changes will be implemented. Gone will be the midget class completely, judged unpopular by the drivers and redundant to the open wheel sprint class. Replacing it will be the Late Model class, which will debut during the California Classic. The Late Models will have some of the most open rules regarding tire selection and should prove to be very interesting. The open wheeled super modified class will also get new wing rules, after the last series “billboard” wing fiasco they will share wing measurements with the open wheeled sprinters.

The schedule has also been pushed back to begin on March 3rd instead of Daytona weekend due to the promoter (me) actually going to Daytona this year as part of my Ford dealerships contingent to the TFR hospitality presentation. The opening event, the California Classic, will be cut down to 25 laps from the original 99 laps, and both the Super Modified and Late Model classes will run back to back events. No other programming changes will be made, and the same program used for the last 20+ years will continue.

***Late Edit: Approval finally came through for a new class coming this summer on a 1 mile scale 4 lane tri-oval!!! More details will be posted soon!!

There has been a huge shake-up in our program and with our track owners. As of today, the California Micro-Racing Assoc. will cease to exist. Two of the four track owners have joined together and decided to combine their tracks and make an entirely new 4-lane road course, and have it operated by a new sanctioning body they have formed.

This leaves me and one other with small 'bull-ring" 4-lane ovals to form a new sanctioning body to continue the program we have been running for quite some time. Both the existing track and the new track about to be built have been redesigned to allow the turns at opposing ends to be removed to create one large oval with 14' straights, as well as run their original configurations. While this change makes the corners at the new track to be tighter, it does allow it to have longer straights in its stand alone format. The Lap Timer 2000 by Greg Braun will be installed so that it may be moved from one track to the other, allowing both tracks to enjoy the same precision lap counting and timing.

As such, the new sanctioning body for the two (and combined third) oval tracks will now be known as the Fresno Slot-Racing Association, and a new website will be published sometime early next week at The FSRA (http://home.earthlink.net/~fsra). We still invite anyone in the Fresno Area to come and race with us, our season will begin as scheduled.

Sometimes it’s good to get the word out. After our initial posting I received mail from 6 local area guys who race HO cars, one of whom I raced with some 15 years ago and lost contact with. He is now coming onboard with us and going to build several cars for our series. He has also donated 3 brand new 75 ohm Parma controllers with adjustable braking to the new track.

That's what the Internet's here for. Sounds like everyone had a good time. :)