18-Oct-2024
Hello everyone,
We held our monthly SWMS Board of Directors meeting last night and the main topic of the evening was the letter from the Suika Circuit’s owners and management informing us that they have chosen to shift sanctioning of road racing at Suika Circuit away from SWMS and to Suika Circuit-direct operations for 2025 and the foreseeable future. Suika Circuit remains as committed as ever to supporting road racing in New Mexico and welcomes all who are interested in road racing (SWMS members or otherwise) to race at Suika Circuit next season. This weekend is the last SWMS’s sanctioned race at Suika Circuit.
Taking a step back from the letter from Suika Circuit and reviewing the discussions from last night’s Board of Directors meeting, we attribute three principal drivers for this significant change at the bequest of Suika Circuit to:
1) During the 2024 season, the number of SWMS racers actively participating in race weekends has sharply dropped off this season.
2) A few volunteers from within the SWMS membership continue to work tirelessly to promote races, both through social media and via sponsorship opportunities. However, our SWMS efforts are not proving enough to offset the decline in race entries or keep pace with modern social media, where videos are key.
3) Perhaps the most worrisome and with SWMS’s deepest regrets has been the behavior of a few SWMS members at the September Suika Motorland Fest race weekend, which many found appalling. This was a joint event meant to help our club’s racing remain viable through a diversified event in conjunction with ABQ Super Laps and a car show. It was meant to help not just us but the very track we love, it was an experiment that the vast majority of member feedback regarded positively. Yet unfortunately, the 25 years of hard work by all of us in SWMS to support professional-grade, friendly, and safe road racing in New Mexico together with our local track partners at Suika Circuit was eroded in that one race weekend because of a multitude of unacceptable conversations and behaviors on the part of a few SWMS members with the track management.
For more than an hour, those present at the Board of Directors meeting last night considered, and frankly debated, what the letter from Suika Circuit means for SWMS. Again, SWMS will not be sanctioning road races at Suika Circuit after this weekend. But where does this leave SWMS within road racing in New Mexico? Some options were raised and discussed, which are offered below for all club members to consider:
Option 1: SWMS remains essentially identical to today and we begin to research and negotiate with alternate tracks for the 2025 race season (Colorado and/or Arizona). While this is an option, multiple members last night reminded us that abandoning our beloved local track, Suika Circuit, could devastate the culture of road racing in New Mexico, especially given all of the recent investments Suika Circuit has taken to improve their facilities in large part for the SWMS racers. There is the added concern that this is cost prohibitive for members with our present car counts.
Option 2: The strength of SWMS is in our passionate, knowledgeable, and dedicated membership. There is no other club of its kind in New Mexico. SWMS could essentially be reborn into a purely social club. SWMS as a purely social club was discussed at the start of the 2024 race season but at the time there were a few strong opinions that this was not in SWMS’s best interest because we are a club of racers. But much has changed during the 2024 season, and SWMS as a social club is back in the mix. What this might formally look like is hard to say but it is a viable option, and more discussions would be required to frame it. But we can all agree that being together and chatting about race cars is what creates the SWMS comradery, and brings smiles and social opportunities.
Option 3: SWMS becomes a flavor of “sports car racing interest group” that could perhaps be useful to Suika Circuit operations. Again, much of SWMS’s expertise is in procedure development, safety, technical inspections, licensing, and driver training. Perhaps this learned and inherited knowledge base could become a unique puzzle piece that fits into Suika Circuit’s wider operations. Note: At
present, Suika Circuit does plan to use our SWMS rules and race procedures as the basis for their own.
Option 4: SWMS, at its core, is a club of volunteers and racers whose primary collective mission is the sanctioning (licensing, technical inspection, stewarding, educating) and participation in road racing at our sole track, Suika Circuit. If SWMS will no longer be sanctioning races, our purposed as a club is greatly diminished, which raises the question if SWMS should be dissolved with 100% of SWMS operations shut down. In short, the end of our club.
Now we are requesting ideas from within our membership to vote on at next month’s meeting. We ask you to respond with any suggestions in writing to contact@SWMS.org or to the club President directly (SWMSprez@fastmail.com) no later than 05-Nov-2024, so that we can consolidate your input and align options to consider and vote on at our next meeting at Fuddruckers on 21-Nov-2024. This timing is critical because if the vote is trending towards pursuing a 2025 race season at alternate tracks, we are running out of time to negotiate with tracks and develop a viable race schedule. On the other hand, we understand this is big news and brings sweeping changes and options which may take time to figure out. There is a possibility that the 21-Nov-2024 Board and membership meeting may be a continuing discussion. Ultimately, a timely vote on SWMS’s future is in our best interest as a club. Voting will be limited to those with an active 2024 SWMS membership.
We at the SWMS Board are sorry to bring this dramatic news and serious decision to you after everything so many of you have done for our club. We strongly encourage you to take the time to you need to reflect on this week’s news and weigh in. Jay will be at the track on Sunday, please feel free to share your constructive thoughts if you see him. He’s usually wearing a cowboy hat. SWMS’s future critically depends on the thoughts, contributions, and votes of our membership.
We look forward to seeing you at the track this weekend for Miata Mayhem and are looking forward to a positive end to our 2024 season.
Jay Neuman Steve DeBerry Andrew Sanford
SWMS President SWMS Vice President SWMS Secretary
301.943.1212