For those of you far away from NorCal, NCRC (Northern California Racing Club) is an organization that puts on HPDEs, time trials, and "gentleman's rules" racing (American Racing Club). In the past they would have events almost monthly at Thunderhill, with a few dates scattered in at Infineon, Laguna, Buttonwillow, Reno/Fernley etc. Alan Blaine used to do tech inspections for them. When the economy tanked, they kept their business brisk by cutting their basic price for a track day to $99, charging reasonable extra fees for timing, coaching, etc.

I've been a member for years, and saw no decrease in the quality nor safety of their events after the price reduction, other than Alan's absence.

At this time, Thunderhill has cancelled all of NCRC's dates for 2010, and I believe they are having similar difficulties at Buttonwillow. Lawsuits are pending, but rumor has it the other clubs don't like NCRC's pricing, and now the track(s) are blackballing them.

What I find quite interesting is that Hooked On Driving (HOD) charges more than twice what NCRC does for a track day, HOD has picked up a number of NCRC's lost dates, and HOD's owner is on the Thunderhill board of directors. Coincidence?

I tend not to form opinions without having all the facts, but at this point I'm thinking this stinks ... a lot!

Excerpt of an email from NCRC to it's members:

Dear Drivers,

A lot of you have asked us why we haven’t opened our Buttonwillow events yet, and why we have so few days at Thunderhill compared to prior years. Here is an update.

Thunderhill: Due to a serious business dispute that we have with the track, Thunderhill has cancelled all our events. We have retained the services of an attorney and a complaint will be filed against the track in the next few days. Once the lawsuit is filed we will be able to give you a lot more information.

Buttonwillow: The March 22 event is cancelled, for now we are only opening the two weekends. We will be able to give you more information regarding the single-day events very soon.

We will refund the event payments for the cancelled events over the next week. If you have any questions regarding your NCRC membership or annual tech payments, please contact us.

And a post from one of NCRC's owners on another forum:

Hi Guys:

Until the lawsuit is filed I can't give you too much details but I can at least give you the following info:

We know that quite a few of our competitors have been complaining about our pricing and we believe that TH is not too please about it either.

The dates we were offered by TH for 2010 were much, much worse than what we used to have in the past and we contacted TH to find out what the issues was and to propose them a $50K cash upfront/donation against a multi-years contract.

A couple of weeks after our proposal was rejected and we got a "nice" email from the GM of TH requesting among other things (such as buying advertising/signage from them) that we raise our entry fees ( and I quote the email) " to a level that is friendlier to and more inline with our customer base" if we wanted to change the " status of our current relationship".

We believe that the lack of good dates for 2010 was due to our pricing and we also believe that TH run afoul of the Cartwright Act ( anti-trust laws) by requesting that we raise our entry fees.

Therefore we have retained legal counsel and will be filing a lawsuit for price-fixing, tying, unfair competition and a few other causes of actions.

Wow, keep us informed.

Just more proof of what happens when businessmen step into enthusiast activities. I hope they win the lawsuit and make a mint off of the dirt bags.

-Tim