Parker Tech- The casino VS. on the street. What do you like better?

[dan200]

The ppl buying all the stuff in tech are mostly ppl that are not racing other than a few things like a cath or a helmet part most teams have what they need already
It's the ppl that come to watch or if a team needs something then they will get it
Parker tech is way better on the street than the casino rat race. If you been doin it for 12 years man that up and down circles gets old.

You’re way wrong thinking that it’s not racers who are buying stuff at tech. Not everyone is as prepared as you think. Fueling stuff, visors, safety triangles, first aid kits, fire suits, fire extinguishers, camera mounts, phone and I pad mounts.

 

[10 shot]

How about fast tech pay a extra 100.00 and skip the party and head to the motorhome

 

[dan200]

How about fast tech pay a extra 100.00 and skip the party and head to the motorhome

Who are you paying? The vendors who paid to be there and have an opportunity to interact with race people? Or the organization who puts on the race?

Mandatory tech or a “fast pass” ain’t gonna happen guys. I promise.

 

[10 shot]

How are we taking money out of a vendor pocket if we have everything we need and do not push our car past there tent? Ppl that need stuff will go to them it doesn't matter if our car gets pushed past there tent. If I need something then I'll find it and buy it. Vendors are great but the cars getting pushed past them doesn't make them money but I tell you what having them around on race day with parts available for teams would definitely help some teams out but normally there already gone.

 

[BigAlRudd]

Street and leave it on the trailer

Trailers are what slowed it down so much .

 

[MTPyle]

The cars going thru tech bring customers, not just the team that is with the car going thru tech.

Would the crowds be as big if no race vehicles went thru tech and contingency?

the race vehicles are there to draw all sorts of people.
@10 shot who are you? Maybe you said and I missed it?

Mike

 

[10 shot]

Ahh we are a new team came from a buggy but found out on rdc forum a buggy can never beat a truck so we switched over to a herbst 6100 with the new pop off fenders ....optional 2 speed under drive and 100hp piggy back ecu. We have been pre running tech and now found a cheater line to the front!

 

[MTPyle]

Ahh we are a new team came from a buggy but found out on rdc forum a buggy can never beat a truck so we switched over to a herbst 6100 with the new pop off fenders ....optional 2 speed under drive and 100hp piggy back ecu. We have been pre running tech and now found a cheater line to the front!

LOL Hello Keith

I knew your post and attitude seemed familiar. Haha

There are not that many people that are this clueless and combative out there. Wonder why you made a new profile right around the time you made a fool of yoursleve earlier this year? I guess you decided it was not good to be a internet jerk while you own a business in Havasu? Haha Actually a pretty smart move. But you just cant help yourself from being a childish jerk.

BTW- I did laugh out loud at the above post, it was funny. But I am not about to give you a like. LOL


Mike

 

[dan200]

How are we taking money out of a vendor pocket if we have everything we need and do not push our car past there tent? Ppl that need stuff will go to them it doesn't matter if our car gets pushed past there tent. If I need something then I'll find it and buy it. Vendors are great but the cars getting pushed past them doesn't make them money but I tell you what having them around on race day with parts available for teams would definitely help some teams out but normally there already gone.

How?

Our company pays for the opportunity to engage with racers and their crews. This creates an opportunity for a sale right then and there OR begins a relationship where that sale can happen later. It puts a face with a name in a world where that happens less and less. People tell me all the time "It's nice to finally meet you face to face." Its called networking and we pay the opportunity to network.

Here is a common scenario- I am gonna call this story "I forgot my sunglasses"

You have a prefect truck and come through the tech line. It takes a few hours to make it all the way through. It's you, your wife, and a few dudes from your crew. Maybe a kid or two. As you wait a guy from your crew is window shopping and notices that I have a huge selection of sunglasses. Our sunglasses are popular in this sport and difficult to find at a retailer. But I have 'em, right then and there. And a dude from your crew wants some so he rolls up and starts looking through them. While he doing this your wife notices the straw hats and she wants one because its hot and sunny and she's "too old to be uncomfortable". Then your kids say "We want a hat too Mom". A few minutes later I have sold a couple pairs of shades a straw hat and few baseball hats.

Also, while your crew guy was there looking at sunglasses, he asks me about door bags for the new can am play car he just got. I don't have them on hand but I do at the shop so, we exchange contact info and I quickly follow up with him when I get back home. I text him right after I get back and even though I responded quickly he decides not to make the move and buy the bags. Did my follow up end up being a waste of time? No. Because he saved my number, knows I am solid and now, maybe the next time he needs something he might go to me first. He might need a new floor jack later that season and that's a 74 pound box and that's expensive to ship BUT he knows I am gonna be at the next race so, he texts me a week before the race and asks me to bring him one to the event and he doesnt have to pay shipping. While he's picking that up from me he tells me about the last minute plumbing nightmare he just dealt with the night before. During this conversation I tell him that I have over 3,000 pieces of plumbing on the trailer. (I do actually. 3,246 was my last count). I also tell him that I make myself available even after tech is closed. "The trailer closes but it is never really closed." All ya have to do is text me. If I am on site I will do my best to get ya squared away. ( I can't count how many times I have been pulled out of the Tree Bar (RIP) or Bikini's or wherever to get some guy a brake fitting or some tear offs or whatever.)

6 months later at a two day race he remembers what I said about plumbing and its 1 AM and he needs a dash 8, 45 degree, push lock fitting and 24 inches of hose to go with it. Or an entire CBR transmission cooler. Or a catheter. And I get a text. And he gets one back. And then he gets to see me in my pajamas while we dig through the trailer and get him sorted out. The race car stops being a paperweight and starts being a racecar again.

And all that happened because some guy who hauls tires around for some guy who has a perfect race truck forgot his sunglasses.

The End

 

[C4]

The ppl buying all the stuff in tech are mostly ppl that are not racing other than a few things like a cath or a helmet part most teams have what they need already
It's the ppl that come to watch or if a team needs something then they will get it
Parker tech is way better on the street than the casino rat race. If you been doin it for 12 years man that up and down circles gets old.

This is not true at all. I would be SHOCKED if there were more than 10 "spectators" in Parker for tech total, all day long. There are even less "spectators" at other races like Silver State, Vegas to Reno and so on. The people in tech are there for or with a team or are somehow connected to the event.

 

[RacingTraX]

Personally I love the street. I like being in town also because you can actually get an LTE signal on your phone!

 

[TwistyItch]

How are we taking money out of a vendor pocket if we have everything we need and do not push our car past there tent? Ppl that need stuff will go to them it doesn't matter if our car gets pushed past there tent. If I need something then I'll find it and buy it. Vendors are great but the cars getting pushed past them doesn't make them money but I tell you what having them around on race day with parts available for teams would definitely help some teams out but normally there already gone.

I get your point in general, but for us with a never been seen product in the market space, almost all of our business comes from people waiting for tech and seeing our product and going "WTF is that?!" We're small, can't afford a lot of advertising, and rely on onsite demo for sales at races. We also get to provide in-person support to our customers who might not have known we'd be there. And we consider support to be very important for us and our customers. As a vendor, I'd skip the race if they split tech/contingency into 2 options. LiquidAider push button hydration system

 

[Jimmy8]

This is not true at all. I would be SHOCKED if there were more than 10 "spectators" in Parker for tech total, all day long. There are even less "spectators" at other races like Silver State, Vegas to Reno and so on. The people in tech are there for or with a team or are somehow connected to the event.

Normally I'd agree with you, but yeah, a good 1/3rd of the people walking around tech at Parker were spectators. This town eats, sleeps, and breathes this stuff. Since I live here, I know who are the locals and who is spectating and there were plenty of them. They all come out once a year to blow their money on the latest off-road swag. Parker is the anomaly.

 

[10 shot]

LOL Hello Keith

I knew your post and attitude seemed familiar. Haha

There are not that many people that are this clueless and combative out there. Wonder why you made a new profile right around the time you made a fool of yoursleve earlier this year? I guess you decided it was not good to be a internet jerk while you own a business in Havasu? Haha Actually a pretty smart move. But you just cant help yourself from being a childish jerk.

BTW- I did laugh out loud at the above post, it was funny. But I am not about to give you a like. LOL

 

[ekozy39]

For Baja tech, I’ll push and gladly wait out 3hrs in the sun. THAT is a vibe and I think brings value for racers, vendors and fans. BITD tech is just something you have to do and sorry for the vendors but given a choice I’d rather not push through a 3hr line for the benefit of the vendors b/c tech only attracted 100 fans. If we forgot something required to pass tech , I’d seek you out anyways. BITD races are held in cities with small populations, and on a weekday, can’t really expect a whole lot more unless promoters make it a destination.

 

[10 shot]

Lol but mike everything I stated you said first! It's all fun don't get upset or we will have to delete another thread.

 

[10 shot]

Anyways ..... just did my first MORE race last weekend and they had a tech time you had to file after sign up online. You choose your time of tech and show up accordingly. Very organized you still had to go through the tech alley but no backed up cars and had aprox 180 entries. Ppl still buying stuff from pci and the vendors that were there. It doesn't have to be a full blown party with ppl spilling beer on your cars for 5 hrs . You also had to move not park your truck and block everyone and go talk to whoever for 30 min about your shock tune. No reason you cant come back to do all the talking and looking after your truck or car rolls through. One year the mint was 9 hrs that's just stupid sorry.

 

[dan200]

For Baja tech, I’ll push and gladly wait out 3hrs in the sun. THAT is a vibe and I think brings value for racers, vendors and fans.

The only US vendors in Baja are PCI and Rugged. Everyone else is there to display stuff only, besides the local T-Shirt people.

BITD tech is just something you have to do and sorry for the vendors but given a choice I’d rather not push through a 3hr line for the benefit of the vendors b/c tech only attracted 100 fans.

Regardless of the fan count the vendor presence helps with the cost of the race and it gives support companies an opportunity to get a return on their investment for all the contingency money they put out there for the racers.

If we forgot something required to pass tech , I’d seek you out anyways.

Good luck finding anyone. If we don't get vendor row, were not going to be there.

BITD races are held in cities with small populations, and on a weekday, can’t really expect a whole lot more unless promoters make it a destination.

And then there is the Mint 400. The single most expensive place to be a vendor. And it has added costs because it takes two days, and hotels and food, and if youre me ya have to move in early because of the size of my rig/trailer.

 

[J Prich]

The conversation is actually an interesting crossroads of competing interests. When you step back from the self driven lens of your perspective (vendor, racer, or promoter) what you end up with is a group of people with many who want polar opposite things from the same situation.

Using the Mint as an example, the 2017/2018 iterations where tech was like 9 hours long...if I'm not mistaken entries were at like 350-400 that year. That's a lot of cars and trucks, no bikes. In order to tech 400 cars in 10 hours...simple math says that's an average of teching 40 cars per hour. Forget contingency, vendors, etc...the math on just teching that many cars alone means you're tagging a car every 5 min or less...and that's with two lines and probably two vehicles at a time in each line. Taken in to account the thoroughness of pre and post race tech that has been debated here...how effective can a pre race tech really be when you're talking about less than 5 min per car/team (including safety gear etc), for 10 straight hours?

So then you move to two day tech to manage the load a little better (PS, anyone remember back in like...2018 when so many people were saying you couldn't do a two day race because of volunteers, time commitments etc?) and when you go to two days you get vendors who dont like it because they have to commit extra time only to have diluted crowds and racers who don't like it because they have to spend an extra day (and more money) to get through the process.

Everybody involved in these processes wants something different and at the end of the day there is really no solution that will make everyone or even most everyone happy. This is why Al Gore invented the internet. So we could all have a place to come and complain about it all, lol.

 

[10 shot]

The funny thing is everything we sre doing today to make tech faster was also said could never be done before covid like the online drivers meeting. That was also a great idea now it can be done and I hope it stays that way.