It’s Working!

At last weekend’s RAL event at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the proof of concept that New England Region’s Trackside Experience is paying off was seen throughout the track.

11 of the 63 volunteers that registered on MotorsportsReg, and then showed up to work over the weekend were Trackside Experience alumni.

That’s outstanding!

There were 2 people in T&S, 2 in Tech, 1 in F&C, 4 in EMS and 2 on Grid. Exposing the variety of specialties as part of the Trackside Experience program available really allowed these new faces to find the spot on track that best fit their interests, and then return for a full weekend.

Two alumni attended a 2024 Trackside Experience, two came from 2025 events, and the remaining 7 were from the two events held this year – 4 from our first event in May at NHMS, and 3 from the second event at Thompson Speedway at the Majors over July 4th weekend.

Jonathan Baily and Gage Jeselink return to work Grid after attending the May 2026 NHMS Trackside Experience.

What is Trackside Experience?

Back in 2023, Steve Introne founded a Recruiting Team with the goal to attract and retain new volunteer workers for our road racing program. His team brainstormed and spear-headed the creation of a Trackside Experience program. They hosted the first event in 2024, then two in 2025 and two more again in 2026.

The team wanted to offer a way for potential workers to see, hear, feel and experience each of the opportunities to get involved at the track. SCCA has always offered On The Job (OTJ) training to new volunteers. But we’ve usually required newbies to commit to a single specialty for the entire day or weekend. Trackside Experience changed that, and attendees were able to try them all.

For the first half of the day, during the morning sessions, the entire group made the rounds and visited all areas of the track. This allowed them to also get the lay of the land, as for many, this was their first time ever even being at a road race event! Each specialty chief gave a brief explanation of what they did, and the roles and responsibilities of the trackside workers. Then after lunch, every person was able to pick their two favorites and go try them out for a couple sessions. F&C people were put to work waving flags on corners, tech people helped weigh cars on scales, T&S did taping of cars as back-ups, and those that went to the grid assisted with arranging cars for the starts of the afternoon races.

They Came Back

Each Trackside Experience event hosted between 6-15 participants. The programs are scheduled on a Saturday, so attendees have the option to return on Sunday to go deeper and spend the entire day in one of the specialties. In most cases, at least 1-2 of the attendees did just that.

The real test is if any of these new faces would come back for a future weekend. And this last weekend proved, they are. Of the 11 working NHMS, this was the second or third weekend a few have returned and continued participating in the region’s Trackside programs.

Next Steps

The goal of the Recruiting Team and the development of the Trackside Experience program was to attract and retain new workers. Those are delivering. If our region can continue to get people to the Trackside Experience events, we have a great opportunity to create and develop new, long-time volunteers for our road racing specialty programs. The Recruiting Team is always looking for help as they visit car shows, local colleges and push out social media marketing campaigns to drive awareness and attendance at the Trackside Experience events. If anyone would like to support their efforts, contact the team at Recruiting@ner.org.