2012 - A TOUGH YEAR FOR MARSHALS

Missing from the otherwise excellent article in Autosport on 19th January 2012 by Ben Anderson was any contribution from the marshalling fraternity.  Hugo from CSCC tried to put Ben and me together for a comment while I was at the Show on Friday but this did not happen.  Maybe there will be another opportunity.  In the meantime, there has been some comment on Ten-Tenths under the above heading.

Had we (the Marshals’ Club) been able to contribute we would have said that many marshals are similarly cash constrained at the moment and we fear some marked reduction in marshalling days this coming season.  We had a minor exodus in 2008 when those marshals who keep detailed household budgets calculated what the incoming financial crisis would do to their so-called discretionary income; quite a few cut back, a few gave up marshalling altogether and a few gave up membership of whatever club they belonged to.  This was masked by the results of the various recruiting campaigns being run by the Marshals’ Club (funded by the MSA) and in our own case membership actually increased but we were keenly aware that we had once again lost experienced members to the financial cutbacks.

We have continued to recruit but the moment we started our renewals for 2012 we had quite few who cancelled their direct debit instructions and a few more who wrote on Ten-Tenths that they would be severely cutting back or stopping marshalling in 2012.

So, it is cost in the main this time but if you ask those who are leaving, all the old reasons come out again.  Lack of decent facilities, lack of clean, usable toilets within easy reach of the marshalling posts – and up until recently the failure of the authorities to enforce their own regulations in this respect – topped all the polls.  Hopefully, the recently agreed appointment of a Marshals’ Representative at each circuit (a BMMC initiative) will make some improvement here.

Next up is timetabling – a major feature in Dave Morgan’s contribution on Ten-Tenths.  Marshals at Castle Combe are almost like family and I am sure they will support Adrian by working through their lunch breaks.  (Adrian is arranging extra cover and break rotation anyway)  So will many marshals  help out at other circuits for other clubs where perhaps there is no extra cover for break rotation.  However, they will not do it for ever, in my experience.  They will do it to help out and to support their club in extremis but if other things are not in place – the aforementioned facilities, some other substantial mark of real appreciation – the love affair will end and many will drift away

In the late 1990’s the sport ignored Marshals’ Club warnings on this score, until three or four years later when the recorded figures of total days marshalled shrunk to 40% of what they had been at their peak.  Some events ran very, very lightly manned indeed, well below the recommended level.  At the peak, some 50,000 days were recorded (the vast majority by Marshals’ Club members); this shrunk to 22,000 but thanks mainly to Marshals’ Club efforts on recruiting this is now back to around 40,000.

At the end of last season a couple of organising clubs said that they might find it difficult to continue to give the marshals even a nominal amount towards expenses in 2012.  We challenged this on the basis that if clubs could make money only by short-changing the marshal, maybe they needed to ask themselves if they were in the right business.  Another reason offered was that there were “so many marshals”.  Well, let’s hope there will always be so many marshals but the cost of, say, £10 a day to each marshal is no more, in total, than the sum paid to two or three doctors over a typical race day or what it costs to hire those other “volunteer” officials scrutineers, timekeepers, even though there might only be three or four of each.  Why is it that the only true volunteers left in the sport still appear to be so far down the food chain of consideration?

Another issue that drives marshals away is poorly supported races.  Are there simply too many championships for each type of car?  Should the organising clubs not cooperate a little more than they do, to amalgamate championships/series for similar cars, to provide better grids and, hopefully, better profitability?

We have three proposals up for consideration at the moment with the MSA, awaiting discussion by Motor Sports Council, where strategy is set.  One is for the GP Fiver to be increased, the £5 a day paid to British GP marshals since 1992 – in which time petrol has increased more than three-fold, the allowances paid to other “volunteer” officials have increased almost four-fold and the cost of a grandstand seat four- or five-fold.

We have also requested that no club should reduce or withdraw this season the nominal sums paid to marshals against expenses and that all clubs should ensure that this nominal sum keeps pace, at least proportionately, with allowances paid to other “volunteer” officials.  Many marshals spend £200+ on a weekend’s marshalling and the sums paid by some clubs, however nominal, are always very much appreciated as a token of that Club’s appreciation.

We have also asked for a Marshals’ Club representative to sit on MSC, something we thought we had achieved in 2007 but was subsequently denied to us.  It is notable that all other “volunteer” officials not only have individual representatives on MSC they are also represented by a separate representative for the Volunteer Officials Advisory Panel, who is not currently a marshal.

These proposals received a somewhat sympathetic response (but not unanimous!) at the last ABMRC meeting and the papers are now with the MSC for consideration.

In answer to Lucky Scarf and others on Ten-Tenths, yes, we are aware of the issues and we are trying to organise some improvement – the main aim being to encourage as many marshals as we can to stick with it.