Members,

The Board has been hard at work putting together the various pieces to make our 2019 Lucarelli & Castaldi Club Race Series a successful one. I wanted to use this opportunity to provide some updates about the series.

First off, I wanted to quickly introduce myself. My name is Kevin Hsieh and I’ve been racing with CRCA for six years. The Lucarelli & Castaldi Club Race Series is one of my favorite ongoing events in the city. There is no other race series that provides the narrative potential of 12 races with the same racers and teams. It’s really an incredible race series to watch various storylines unfold as teams and racers vie for the highly sought after Lucarelli & Castaldi CRCA Leader’s Jerseys and the various Team Cups.

I also want to acknowledge all the hard work that my predecessor, Julius, has put in over the past three seasons. This is the first time in my six years of racing with CRCA that I’ve been given the opportunity to peek under the hood of what happens before, during, and after a club race. It’s incredible to see all that Julius and all the other folks involved were able to achieve. If you see him or any of the other race operations team around at the race or at a CRCA social event, please find a way to express your gratitude for their efforts.

As always, the CRCA Board is here to listen to your feedback on the race and we are always willing to consider your suggestions. I wanted to give a quick overview of some of the changes that we have implemented based on your feedback:

• Randy (Memberships) has done a great deal of work to streamline the race number pickup as well as day-of race check-in. With on-the-fly race number assignment and dedicated equipment for our check-in team, we’re hoping that we can relieve some of that early morning pre-race stress on both the racers and the operations staff.

• We have shifted the WDev field to encompass only Category 4 and 5 Women’s License Holders, as opposed to Category 3/4/5 in previous iterations. We feel that this change will improve the race experience for newer racers as well as bolster the size and competition within our W field.

• We are introducing a Master’s Team Competition to go alongside our Master’s Series Leader competition. To promote participation in these competitions, we also added one more Master’s race date into our schedule.

• Based on feedback from some of the larger teams, we are bumping the team limit in the B and W field to 10 in an effort to keep sub-teams from having to make the tough decision of benching racers at the start line.

On a personal level, as this is my first season as Vice President of Club Racing, I’m working to document and standardize as much as I can as I run more races throughout the season. I’m hoping that by approaching the role from this perspective, I’m able to make our races run even more smoothly and eventually dedicate time to telling you or your team’s race story.

See you all Saturday!