July 11, 2020 – SCCA Racing in the Northeast has come back with Covid-19 protocols in place. NER had their first event recently at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park (TSMP), hosting an SCCA US Majors race weekend. Knowing that the flagger crew generally is an older demographic, I was eager to volunteer to make sure that our new flag chiefs had enough volunteers to adequately staff all the necessary stations around the track. I was also anxious to get out and flag, having most of the first half of our season cancelled due to the pandemic. Being outdoors and not in a crowd is a necessity for me to feel somewhat comfortable in getting out to events. To further reduce the risk to myself, I decided to recruit my wife to join me as a flagger; bringing my social bubble along for the event was a good way to reduce exposures to others.
The weather forecast for the weekend was threatening to be pretty wet, with a huge storm making its way up the East Coast. Fortunately for us, the storm decided to head further inland than first anticipated, and as such we enjoyed hot and sunny weather for the race weekend. SCCA road racers were also eager to get out and enjoy some social distanced motorsports fun, too, as car counts were pretty good; some race groups were 30+ cars. My wife didn’t want to stretch her wings too much during the event, so she stayed on the yellow flags for both days, making me blue flag for both days. We were given an easier station to work so that I could keep an eye on both my responsibilities and give some help to my wife’s flagging duties when needed. By day two, she was starting to get the hang of the event and was commenting on specific cars and racer actions. It was great to finally get her out to an event and see what I do at these races. I’m hoping we can get out to a few more events as a team.