CRA Membership and Board Meetings are held virtually via Google Meet on the first Tuesday of every month (click 'see more details' below for link). Membership meetings are open to all members and are a great way to raise questions or concerns about your club directly to the Board. All are encouraged to attend.
By Phone: Call 1-800-317-8143, and let them know you need to make a reservation in the Central Roadracing Association Awards Banquet Dinner room block. Let them know the group code is 909.
**The group rate is valid until 12/21/24 or once the room block has been filled, whichever comes first.
This is the first event of the 2021 CRA race season, and the first event where we are utilizing MotorsportReg.com to sign our volunteers up for the race weekend!
Please continue to communicate with your chiefs as we want to make sure we don’t miss anyone.
Volunteer registration closes at 7pm on Wednesday May 5th. We will still accept volunteers after this time, however you will need to email workerliaison@cra-mn.com to be added to the volunteer list.
Please reach out with any questions or if you have any trouble registering for the volunteer event.
Membership is finally open for the 2021 CRA race season!
To obtain your CRA Membership:
1. Visit MotorsportReg from the CRA website, https://www.cra-mn.com/, by clicking “MotorsportReg.com” in the CRA Links section of the sidebar on the left side of the CRA website, or
2. Go directly to the MotorsportReg website via the following link:
2020 Racing Members – Please remember to complete, submit, and purchase membership by March 21, 2020, to keep your competition number from the 2020 season.
All membership cards will be in a digital card format this year, and available on your MotorsportReg account once your application has been accepted by the Membership Director.
If you have any questions regarding membership, please contact Martin Holte at membership@cra-mn.com.
You’ve read it here first! The CRA is in the process of migrating from our former online store to MotorsportReg.com.
Reasons for Change The software at the heart of our previous store, Magento, at its current version, will no longer be supported and as is will not meet credit card processing requirements (PCI certification) this year. Upgrading and ongoing support for Magento is time consuming for our volunteers, and cost prohibitive to the organization as a whole. Several functions in our current implementation would be broken by an update, and it’s not practical to fix them.
Rebuilding the store with the most recent version of software was explored and discussed, but would ultimately suffer from the same support issues in the long term. Using a third-party product will significantly reduce our support requirements and overall risk to the organization. MotorsportReg has been discussed and evaluated over the past couple years, and was found to better meet our needs overall and at lower cost to the organization. Many other roadracing and autosports groups use MotorsportReg, and user account/driver profile information may be shared across the multiple organizations. Which makes this easier on our racers that visit multiple orgs that also utilize MotorsportReg.
In addition, we have previously managed memberships either manually in an Excel spreadsheet, or in a crude database system. Having multiple disparate systems didn’t allow the club to (easily) set store options based on membership status. Using MotorsportReg allows maintaining the membership status, race entries, and much more entirely in one single system.
In addition, with MotoAmerica coming to BIR this summer and the fact they utilize MotorsportReg, we felt now was a good time for our club to make the move.
Based on the above information it should be known that NO data will be copied from the former store to MotorsportReg. You will need to create a new account (if you do not already have one), when the time comes you will need to go in and purchase your membership, and then when the time comes to register for races you will need to go in and do that all as normal. Keep in mind that you will NOT be able to even register for races until you have completed your membership and had it approved.
Idiosyncracies While we believe MotorsportReg is clearly the best alternative, there are a number of restrictions as well as additional functionality beyond what we previously had.
You will need a create a MotorsportReg Account if you have not already.
MotorsportReg Memberships are created as events for set dates. The CRA membership director will need to adjust each one as members join or renew.
The proper profile must be used to register the right person. This includes Membership.
Due to the manual effort required by the CRA membership director, there will be some delay before the system shows the membership as valid.
For proper race entry operation and validation, users will need to create at least one vehicle, and enter their transponder number if they have one. If someone rents, they still need to create a vehicle, leaving the transponder number blank, but need to do only once.
Timeline The timeline for implementation is as follows:
Begin using MotorsportReg exclusively for Membership – Feburary 2021. That will become the master data.
Begin using MotorsportReg exclusively for Race Entries – May 2021 (for pre-registration and registration for Race Event #1)
Common Issues
Duplicate Account Profiles. This may be confusing for you – only one carries the membership.
Creating a profile and not adding Central Roadracing Association. CRA can’t see your profile unless it is associated with CRA, though we can add it if we know the email address.
Missing Birthdate. This is used to validate individuals are not minors.
Missing Emergency Contact Information or yourself listed. No one expects accidents to happen, but we won’t know who to contact if you don’t provide it.
Requesting competition number reservation before driver profile set up. Competition Number Reservations are tied to a specific profile.
Not setting up vehicle to pull transponder from. You will be prompted during race registration to create a vehicle to pull your transponder number from, even if you rent your transponder.
Support Support for account management and payment is provided by MotorsportReg through self help functions, documentation, and email support. Support for Membership status and specifics of event registration is provided by CRA through links to the event Registrar.
With the start of the 2021 race season upon us we have an immediate need for a dedicated volunteer to be placed into a Co-Chief role within our IT team.
This volunteer would be primarily responsible for all at track IT related setup of IT related assets prior to the race events, monitoring and troubleshooting throughout the weekend, and teardown and storage of IT related assets at the end of the race weekend. As this role is very hands on, and at times requires coordination with BIR and other CRA staff to complete tasks – we need this individual to be dedicated to the role during the race weekend.
Excellent triage, troubleshooting, communication, and documentation skills as well as attention to detail and having a sense or urgency are musts to making this role successful for the organization.
Outside of the race weekend there will be a small amount of work necessary for the maintenance of the IT related assets, as well as other areas within the Chief of IT’s responsibilities.
Qualified candidates should have an IT background with basic working knowledge of networking (IP addressing, routing, switching, WAN/LAN, etc), computer hardware/software (printers, switches, laptops, monitors, proprietary systems), cybersecurity, etc. Knowledge within the GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) realm is a plus for this role and supporting the rest of the organization as a whole.
Qualified candidates should submit a statement of interest, or questions to the Worker Liaison and Chief of IT by emailing: workerliaison@cra-mn.com, and it@cra-mn.com.
As of now, we are planning to hold the class live, however this is contingent on COVID guidelines at the time of the class. NRS can be changed to a virtual format if new social distancing guidelines are put into place. Please watch our website for any updates or changes.
Email info@cra-mn.com with any questions or to sign up for the class.
Round 3 of the 2020 Board of Directors election has been completed. We had a valid election with a total of 179 votes cast with 3 people abstaining. Please welcome Ryan Fors (who received 107 votes totaling 33.3%) and Brad Kreller (who received 104 votes totaling 32.4%) to your Board of Directors. Leif Nadeau received 83 votes totaling 25.9%. There were also 27 write-ins totaling 8.4%.
On behalf of the Board of Directors, congratulations Ryan and Brad!
A big thank you to to everyone for participating in the election. As always, please reach out to the board at bod@cra-mn.com with any questions or concerns.
We will be beginning round 3 of the 2020 elections. Date of record was set as 12/5/2020 and voting will close at 715pm on 1/5/2021. Keep an eye out for updated ballots to be coming to your emails.
Candidates still running are Brad Kreller, Ryan Fors, and Leif Nadeau.
Please email BOD@cra-mn.com with any questions. Thanks!
