There have been many personal blogs from people celebrating their movement to paying member, and singing the virtues of doing so. I would like to put a counter argument to that.

I have been with r2p for around 5 months and paid since day 1. R2P became my primary place to race so I had no problem paying a small amount of money for the entertainment. I made a couple of complaints about the Euro schedule at the time which I could just about make, and Tim listened. Season 5 came and the Euro schedule actually got worse for me by 15 minutes. This has meant that in May I have had 5 races. It`s still value for money I suppose but could I have done the same races for free? With the exception of the GT-I race the answer is yes.

Yesterday I canceled my automatic paypal subscription to r2p. I still have a bit of time left on my membership from my last payment. I have not yet decided whether i will continue as a paying member, but in canceling the subscription I am now in control of that decision.

Ok thats where my mindset is at. Here is the point. I dont believe that r2p incentives paying members enough. Besides the ability to compete in the GT-I the only other benefit for me is that i can schedule races a few weeks in advance. In effect that means nothing to me. The mid week Euro schedule means I often cancel those races I booked a couple of weeks ago anyway. Yeah I know there are other incentives, like the panoz thing, the wtcc loan thing, but they don't mean anything to me. I just want to race.

When r2p announced an effective end to long periods of racing for free, the backlash was such that the decision was retracted. So free members continue to race here with probably 90% of the benefit that paying members get. Wait, before you think it, I am not trying to belittle race for free drivers here, in fact I am considering joining you. However paying members should have considerably more influence than free members. They are the ones who contribute to the infrastructure that allows free members to race. Without those paying members r2p wouldn't be what it is and what it will become.

As I mentioned before the benefit of being able to join races 4 weeks ahead really doesnt help when I dont know what time I will get home from work the next day, never mind in 4 weeks time. As a paying member there are 2 benefits I would like:

The ability to join races and if necessary bump free members from races up to 1 hour before qualifying. Seems harsh? Not really, I am paying for them to race!

When I protested that Euro races were being scheduled 15 minutes earlier than season 4, Tim informed me that the survey dictated this. I wondered how many free members were able to influence that. In my opinion free members should not get a vote on schedule, in fact they shouldn't have any influence at all. As a free member you enjoy what has been setup for you, you don't have a box to complain from because you take and don't give. As a paying member your almost a customer of r2p. Those are the people that should be kept happy.

Lastly I wouldn't like this post to be seen as something less than constructive. There are many excellent things at r2p. However I am now racing more at the league I raced with before r2p for free, than I do here. Thats influenced mostly by the euro start times. This is just one man`s thoughts on membership and I might perhaps be in the minority on this, but I thought it was worth posting them. Again, I am not against free members at all. In fact when the 30 day limit was proposed I posted against it, saying that free members have a positive contribution to r2p in that they make up the numbers. BUT free members should just be doing that, making up the numbers, because at the moment thats all I am doing and paying to do so. 10 dollars is nothing, but if spending 10 dollars brings you nothing, better then in your bank than someone else's.