Charles wrote:I'm sure I'll just be told I'm wrong, but for the majority of the morning session the start interval between cars was too close.
You're not wrong. This course lent itself to a VERY short start interval. We were able to send a car every 18-22 seconds. Our normal target is 25-30 seconds. Rather than fight it, we opted to work with it, and starters were instructed to simply hold the start for ANYTHING. If a worker flinches, hold the start. It seemed to work well enough. It allowed us to take advantage of the fast pace... but, without running the workers ragged.
In the late session when it was raining, we ran each group through two complete runs one-car-at-a-time to be sure everyone knew the course before we did any overlap at all. Then we slipped into the same routine because it worked.
I know in the 1st heat of at least 1 instance of a car coming through the finish shoot to find another one sitting stopped or barely rolling though the end of the shoot. Missed his name, but he said he was going to report it to someone.
That's either a worker problem (didn't red flag the 2nd driver), or a driver problem (not recognizing that they spun or whatever, but there's still a car coming BEHIND THEM). It does happen from time to time.
From a driver perspective, you should see a car in the finish chute when there shouldn't be. And ANYTHING that distracts you like that, whether it's a worker still on course when he shouldn't be, or running out in front of you... anything that's blown your concentration... Stop. Don't try to finish your run and risk hitting another car or a course worker. Just own the situation and Stop. "Hey, I stopped because there was a car in my finish chute." "Okay, we'll get you a rerun."
I know in the 2nd heat it was more of the same because I was driving in it. Seems like we should have been waiting an extra 3-5 seconds until the 1st car was fully committed to the turnaround entry before releasing the 2nd car.
There was also a "window" on the finish side. Depending on the relative speeds of two cars on course, the starter may have been waiting for car A to finish before starting the next car. Car B is "somewhere in the turn-around", and that was fine for this course. The DANGEROUS thing on this course was to send a car too late. Then they cross paths mid-course in an unsafe place. So, while you might not have liked it, I much prefered the "early" start to the "late" start due to the passing point.
You've worked start enough that you know the starter has a lot of things to look at, AND drivers don't always start when you tell them to. Getting a car started +/- 3 to 5 seconds of your intent is usually good enough. And if it's not, we'll usually opt to run one-at-a-time or whatever it takes to ensure safety.
~38 second course on average with ~5 second variation between the fast crew and the slower crew doesn't leave you much room for error. If anyone spun or slid, the 2nd car was on them like white on rice in no time.
We did have the luxury of plenty of experienced course workers this time. There were no sketchy "3rd event" corner captains. This weighed in our decision of how quickly to let the pace be.
I didn't see any value added by saying we aren't counting the last run in the morning session. In the future shouldn't we announce "6th run won't count if the afternoon crew doesn't get one" ?
After we were told it wouldn't count it was clear to me the thought was it might take too long to duplicate in the evening but what if it doesn't?
Well, now you're just whining. We had the time, we made the decision to allow the 6th run in the morning and not count it. Had it been POURING down rain, or worse yet LIGHTING that we would have had to wait out... maybe we wouldn't have had time to do the 6th run in the afternoon? You got a bonus run, be happy.
When you tell a group of autoXers that a run doesn't count they all go to 11/10th right away clubbing more cones and generally eating up more time compared to a competition run.
But, again, we had the time. And it was the decision that we made.
I called from grid that there was no point in calling in cones if the run didn't count to save us some time if the course workers and/or timing were overwhelmed trying to keep up but no one wanted to hear it
I heard that call. It's NOT a call that you should be making from the grid. We don't like changing procedures like that for just one run. Everyone out there knows how to play the game. Why change the rules for this one run? Business as usual. Get these 26 cars through their one last run, it will take about 15 minutes and we'll be done.
Yes my fastest run was my last run but it wasn't even close to changing my finishing position. Making this point as a suggestion for the club not for personal gain
I'm not sure I'd have made the decision on the 6th run any differently if I had it to do over again. Unless the decision was to just stand at 5 runs and NOT give the bonus run, which is more often the case. When afternoon weather is iffy, we don't want to over-promise for the afternoon. If we'd just done 6 official runs, then we'd have been locked into doing the same for the afternoon. I was actually very surprised that so many of the afternoon drivers WANTED to take that bonus run in the rain. People are unpredictable.
Championship points files are labeled June but I assume these results have not been added yet? I see points listed for event #10 but some of the folks with points didn't attend this event.
Philip hasn't updated the points yet. What's out there is from early June. (Jun 3)
