A few of my thought's....

[Anonymous]

The biggest gripe I had with the last event just run (Brooksville 9/9) was that I was assigned to the first working group. No problem.

Every station already had 4 workers, so me and a friend were told that we should stand in between two groups that were spread a bit far apart.

So, off we went. There was no equipment left to speak of, but we figured it would be okay and we could just call out if something happened to another group to call in. A little low tech, but it would suffice.

The last straw came when a car was sent out to tell all of the worker groups about what was going on, as there was a delay in the running of cars. We watched as the car going around to each group drove right past us, as though we were just standing there spectating.

After this, I essentially felt completely useless and walked back to the paddock area. I know this may have been slightly irresponsible, but it's something I've never done at an autocross before up untill now. I make sure to work every time I need to, and I try to run my ass off if something does happen. But when I'm just standing there and not even being acknowledged that I'm doing anything, it's a little undermining.

Then of course, because there were so many people that worked in my run group and assumed they were done, there was a delay because there weren't enough workers.

I don't mean for this to sound like a rant or gripe; I always have a fun time being out there, and I like doing what I can do to help. These are just a few points I felt could use some attention. I think if these were addressed that following events could run much smoother.

I think that these problems may be limited to Brooksville, as it's so large and hard to cover adequately with workers. But hopefully by adressing the issue now, future events there will run better. Thanks



-Eugene

[rippin mazda]

I was the one riding in the car jumping out at the various worker stations. We wanted to make sure that the people at the stations were not accidentally calling people off course when they were not since some elements were a little hard to follow. Your area (finish side by the turn around IIRC) was not calling in a lot of off courses, so we kept moving to try to minimize the down time.

The worker situation was unique since a lot of people went out to work when it wasn't their assigned heat. We told them all that it was great they wanted to work but it wouldn't count as their working assignment and they still had to come out for their regular heat. That seemed to go in one ear and out the other as we had a huge worker shortage for the 3rd run group. That was something I've never seen in my 4 years of autocrossing.

The next time we are at Brooksville will be when it is much cooler so we will be able to do all the runs at once and only have 2 worker changes.

Ryan

[Native]

Eugene,
Just for future knowledge, for anyone, we have at the least 10 radios, and they all work. Maybe 12. We also have all sorts of flags - not all red, mind you - but any flag would suffice if needing to get a driver's attention. So, there's never a need for anyone to go out on course "unarmed."

We have plans for making the drivers' meeting a bit more detailed to try to avoid such confusion over work groups, equipment, and other issues (such as people not littering the site and sticking the tear-down crew with cleaning up...), but that's already been addressed in the post-event thread, which I'm sure you read

I'm wishing you would have spoken up at the time...if you, or anyone, are ever at an event and see something that just "doesn't seem right", including such things as you experienced, find the event chair, Course Marshal, or me, and let us know!

Thanks for the feedback.

[Anonymous]

Steve,

Thanks for the info. I'll make sure to let someone know if things seem a little off. I was having an off day at the time so I just kind of shrugged off everything.