Re: July 26 YYC Practice event is a go!

[midship]

Reijo, thank you for setting this up (and Aug 9). I personally find it useful to be able to do a repeatable test/practice on both driving and car setup. I think for us in the living in the north with a short driving season that's a fast track way to get our car and our driving to improve.


Here my take on the test and tune:

+ The 2 courses with different elements were great! It's great for target both driving and car setup independently. I suppose if we takeout the crossover, we can put more car thru. (But the course wasn't that long anyway..however, the starter need to be on their toe to release the next car. see below )

+ course was simple enough cone picking was minimal.

- I was a bit disappointed with the numbers of runs that I could get out of the hour. In total, I was only able to get 6 runs out of an hour.

  I was only able to test 3 setup with 1 runs on each course. I could tell the difference between my settings but there weren't enough runs to make a meaningful conclusion if the changes were any good, as I didn't have the time/run to get consistent with the setup. 

  3 runs probably do not give you a driving consistency for the course to even start trying to make changes to one's driving (unless you're Cam/Ryan/Reijo ) Personally that didn't provide the true benefit of a test and tune.

e.g. We had a few TnT at GreyEgale before and I was tired of running as we did at least 20 runs each for the evening. That's when one can really "try things out" and see the results.

  Maybe we need to see if the change over was the culprit. As each course was only ~25-30 secs. With 2 courses, 20 cars ... technically you can put thru all 20 cars per 5 mins. (even without overlap) So each one of us should at least get 12 runs per hour. We need to find a way to do/keep track of change over.


Suggestions:
  With 20/30 cars with 2 courses - I suggest we don't even run a grid. Just line up. If you need to work on your car, then pull it off the line back to the pit and work on it. (Two drivers cars - just line up, swap drivers)

Or 1 course with less entries?


This will at least keep the starter busy. On the slalom course, you can put thru even more cars per minute.

[MurrayPeterson]

First car didn't run until 6:30.  For a "speedier" evening, I would suggest:

1. Smaller, simpler courses to allow much faster setup with fewer cones.
2. No course walks.  Just run the course(s) blind for your first run
3. No crossover on any course to allow multiple cars on course at once.

Changeovers and grid were definitely a holdup.  Perhaps we should try what other clubs do: You take some runs (3?), park your car, and go out to marshal at station #1.  Marshal at station #1 moves to station #2.  And so on, until marshal at last station goes back to take some runs.

[JCS]

if you look at the slalom (28-31 second course) running cars every 15 seconds if you had 12 cars queued up there for 30 minutes you should in theory be able to give most people  10 runs.  Unrealistic though, and more likely is 7-8.

if you had 12 cars on the sweeper course with the overlap (31-38 second course) running cars 30 sec apart because of the overlap, in 30 minutes should get 5 runs in 30 min.

I was proposing earlier when registering folks that your work group would dictate your run group.  do 30 min on slalom, 30 min on sweeper, 30 min on work. 

Based on the above in the hour of seat time you would get 8-10 runs on slalom and 5ish runs on sweeper. 13-15 runs maximum in the 1 hour TNT + 3 runs in the race session.

This would make the queuing more simple to maintain as well as you could make sure even numbers were going to each course through the evening and just every 30 minutes you rotate to the next station/track.  I guess this distracts from those who wanted to focus on certain aspects though.

The alternative is the final track was 30-40 seconds but we were steadily running cars through it ever 20 seconds.  If we had run two run groups on the one big track for the whole night.  say 90 minutes and 90 minutes then in theory 20 cars running 20 seconds apart for 90 minutes.  means you're pumping all cars through every ~7minutes with I guess 5 minutes between runs.  Enough to make some adjustments.  everyone gets 10-13 runs in 90 minutes. 

I'm not sure how at 40 cars you give people more seat time than that.  For what its worth between riding with folks and driving I'm pretty sure I got in close to 15 runs driving and 2 or 3 ride alongs.  I was happy with it.

TLDR version:  Last nights format but with specific run groups would give you up to 18 runs total across all course setups.

[kaho]

Thanks for all the work required to have yesterday's event running. It was a fun night!

[Reijo]

Thanks for all the work required to have yesterday's event running. It was a fun night!

You're welcome!   Also thanks to you and all the others, Brock, Tara, Cam, George, Paul, Murray (sorry if I missed anyone here!), etc. who helped before and after the event bringing cones/equipment to and from the venue.  It was a long day for some of us and your effort was appreciated.

[Reijo]

Just one more comment:   Anyone wanting more down time could have skipped their run at any time - no problem since it is not an official timed event.  There is no issue with skipping runs!

With a grid like this the gap if you skipped a run was about 10 minutes or less.  Something to consider.

R

[Reijo]

Lots of good comments here - thanks!

Just as a note for you all to consider:

I thought we might have had more runs than we did and the biggest factors were people lining up at the slalom course instead of the sweeper course resulting in no one at the sweeper course a number of times.  Maybe having a choice wasn't so good?

The BIGGEST factor in how many runs you get is how fast (how small an interval) you send out cars.  Therefore the starter HAS to be sending them out at 20 sec. (or less) intervals.  This requires a certain level of expertise, help, and consistency for the starter.  There also have to be cars present to start.  This is one of the issues we were dealing with in grid.  It was a bit of an adjustment with 2 courses going and only one grid supplying the cars!  The cars had to go out very, very quickly ... plus tell drivers that there was a line up of so many cars on the slalom course and that they might consider going to the sweeper course instead.....or something like that.  But the grid people did a great job and adjusted as we went so that things were flowing pretty well toward the end of the first 3 heats.  It will only get better.

Now having said that, even with the limited cars on-course and around 42 competitors (2/3 in grid), some cars were coming in (2-driver cars) and then heading out without stopping!  In other words that was about as many as you could physically send out with such a "small" group!  Hence, it might be an idea to actually allow more people in to allow some time between runs for adjustments, water tires, etc. etc.!  Think about that for a moment or two.   

Maybe a month and a half ago I did a calculation and discovered in order to have a 5 minute gap between runs for 2-driver cars, we needed to have an absolute minimum of 27 competitors in a heat, sending them out 20 sec. apart!  That is why I suggested for some 2-driver cars that they might consider separating into 2 heats just to get a break between runs.

Something else I could have done is to have 2 (almost - they would never be identical twins) identical slalom courses and that way there is no cross-over.

 I'll get back to other comments and plans later on ... enough for now ... have other stuff to do.

R

[midship]

"Maybe a month and a half ago I did a calculation and discovered in order to have a 5 minute gap between runs for 2-driver cars, we needed to have an absolute minimum of 27 competitors in a heat, sending them out 20 sec. apart!  That is why I suggested for some 2-driver cars that they might consider separating into 2 heats just to get a break between runs."

In all honesty, I would ignore the dual driver car. It's not a competition. If they would like to keep the tires cool, they could just pull out for a few minutes and get back in line. (moving grid) Simplify the logistics.

You'll also save 2 guys doing the grid. If everyone like to run the slalom course, so be it. And you will always have cars to send out.


JCS - I don't know how you could get 15runs with 2-3 ride along? I was sitting at the grid the whole time, and no lineup when I pull up to the course, and I could only barely got 6.   

Maybe the grid guys really like you! LoL

[MurrayPeterson]

I did hear more than a few comments about the disparity in runs available.  Not sure how/why this happened, but we should look into the issue.

[Reijo]

I did hear more than a few comments about the disparity in runs available.  Not sure how/why this happened, but we should look into the issue.

The early group did not run as efficiently as the latter ones.   We were not sending up cars fast enough and that is one of the reasons I spent more time in the grid than anywhere else getting our people organized and sending the cars quicker.  Grid is actually a very difficult job and in this case with 2 courses running at the same time, it meant cars had to be sent roughly twice as fast as so it was a little bit of an adjustment period for the grid people to get that figured out.  That, of course, is no fault of their's but rather because it was a unique event and hence we needed a unique way of running things in grid.  In a nutshell that explains the situation ... of course, it was a bit more complicated than that ... as I said, grid is a tricky and pretty hectic job.  The drivers also had to adjust to the quickness of getting out ... and the starters too.

There were a couple of other items such as people just driving back into the line without going back to grid like they were supposed to ...  We just need to herd the cats.     LOL

R

[Reijo]

Ambrose and some others mentioned about just making big lines of cars going into the start area.

That is going back to the 1980's and that is absolutely a non-starter for me.  Forget it guys.

The reasons:  We need proper procedures.  If we get some CM cars in the future, they can't be idling in the pits.  In fact our FP car will eventually have a smaller radiator and the same thing is true.  And what about inching forward as if in a traffic jam with a racing clutch?  No thanks!  Also what about where are you going to keep your water bottle, helmet, numbers, tire pressure gage and whatever else you need to do between runs?  If you don't have a set position, none of the above is going to be possible or easily anyway.

If you are running a completely stock car and aren't watering the tires or anything else.....sure that makes sense.  But that is not the case for everyone.

Also, there were comments about talking with other competitors, changing cars etc.  How is that going to be possible if the line is creeping forward every 20 seconds?

So, no go.  Let's not regress back to the '80's ... or do you want to bring back the useless tight courses too with gates that you can hardly fit through with a bigger car etc.?   ... or was that back to the future?  hahaha

R

[JCS]

JCS - I don't know how you could get 15runs with 2-3 ride along? I was sitting at the grid the whole time, and no lineup when I pull up to the course, and I could only barely got 6.   

Maybe the grid guys really like you! LoL

Maybe.  I dunno I had 6 runs on the sweeper and 3 runs on the slalom in videos plus the 3 race runs.  And I ran that FRS I think twice on slalom and once on sweeper.  So whats that = 9 + 3 + 3 = 15 runs. 

I had a ride along with Brock, maybe I only had one ride along:)

It doesn't change what I was really trying to explain above which is the math does work to get 15 runs if you had run it as three run groups with 30 min on each course + work.

[FrozenMarzBar3]

Thanks again to Reijo, and everyone who stepped forward towards making this event happen! The new format was a little strange to get used to (and I had to explain the format to a first-timer at the same time), but for the most part I feel that, from a participants standpoint, it went quite well... especially considering the limited timeframe we had available to us.

From my experience, I have a couple things to suggest to make the things run a little more smoothly:

• Set a regimented schedule for the 3 heats in the first schedule, or provide radios to course marshalls to announce when the shifts change. I found that when we were marshaling deep in the course, we had no idea when our work shift was ending
• Provide sticky notes of different colours when people register to designate which group people are running in for the second session (with the long course), and apply them to the inside of their windshield? that way it might make it a little easier for the grid marshalls to know which cars are running in that heat, and chase down the owners if they are not there.

Just a couple of ideas

Thanks again!

[MurrayPeterson]

I could live without the long course entirely and just stick with the short courses for the evening.

[MurrayPeterson]

Point of interest about the Farmtek system -- it was at the absolute limit of its range that evening.  I have Yagi antennae on order, but they won't be here in time for the next event.  So, the course designer needs to keep in mind how far the start and finish are from the control unit in order to make it work.  Also, please add "timing" to the worker list; I had to work for 2 out of the 3 heats because nobody signed up to replace me.