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I noticed that on both of my afternoon runs I think. Would that have qualified for a rerun if you stop to point it out?

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Stephen Westerfield
2009 Infiniti M35 | 2007 Honda Fit Sport | 2005 Ford Mustang GT |2000 GMC Sierra |1992 Acura Integra LS | Super Westerfield Bros Acura Integra

We just have to be careful not to confuse feedback and constructive critcism with complaints. I really don't see the stream of "constant" complaints" you are referring to. I think I see as many or more complaints about complaints than actual complaints.

We learn from others and if the "others" don't get to voice their opinion, then we don't get to learn and improve.

The important thing in an event post analysis is to take all the comments, good, bad, and even the "complaints" and see what has validity and what doesn't. You consider the source of each piece of information and then you have to try very hard not to take it all personally. Sometimes I can do that last part, and sometimes I don't do it so well.

I haven't seen anything so far that I would consider a "complaint." So far at least, I consider this a positive discussion.

Just as politicans accept the fact that they will be in the public eye when they run for office, an event chair/course designer has to accept that people will have comments when the event is over.

A course designer is like an artist that puts his work on display in a public building. Everyone can see it. Some will like it. Some won't. Some will analzye it to death.

The difference in our case is that we at least hope that everyone appreciates it.. even if they don't happen to like it.

Just my viewpoint...

Miles

That was a replacement cone from the worker station after somebody dragged the cone that WE placed there through the finish!



I prefer to look at it as a commercial artist (yes, I stole that from RJ) - you're providing something that people are supposed to appreciate, not just look at and say, "I love it." or "I hate it." with no consequences either way. If people hate a piece of art, do they buy it? (think photography here - maybe that's why I see it that way )

Also, I promise that the next time I co-chair an event I'll set up the course, then go remove all the cones that make no difference in the driven line. I guarantee you somebody will still hit one.

And about the "Kenny cones" - that was the whole point... if you wanted to exit that gate onto the "straight" while on the throttle, you had to give it up at the previous gate and thread the needle. What's not fun about that? (I didn't hit either of those cones - hey, maybe that's why Carl got me! ) If you opened that gate up, it just became an offset, and that would've taken a lot of the fun out of it.

i've read all the posts in this thread and in the other, and i appreciate all the suggestions made.

i've chaired two events now, one with mike w. at rockingham last year, and again this year. from my limited experience i don't really feel comfortable challenging anyone's opinions...maybe next year

i will give a suggestion though. i think that it would be EXTREMEMLY helpful if we had a good map of each site. and by good, i mean a map of the site, layed out over a pre-measured grid. the map would layout the entire site, hazards, entries, exits, etc. This way, we could have the course drawn up ahead of time, with precise distances to go by.

so, i'm going to take it upon myself to draw up these maps...i'll probably do it in some generic format like excel so everyone can use it. if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

mike, i know we did something like this for rockingham b/c i remember buying the measuring wheel for that event...do you still have that anywhere...you never know, we may one day go back there

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05 MCS

I was working station 4 during heat 3. I swear nearly every single car hit the last cone on the wall of cones right before the long straight. I had a 51.4x during my second run, but hit two cones there. No complaints here about the design as I just needed to give it up a bit earlier. But for me it was the tightest spot on the entire course. The problem was that it was the last element before the long straight and I am sure everyone was trying to exit that element with as much speed as possible and that caused problems.

What was interesting is that the wall of cone they were not in a straight line. If you drew a line from the first to the last, the middle cones were proabaly 4-6" out. So as you approached and turned into the element, that last few cones hooked in toward you. If you didn't look at the important last cone and instead gauged your approach based upon the first few cones in that wall (as a way to predict where the last cone was), you got the entry all wrong and hit the last cone.

These might be the exact cones Jim is talking about. Also people DNFed quite often in this area. Between station 3 and 4 you had a pointer to the right. There was another element with pointer to the right and many people either hesitated as they didin't know which way to go, or drive around the element the wrong way. Others just blew past two or more elements on the wrong side. Same thing happend on the other side of the runway in the same area.

Working station 4 during heat 3 is what allowed me to get clean runs in heat 4.

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Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.com
Money can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.

The STis and Corvettes approve of your course design.

Welcome to the club!



- brian

what does not kill us only makes us stronger. my novice opinion on this seasons' courses.

my greenhorn opinion of this course is almost an ephinany for me. i tried to "kill it" in the morning and sucked. slowed down in the pm and looked ahead, wow easy course to follow and my best finish placement so far this season.

i agree with Chuck on the sea of cones but at the same time the learning curve allows one to sort of read the courses better.

given the level of competition within this club, as i see it, course design (subterfuge) is only going to be a normal occurence. go hard or go home. use all weapons at your disposal. and as has been often mentioned on this forum, anyone who wants to volunteer to chair and design an event is welcome to come forward.

again, i respectfully submit my opinions as a novice, and while i may not know what i am talking about, i do have a different perspective to offer. and as a side note, i strongly support the NOVICE CLASS program.

Having been at home cleaning the house and watching the TdF I'll not comment on the Danville course.

I will comment on general course design though. Like some others have said, notably Roger J., a good course design should be one that is easy to follow and impossible to master. This is much easier said than done and is particularly difficult with funky shaped airport sites. The nature of Tarheel's sites lead almost inevitably to transition intensive cone-heavy courses. One thing I've noticed lately (with my marvellous lack of attendance) is that lots of the courses seem to have been designed by novices. Novices, even after reading Roger J's handbook, tend to make everything too tight. Things that look nice on paper end up VERY tight in practice. Many people also try to put every trick in the book into each course. It's not necessary to put every cool design element you've ever seen into every course.

The most successful course designs I've done have always had a few common elments:

--Consistent visual cues (ie all walls or all pointers, etc...)
--Consistent themes on the course (ie similar types of sweepers or similar types of offsets)
--Cones placed at non-painful locations (ie nothing that just screams to get hit, no Kenny cones)
--Only a few very tight places on the whole course (tight defined as large steering input needed, not gate spacing)

One thing I've learned over the years is that there are a multitude of ways to use every lot. The NCAC last November was a prime case in point. I designed a VERY open VERY fast feeling course with only two defining themes (decreasing sweepers and hidden apexes). People seemed to really like it. Then the next day Team Underdog designed a radically different course that seemed to be equally liked. That course was a series of linked 180's of different radii. Both courses didn't seem to favor any particular type of car.

Beyond getting positive feedback from others (BTW someone will always hate your course. Get used to it! ) I've found that low cone counts and low DNF counts correlate well to a widely liked course.

--Kevin H.

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2003 WRX (again!)

Well......I feel that I have a dilemma on my hands. I promised Whitney that I would help co-chair the Sanford event, which would be my first event. I told Mike that I plan to draw up a couple of course layouts for him to review, laugh at, trash.....whatever. Mike's comment to me was "use every cone in the bus!" Now I'm getting the message not to fill the couse with "superfluous" cones.

Damn.....what to do....what to do. OK.....I've thought long and hard about it and I think I have a way to make both sides happy.

Here's the new gate design that I plan on using for the start and exit gates. This should leave me about 10 to 15 cones to use on the course!!
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OK...seriously, I had a blast this weekend (except for the heat). I enjoyed the course even though it had sections that kicked my ass on every run. I wish we could have more schools throughout the year so that you could work on the elements that give you the most heartaches (like 180 deg tight turns).

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Rob Harvey
919-697-5485
1997 BMW M3
1992 Acura Integra (Simon)

That bent cone was pretty funny....amazing how well you picked it up in your sights while driving that fast through that section.

I'm glad to see a nice objective discussion about an event without some people assuming that other people are just complaining, that it's yet just another time to take sides and point fingers. Discussions like this one are how you bounce ideas off of each other and work to make events better, not work to irritate each other. All of us should remember that working together is what made/makes this club as good as it is.

As far as Miles idea...I think "schools" for course design, club officer positions, VP training, timing and scoring or course worker classes would be great. Chuck and I however remain in the same boat that we always are in....our store is open on Friday nights and we have to be there if we're open. I'm sure a lot of members don't have this issue though.

Since we've each served as club officers in our 'previous lives' many times over, as well as SEDiv worker chief, SEDiv impound chief and SEDiv chief of protest as well as ProSolo worker chief and chief of grid in this 'life time' we might have something to offer and I'm sure with the wealth of knowledgeable people we have in the club it would be a great way for us to pick up even more information that we could use and share. But Fridays are tough.

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GO FOR IT! BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.

It was an offset to start with. By moving the cones slightly you would still have the very same effect (giving it up early), but the course would have flowed smoother and you would have saved a lot of cone hits. All of those cones really start to slow an event down.

Over the las few events, our cone counts have skyrocketed, along with the DNF's. So either as a club, our level of driving has decreased or we need to be a little more diligent with course design.

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Jim Pastorius
2008 Silverado VortecMax
1992 Camaro CMC#92
2002 BMW R1150R

2009 3rd Place CMC Mid-Atlantic Championship
2009 CMC Hyperfest Winner

Additional thoughts...

Several seasoned autocrossers in separate discussions with me on Sunday said that this year they are struggling even though they are in the same car/class as last year and wondered out loud to me...why? What am I doing differently they each said (while standing in grid). I have people ride with me all the time and watch my runs, but at the next event I struggle again.

To each one I said that it sounded like it was time for a refresher...a school. It's so easy to fall into a (or more than one) bad habit and repeat it without realizing what you're doing and an ocassional rider might not pick up on it and point it out. Multiple runs in a school type atmosphere are much more likely to raise up that issue.

The reason I bring this up though is that I was also convinced that each one of those people would have also benefited from a course walk "school". I think that the courses that we've had this year have been more complex visually than last year and require more analysis. These same drivers may have done incredibly well last year simply because they needed to think about the course less and could think about their driving more. Or they've forgotten some of the basics of course analysis while concentrating so heavily on driving.

As a side note...I like the complexity in some ways because it challenges me that much more and it throws a red flag in my face when I make a rookie mistake like I did Sunday on that dnf. It reminds me that I ALWAYS need to concentrate more, ALWAYS get more sleep, ALWAYS walk one more time than I did and I'm not going to catch a break on such lack of preparation in a national situation.

However, I agree that too many cones in one element is a recipe for confusion for too many competitors, especially folks just starting out. On the Chicks School course walks I tried to show the girls how to minimize cones, only pick out key cones and illiminate the rest. In a lane change element only two cones were important. The other twenty eight or so meant nothing. They were all amazed how much clearer the course became. This kind of instruction becomes that much more important the busier the course becomes. I see too many novices that haven't learned to do this get frustrated and debate trying. It just looks like a sea of orange. Like Ryan said in another thread, training like that helps the novice go from saying "I can't" to not saying it. So yes we need more classes/schools for different things.

It's a terrific challenge to design courses that are both challenging and flowing for seasoned drivers but straight forward enough for all the great novices in attendance. I appreciate all the people willing to take it on and all their hard work. I just hope they also appreciate the rest of us discussing their paintings when we're done with them, hoping that our comments aren't hurtful but helpful.

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GO FOR IT! BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.

Good discussion. I'm all for training as rookie course designer. You can feel free to throw in the Laurinburg course Rob and I set up too. I've already thoroughly beat myself up over the mistakes. So objective discussions would be good.

I like Kevins' assessment that it is like being a commercial artist .vs. say a painter. Once you make this picture a reality and force all your friends to drive it you're going to get some interesting feedback. Like Kevin I have read Roger Johnson's course book many times. And started trying to apply the ideas last year with Miles. It is not easy to follow and then just reproduce into a course without lots of practice.

Our course in July also stole Roger Johnson elements from his 99 North/South course. Those elements are cone intensive and walled. We messed up the spacing and that really hurt. It didn't look like it would be that difficult to reproduce. We only used a few elements that were tied together. So needing a big square lot was not necessary. It would work on the main runway. This is where I painfully learned about spacing between elements. Not spacing of gate width. That seems to me like a good topic for a class.

I have 2 concerns and opinions on the more is less thing. Going back over your course and removing all pointless cones. Well that sure helps reduce cone carnage. The line is still the same. Those are good things. What is bad is that picture we had and drew. It's now gone. The look is now different even if the feel driving it isn't. I look at it is taking this nice color picture with sharp detail and removing some of the detail and making it black and white. The creative ideas or artistic impression are gone and it is now the basic skeleton. I just don't like it personally. But I see both sides of the discussion on it.

Chris B. I have a map of the Sanford site. It is too scale with all measurements marked down. It is useful but it isn't the final answer. I have been working on one for Laurinburg as I have some, but not all, of the runway measurements. For the July event I made a nice big map on a 24x36 sheet. It was ok but wasn't as helpful as I had hoped. It did get Kevin laughing pretty hard though.

Graham

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http://www.greywinds.com

I agree with Graham, that we (I hope) learned a lot from our experience, but I would certainly benefit from a class. In going on a bit on the fewer cones = less carnage theme, I think you would get less carnage due to the fact that if you screw up an element, you would take out fewer cones because the element was simple w/o extraneous cones. The other side to that is that some of the "extra" cones disguise the element a bit and therefore will put some emphasis on course walks and experience to learn to ignore the "noise" and focus on the important cones. Either way can work and their are extremes on both ends of the spectrum (see Ryan's course map above, or ours from Laurinburg) The spacing thing between elements to me is critical as I think on our L'burg course we could have cut 5 or so secs off the run time (and probably some carnage) by just adjusting the spacing of elements a little even if we did not drop or change them.

Just my opinion, feedback and discussion improves the breed.