New HPDE Instructor Experience

jimpastorius · **Posted:** Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:25 am

Stacy King wrote:

Quote:

After rereading VK's post, I am not sure what the issue was. I am thinking that from 14 on, they got a black flag whereas rest of the course received a red flag.

I must have missed this somewhere... if this is the case, then I stand corrected and I applaud them

I am just going on what I observed. I saw the Mustang come in the pits, it was hard to miss (pretty good looking for a Ford). Then the track was quiet and it took quite a while for the others to come in. At first, I thought the Mustang was calling it a day a little early.

Like I said, it had to take 30 minutes or more to get that BMW back to the pits. I saw it come in and decided to load the car up. But as I was getting it ready to move onto the trailer, they called my group to grid....I figure since I am already in the car, why not one more session :-)

The worse part of the track for me on that final session was the front straight. There was a lot of standing water. Twice I felt the car hydroplane at about 85 mph. From then on out, I was extra cautious there. That inside wall is pretty darn close.

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:44 am

jimpastorius wrote:

I saw the Mustang come in the pits, it was hard to miss (pretty good looking for a Ford). Then the track was quiet and it took quite a while for the others to come in. At first, I thought the Mustang was calling it a day a little early.

That Mustang (Blue Shelby GT with White Stripes) was my student and I. We were the first car to go past the BMW in the tire wall. Since we were already past the incident, it would make sense to black flag us and red flag everyone else. Sounds like the right call was made IMO.

David Teague · **Posted:** Fri Mar 02, 2007 10:13 am

Stacy King wrote:

The BMW is the one that impacted the wall at the back straight corner station and ended up on its side.

In general, at least at our events... the corner worker calls in the incident to 'Control' (The lead VIR guy in the pits) and its at his discretion. But that's using VIR corner workers, some of the best in the industry. I don't think NASA uses VIR workers. I know they offer event credits if you 'volunteer' to work corners (and frankly, this scares me.... but only cause I don't know what kind of training they go through, if any)

You would be surprised how many of the VIR corner workers are there at a NASA-MA event, I not sure if it is still true but the control guy that worked every NASA-MA event. Was the same control guy VIR uses. NASA-MA workers who volunteer are given credits to do future events (much like car guys) however when I was working with them we never put anyone track with a flag until they had worked with a veteran several weekends, and in fact they did not start earning those credits until that had completed training. When NASA-MA does not have enough of their own workers they supplement them with the Track Workers.

Generally I have never seen them good partial red, they usually go all red then black to bring people in. (Of course they could have done what you guys said above, I just never saw that in the 4 years I worked with them) They could have went straight to black because of the info they were getting from the corner, aka the driver is fine and out of the car or something to that effect where the worker did not think it was necessary for a red flag situation. However Contorl can and has called a red flag when they think the sitatuion warrants even if the corner does not. However it is hard to know what was really going on without any of us being in control.

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