THSCC Forums

I agree. I don't think the corner/finish was bad. I do think it was very hard. How many courses (of any type) are there where you have to come down to 80% to preserve your time/equipment? Not many, but I can think of many times I've had to do that at particular spots during a stage rally. In that sport, they are called cautions, and they come in three varieties:

Caution - watch out, something tricky here (perhaps a deceptive treeline)
Double Caution - slow down, something dangerous here (rough section, big rock that juts out into the road, hairpin with a large bank on the outside)
Triple Caution - If you mess this up, there is a chance you will destroy your vehicle and die (for example, Cherokee Trails this weekend has a tight hairpin where five feet off the road drops away 50 feet. It then continues to drop to about 250 feet.)

These things are a normal part of rally. They are places where you say to yourself "I can only loose by attacking here." The finish was a double caution: I told all drivers to slow down, and that it was a really difficult corner, and that messing it up would result in extremely bad news.

We can talk about ideal worlds, but anything like that is really moot: the course is constrained by the terrain. This course had three elements 200 - 400 feet long that we could cross in only a couple places. (If you didn't realize that, well, it's because we fit the course to the terrain. )So, we can have course design goals, but they will not always be met. Driving the resultant difficult courses may not always be the most "fun", but _competing_ on those courses will be. Mastering easy stuff doesn't have much appeal to me.

I like the proposed "multiplier" approach. I think the *best* reason for using it is that the bogey time would actually be adjusted to each course, which is how it should be anyway. I think 1.2 times the average of the morning runs would be good. (morning runs only, so that the lunch results would be accurate, and then that time would be used the rest of the day)

Cheers,
Anders

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Lina Racing: As Seen On Radio

To an extent, I can agree with this. At one event last year, I was first SU2 on course after the SO4's had run, and some nasty ruts had developed. I ran the line I planned to on a 120 degree corner, but caught an edge which threw the car inside the corner. I was almost positive I had cought the gate, however. Unfortunately, that bugger stood back up in the box, and I DNF'd. This pulled not only my event standings down, but potentially my year-long standings as well. I understand we still drop low events, but the impact is still there.

On the "positive" side, I've become MUCH more aware and conservative becuase of this. But with conditions that change SO drastically over the course of the day, these type of issues CAN ruin the competition. I'd be for making DNFs in general severe enough to drop somebody's daily standings, but not SO severe as to hurt their year. If +5 (10 secs) is not severe enough to prevent Mike from straight-lining the course, make it more.

Optionally, make an additional penalty (no trophy points, time adder, etc..) for anybody who aggregates more than 10 cones (pick a number here) per DAY. That way, Mike might have incentive to stay on course? This shouldn't add to T&S during the event, and is something that could be done during audit. This combination helps "honest" drivers not ruin their days, and at least helps prevent people from taking short cuts, without adding significantly to T&S during the event.

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Dustin Fredrickson
-- I'm a nobody --

Not that I'm a novice but I've made DFL a few times and I keep coming back!

Maybe that's my problem!

Simon

Here's what I'd like to do:

Since switching from bogey times to penalty times will require Emmie to change the rallycross scoring, and since we are already evaluating AXware which has a rallycross mode which uses penalty times, and since after the May Rockingham event we have a 3 month break before the next one, and since 98% of the whole problem can be traced to putting the finish lights too close to the final corner anyway, we should make no changes before the May event other than to try to have a minimum 25 pace straight before the finish lights.

Then, if we decide to use AXware for rallycross, we switch to using it and avoid the effort to change the current scoring/reports. However, if we decide to stick with TS98, then I'll sweet-talk Emmie into making the necessary changes to the rallycross scoring.

We will have at least 5 autocrosses between now and the August rallyX, so we should have a fully-developed opinion of AXware by then, and plenty of time to make whatever changes are needed.

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Carl Fisher

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4651531

Good call.

One other idea - let's just offset the big cones off of the course by a few feet, so they are more out of the way of a slightly sideways car. So instead of:



We do this instead:



It's simple and it solves the problem without causing others. Right?

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

ooooh... that's a good idea. and we could put the big cones right next to the timing equipment; that way, you'd know exactly where NOT to go.

Sure, just not *right* next to the timing equipment. Give at least enough room that it could fall over and not hit the laser head.

There's still that whole "target fixation" thing we need to give a little clearance for. "Oooooooh, look at the big pretty cone" *smack*

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

Did you guys plant a bug in my car?



Simon

Well I've been out of town for a few days so here's my late input to the discussion:

1) I don't think the course design was _bad_. It was difficult, like Anders said. Given the site it was extremely difficult to create a safe finish. Almost everything we tried at the finish when running in the clockwise direction either put cars going straight over BIG humps and ruts or had cars turning at the finish. It was simply a factor of the site. The end result was safe but not easy or tolerant of sloppiness. We originally tried to run the finish over to near where the van was parked. It was HORRENDOUS and all the other semi-flat areas were also unreachable thanks to the lumps. Halfway through the setup day we seriously discussed bagging the site and just doing the event at Kevin Allen's mom's field because it was so hard to figure out how to get over the big humps. Thankfully we regrouped and the overall course was (I thought) fun and challenging.

2) Since last season I've thought that the DNF/finish cone penalty is too severe. Now that points are being taken somewhat seriously by more than a few people I think a penalty for DNF and hit finish cones should be instituted that takes people out of the trophies for hitting/missing things but doesn't take someone to DFL. I think a 10-sec penalty for _each_ missed gate or the same for hitting the stop cone would be sufficient. This would prevent Mike from shortcutting half of the course because he would get about 150 seconds of penalties for missing 15 gates, not 10 seconds for DNFing.

3) Mike that's a great idea with the cone layout. Next course I have a hand in I'll definitely do the finish cones that way.

--Kevin H.

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2003 WRX (again!)

I'm reading this thread &, just FYI, if I have to try to rig TS98 again to make it do all this lovely multiple penalty times, y'all are gonna owe me!

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The person with too many names...
Mary E./ME/Emmie Fisher/Daniel/Daniel-Fisher
(& some others not suitable for posting!).
Help support our habits; BUY http://virginiabreeze.us !

Emmie we love you!!!



Anders

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Lina Racing: As Seen On Radio

I just wanted to point out that the people who are serious about points are going to get to drop one event. So don't get your panties in a wad if you DNF'ed this event; learn from it & DON'T DO IT AGAIN.

I used my drop event at Rockingham last year - DFL in SO4 in the green rally beast. (2 or 3 DNF's & a bunch of cones hit)

That's pretty much what I was thinking, 10 secs. per gate will keep the shortcutters on course and 10 seconds for the finish or start cones.

That should make it easier for Emmie to setup also.

Phillip.

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Common sense is NOT so common. ...Voltaire.

ok, this is getting complicated. what happens when phillip gets lost on course, gives up on finding his way & just proceeds from the 4th gate after start directly to the finish? do we really need to count all the gates he missed? What if we miss one, or add one that wasn't there? What if he misses 20 gates? 200 second penalty?

I know we want novices to keep coming back, but I got my ass kicked the first several times I autoxed (and several times since then), and I kept coming back. If you have enough fun, you're going to come back. It's not all about results...

And if I was a novice who DNF'ed my first time out, the large penalty for doing that would make me not want to do it again - I'd realize I needed to know where I was going next time. Maybe even look ahead & be thinking about what's around the corner. Which is going to make these guys better rallycrossers, and increase the level of competition.

One thing we definitely need to do is have an experienced driver ride with each 1st or 2nd-timer on at least their first run. I rode with the guy in the red Legacy on his first run, which prevented him from getting a DNF, and then he proceeded to get faster & faster all day. I also think we need to have a novice course walk to point out where the course goes, what to expect in the way of ruts, etc. - I'll gladly do it myself. I hadn't thought about that, or even realized that we hadn't been doing it until this discussion started.

i haven't rally crossed yet, but i can tell you that my motivation for missing the finish cones at an ax is not the dnf...it's the cost of the timing equiptment

from a completely unbiased perspective, it seems that the +10 seconds rule would be the best alternative to the DNF. it's easily understood, easily recorded, and doesn't completely blow your day.

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05 MCS