Mark,
I did see the shorter distance wisdom in heading to the right on the
slalom entry... but decided against it for only one reason: I'd have had
to lift to make the offsets after the slalom. Instead, I chose to enter on
the left, as it allowed me to run from the START to the far end of the runway
flat out, rowing the shift lever 5 times.
For those not in attendance, by my admittedly inaccurate pacing method,
I estimated 1000 ft. of uninterrupted acceleration. Bending a kart through
a slalom and offsets does produce enough scrub to reduce the actual
speed gain, so it was not like running a straight drag in terms of top speed,
but it was really fast!
I meant to take a G-Cube and Palm setup to record my runs, and really
wished I had, as the surface at Ayer had very few bumps which would have
caused any funny spikes to appear on the results.
Anyway, for what I drive, the momentary pause in acceleration would have
easily negated any time gained by shortening the distance. During run #2
on that course, I had to lift and downshift to 5th in the offsets coming back
because I got sideways (driver input error). I figured that alone cost me at
least a full second, probably more...
Alan Sheidler
In a message dated 06/12/2000 3:52:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
msirota@isc.upenn.edu writes:
> For those who were at the Ayer NT: I ran the B course on Saturday. We
> were quite indecisive on which way to take the very first slalom, right
> off the start.
>
> Going to the right was clearly a shorter path, but it would be
> pretty busy at the exit of the slalom. Going left was a much easier,
> straight, flat out exit, but longer.
>
> I went left on the first run, right on the second, left on the third.
> My co-driver went left on all three. I saw perhaps three other people
> all day go right.
>
> On Saturday night, we looked at the runs in Geez!, and discovered
> that going right, as I had originally suspected, was faster by a few
> tenths. I told a bunch of Sunday runners about it, but couldn't
> convince a soul -- too much "group think".
>
> Certainly that might not be true for some cars, but I was able to go
> flat from the third slalom cone to the turnaround at the end, either
> way.
>
> Anyone else go right and record the run, for comparison's sake?
>
> Mark
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