Chris Shepard sez:
I went to the Colo Region event in Denver Saturday, and
although they did a great job of rolling things along,
it makes for a long day when you have 150+ cars/drivers.
That's why we run morning and afternoon sessions in Atlanta. We run 6 run
groups, everyone works only about an hour and you will either burn a
morning or an afternoon to autocross.
Sunday I ran with my local club. The first car came
out about 10:30, and all 18 of us had all the "fun runs"
we could tolerate by 2:PM, after a one-hour lunch break.
There weren't any mods or open-wheelers, nor karts, but
we ranged from a 454 Vette, a 427 Camaro and a Z3 bimmer
to an ITB "wabbit" and some crazy kid in an overpowered
blue car. And an FTOD RX-7. ;)
That's racing. That's autocrossing. That's having
"bookoo" funsies for $15. That's not working two hours,
waiting four hours, and heating up the grid for two hours
to get in your three minutes of adrenalin for $30.
Yep, that is a lot of fun. And IF you are real successful at having a lot
of fun AND you don't keep it to yourself, before long you will start to
have the same problems that Colo Region has with all those cars.
Now you have a choice. Do you figure out a way to accomodate all those
people? Or, do you, like SCCA has been charged with doing in some places,
do a sloppy job to piss the masses off in order to keep the numbers low
so the little club can have a lot of fun playing with themselves. Success
is a real bummer, isn't it?
Doing the math suggests a lot more drivers can be handled in a great way
without wearing out the drivers. Figure it out, if Nationals has 1000
drivers this year that is a measly 250 drivers per course per day.
You get above those numbers then some time consuming tasks start to be in
need of revamping. For example:
1. Send the chase car out right after a car leaves the line to get worker
cone sheets.
2. Do the cone audit behind the scenes while the next group of cars are
running.
3. Do course worker changes "on the fly" eliminating down time between
groups.
4. Make it a rule that the course must safely allow a new car on course
every 20 seconds.
5. Make the courses wide and relatively low on key cones to lessen the
likelyhood of cone bashing. High speed offsets are the worst offenders
here.
All this gleaned from 15 years of experience.
Ben Thatcher
Apex Benefit Services & Motorsports
Stockbridge, GA
Phone 770.474.1402
FAX 770.474.0938
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