Howdy,
On Tue, 10 Apr 2001, Larry Steckel wrote:
> My multiple part question to y'all is; if your club runs in this fashion,
> how do you organize this type of autocross? By that I mean, do you put stock
> cars in the morning and mods etc. in the afternoon session? Or is it a
> certain number of cars per session on a first come first served basis? Is
> Registration and Tech open all day? How do you get enough workers to
> adequately cover the stations all day? I am interested in learning the
> techniques you have found to make this type of multiple session autocross
> format work.
I'm uniqely qualified to answer that question... This past weekend I ran
three autoxes out here in the bay area, something I couldn't have done if
they ran an all day format. :-)
What they do is to schedule heats for the morning or the afternoon by
class. The competitor doesn't get to choose if they run morning or
afternoon. It also looks like they rotate which class starts first, etc.
so that you go from first heat in the morning to last heat in the
afternoon during the season. SFR teched on grid just before the heat ran.
American Autox techs throughout the day, along with having an annual tech
sticker that I assume minimizes that duty. Each club takes a break
between the morning and afternoon sessions to let folks walk the course.
The number of workers is the same as how North Hills ends up doing it as
you don't need to change the number of heats. At North Hills, you
typically run 5 or 6 heats, with competitors taking runs in all of those
but the one they work in.
So if you went to a split format, you could have (for instance) 6 heats,
three in the morning, three in the afternoon. Assign cars so that you had
pretty even size heats. For one session (morning or afternoon), you'd
have competitors run all their runs in one heat, work a heat, and rest a
heat. Then they're done for the day.
There are some benefits to this system vs. the numerical order one that
North Hills uses (all IMHO obviously). Off the top of my head, those are:
1) All your runs are made in one heat, keeping your mind and your tires
warm.
2) Since you're running in class, its easier to see what's going on in
your class competition-wise.
3) You're less likely to get screwed by weather changes in terms of the
class competition (all class competitors are taking their runs in a
shorter time window.
4) if you can't stay all day, you've got a better shot at working the
autox into your schedule.
Note that 1-3 apply even to an all day class heat based format (like Steel
Cities uses).
The only downside that I can see is that the numerical run order system is
more tolerant of not knowing the distribution of cars you get. You really
don't care what cars you get in what classes, as you just toss 'em all on
a sheet and draw lines between to make equal groups. To run the "two half
day" format, you've got to know reasonably well how your classes are
subscribed to be able to publish a schedule so that competitors know when
to show up.
My advice would be to move to a class heat based format first and see how
that goes. That gives you many of the advantages above, without forcing
you to guess on class distribution. Also, plenty of North Hills members
are used to that format because they also run in Steel Cities.
After that works for a few events or a season or whatever, you could swap
to the half day format as that really is nothing more than scheduling the
classes in advance and putting work assignments in the same part of the
day.
Hopefully the SFR or American Autox folks will jump in and point out
details that I've missed. Thanks for welcoming an out of towner btw!
Mark
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