As one of the announcers, I was outside of the T&S truck this year, but I
know just how hectic it was anyway in the announce vehicle with cars
finishing every 15-18 seconds and no time between heats to catch your
breath. I also saw a lot of the Thurs/Fri T&S crew looking near collapse
on Friday afternoon/evening.
In other words, under the special and highly unusual circumstances of this
year's event, as CHuck said, we got lucky in that there were NOT a lot of
reruns (I should've stopped for the scattering workers in the last turn on
my last run Friday morning, dammit), the weather was approaching perfect (I
would've liked to have run after a couple of hours of sunlight worked on
the course, but it was the same for everyone in Friday 1st heat), and
*everyone* stepped their game up a notch on all the work assignments, from
course (where there were a LOT more bodies than normal) to, particularly,
Timing & Scoring, we were able to pull this off.
I would think it unrealistic to expect all our workers, particularly some
of the mission-critical positions in Timing & Scoring, to have the
endurance to try to pull this off for 4 straight days. Remember, these
folks are also our fellow competitors, and they deserve as much of a shot
at driving well when it's their turn to drive. Hard to do that when your
brain is fragged from dealing with cars every 15 seconds.
Add in the very real possibility of nasty weather, lots of reruns due to
equipment problems (not a common occurrence with the JACircuits system used
for Nats, but something to keep in mind nonetheless) or due to a course
design that has a high-conage area, and you're looking at some VERY long
days trying to do 4 runs for 1200 people (figure 300 cars per course per
day). I don't think that's a realistic call at our nice, high Nationals
entry levels. You're looking at a minimum 33% increase (that's right, it's
33%, not 25% increase. Adding a run to 3 runs means adding 1/3 to the 3/3,
which is 4/3 or a 33% increase. Now, if you're *decreasing* from 4 runs to
3 runs, that's a 25% decrease (1/4)) in the numbers of runs per course per
day, and with reruns and the like, a 38-40% increase is probably more
realistic. Ouch. 300 cars x 3 runs each x 20 second starting interval = 5
hours from first car off to last car off. Figure heat changes, walk times,
the inevitable reruns, etc. in there, and we're looking at a 7.5 to 8 hour
day, easily. Okay, 300 cars x 4 runs each x 20 second starting interval =
6 hours, 40 minutes from first car off to last car off. Adding 2.5 to 3
hours to that gives us an 9.2 to 10.7 hour day.
No, I'm not going to rework that for 15 second starting interval -- it's
not a realistic number to maintain for any serious period of time except
under exceptional circumstances. And it's not a whole lot of fun for
course workers, T&S workers, announcers, safety stewards, etc.
Jim Crider
autojim@att.net
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