I think Jason's point was that how quickly the event finishes is
directly related to the interval between cars, and not on the course
length or the number of cars on course.
Barry's comment about adding 15 seconds to the course in order to get
one more car running held the implicit assumption that the run
interval wasn't changing, and that it was about 15 seconds.
What you're talking about (a fixed length for the course, with the
ability to run different numbers of cars simultaneously) is a
completely different issue. That's related to course layout. Minimum
spacing is around 20 seconds, assuming that portions of the course
that are 10 seconds apart or more do not cross or come near one
another. But for example, if there is a crossover that takes 20
seconds between the first and second crossing, you would have to
expand the run interval to around 30 seconds to avoid a Hot Wheels
"Criss Cross Crash" scenario. When I ran an event in Indy region,
they had a 45-second course with a crossover about 10 seconds into the
course, and 8 seconds from the finish. They had to wait for each car
to come out of the crossover heading towards the finish before
starting the next car. The result was about a 35 second run interval,
and it took most of the day to give 90 people their 4 runs.
Number of cars on course is an effect of both run interval and course
length. It is not a cause of either.
On Mon, Mar 04, 2002 at 12:19:39PM -0800, Giles Douglas wrote:
> Yes, but the interval between car starts is dependent on the number of
> cars you can have on course at one time. If I can only have one on a 45
> second course, its 45 seconds. If I can have 2, its 22.5 seconds
> (depending on where the overlap is)
>
> Although, of course, if you increase the course length to get the number
> of cars on course at once up, then it somewhat defeats the object - except
> for the fact that the two variables are independent.
>
> Giles
--
john@idsfa.net John Stimson
http://www.idsfa.net/~john/ HMC Physics '94
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