March 31st Closed Club post event discussion

[fc-racer]

Hello all,

As was mentioned in the driver's meeting, we are a community of friends and among friends, we are always open to new ways of doing things better.
We may not be able to accomodate all suggestions (due to insurance or sanctioning body requirements), but we will do our best to implement as many changes as possible as quickly as possible.

Please tell us both, the positive aspects of today's event and also the not so positive aspects of today's event, from your perspective.

From your previous suggestions, we focused on six areas of improvement:

1. Registration was too slow.
2. Driver's didn't know the procedure for tech/registration.
3. Run groups were not split evenly.
4. More loaner helmets required.
5. Give spectators information about the club.
6. Course workers not working during their shift.

Please especially let us know how we did on the six items above. With your new suggestions, we will do the same, we will prioritize them and then build an action plan to implement.

Thanks to all the drivers that attended today, the course was a tough one, something you should expect at a Regional event. I see no point in having our members only do well at Closed Clubs, we want our members to win at the Regional and eventually National level. That's why we ran a tougher course today. You all did very well and should be proud!

Farzaan
President,
VCMC Motorsport Club

[ March 31, 2002: Message edited by: fc-racer ]</p>

[Yarko]

Great event today, the course was a challenge as you mentioned but very helpful in experimenting with different setups on my car! Thanks for doing a great job!

[sandy lam]

Yep.. very nice event, I always enjoy my time in VCMC events, they are always great

[N2O4U]

A general comment/suggestion to the whole club...

I am hearing stories of unneccesary put-downs and criticisms of newer/slower drivers by other newer/intermediate drivers. The types of things I'm hearing go beyond the amicable competitive nudge. As a club we should strive for creating a supportive and positive environment and this sort of extreme trash-talk shouldn't be tolerated.

There really isn't any administrative thing that can be done to legislate this but perhaps a mention here and at the next driver's meeting would help.

[Ben]

I thought tech and registration was much improved.
run groups were split evenly, but run-group change over could be faster. Loaner helmets were not return asap for some reason. Overall I rated this C.C.a A, thank you all who help out today. We had another very succesiveful VCMC Closed Club!

[Prostrho]

Great event. I enjoyed it, other than being a little cold while i worked

[PDM]

One major thing I noticed.

We had several major spills today of antifreeze, oil and gas.

We need to ensure we have proper equipment (brooms, concrete/spill kit) readily available to clean up these messes. I'm not sure if there is a safety spill kit readily available, and stocked.

1. In Pregrid, we had anti-freeze overflowed by several cars. ALL cars are supposed to have sealed systems, or overflow tanks capable of catching excess rad fluid. (I don't mean to point fingers, but if a car spews out anti-freeze on pre-grid, it does NOT pass tech and warrant racing IMHO. Corrective measures should be done by the offending vehicles to ensure that this won't happen again.)

2. On course we had gas spew out. Not much to clean up gas, as it evaporates faster than you can really get it cleaned up. HOWEVER I did NOT see a fire extinguisher nearby when the car came in. Again, safety is something we should not overlook. (I know, lighting gasoline on fire is a lot tuffer to do than you see in the movies...but even I didn't think about the fire extinguisher issue on pre-grid until after a bit)

3. Oil on course. Again, the event stopped, while we kind of searched for concrete or spill material.

The amount of oil was not major, (again, not to point fingers, but offending vehicles must have corrective measures done between events, and show Tech that they have made measures to ensure that oil will not spill out if the same situation arises) but we should make sure we have a properly stocked "spill kit/broom" ready to go at all times.

Other than that, the event ran great..., with tech, registration, driver's meeting and run/work groups doing a much better job.

I liked the up to date run groups...with times after each rotation....


don

[Fab_vr6]

A great event today, everything went pretty smooth today, very nice.

I would just like to point out that while I was working out at the course, there were a few instances where I saw a course worker running out to reset a course without realising there was a car running towards him; also his/her station didn't ask the timing area to hold the next car to allow time to reset the course; person at the start line send out cars too fast without realizing someone is resetting the course out there. Most of these are just communucation issues.
In the future I suggest the club could put more emphasis on teaching newer members how important it is to mind their own safety when working outside as course worker. Afterall, our lifes are way more important then anything else we do in autocross.

Gary Fung

[Jeff Y]

Here I am applauding -&gt; clapclapclap

well done. with 100 drivers today... I'm impressed! but... I guess the days of 60+ second courses are long gone now, eh?

All we need now is a warm weather machine.

-Jeff

[Guido]

I just want to thank all the Chiefs for pulling double duty for the last two events. I'm sure Alex as organizer for Closed Club # 1 would agree that it took a great team effort to pull off these two events on consecutive weekends.

Thanks everyone!

Guido

[bcrx7]

it was a great event. Everything went on plan and fast.
But to add to what Don said, while I was working on course with some other guys, we found a pretty big and sharp bolt which was on a piece of 2"x1" rusted metal. Again not to point anything at anybody, but it would be good to check for some rust on cars or check for lose parts. I sure don't want my tire getting punctrued by one of these pieces plus the safety of course workers and the driver is in risk with a car that is falling apart, I agree rusting out a car is a free way to lose weight, but for sure it's not safe.

[Cliffy]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by bcrx7:
... while I was working on course with some other guys, we found a pretty big and sharp bolt which was on a piece of 2"x1" rusted metal. Again not to point anything at anybody, but it would be good to check for some rust on cars or check for lose parts. <hr></blockquote>

While walking the course this a.m., I came across a few pieces of debris as well. These items were mainly not in the path of the course but still I tossed them away to the grassy area. A few of our members had picked up the screws/scraps left over by the movie set last weekend.

Keep in mind that we do share the site with other car clubs and users like the filming crews. While all of us are careful to leave the site as we found it, some things do get left behind. I actually expected more scraps to be left over from last weekend's movie set but thy were pretty good at cleaning up.

WRT, cars spilling fluids and losing parts. This is a big issue. We saw how two such incidents caused delays in the run order. This is a two-way street when it comes to addressing the problem. firstly, it is the competitor's responsibility to make absolutely sure his/her car is not just fit for normal road use, but for competition purposes. Granted we're seeing a lot less 'junk' come through Tech. I'm glad I don't see cars coming through tech w/ bungee cords securing batteries and/or radiators. But there are items that Tech is not able to find. For example, my Civic has shocks and a CV-joint that have outlived their usefulness, yet when the car was inspected last weekend, it passed tech. Still I chose not the run it because of the potential for evil things to happen.

The other side of the coin is for our Tech procedures to be more comprehensive. Although Tech attempts to be as thorough as possible, going through a 150 pt. safety check is impractical. Unless we ask competitors to remove all four wheels during tech, our detection rate is as good as time and depth allows. So it falls back on the competitor to bring a suitable car for competition use.

-c.

[Cliffy]

When the Event Chair says "Timing Scoring is off limits." He means it.

[Radio Flyer]

To add to what Cliff said ...

Its hard for tech to identify every problem and potential problem with a car. There are a few identifiers of cars that might ... MIGHT is a key word ... pose a problem. A car that is really dirty, engine covered in old oil and dirt, loose items under the hood, brake dust all over the wheels, road film all over the car, body damage, missing wheel studs or nuts, damaged wheels or tires, etc.

To me, as a tech inspector, it indicates the driver probably didn't inspect the car, didn't take time to insure its safe before arriving at the event, and may not have the skill nor the interest in taking care of the vehicle. It also leads me to suspect the car deserves extra attention both during the inspection and during the event.

Its the responsibility of every competitor to be vigilant and to report every vehicle suspected of being a danger to the Chief of Tech or to the Event Organizer. That's not to say every competitor should be a little Nazi. Its for everyone's safety.

[dnf]

Overall, the event was really well run, considering the number of competitors and percentage of relatively new drivers. I believe Driver's Meeting took place precisely at when it was scheduled, kudos to Guido and his crew!

Just a couple of safety concerns:

- cars spilling fluid (oil, antifreeze) in the grid from exhausts
- not pointing fingers, but there was a particular car with apparently very little regard for what the course design was and decided to charge his way very hard out on course of his very own design (and he pretty much did that for all of his 5 runs), creating moments for those of us working on course.

One last thing,
Would it be possible in the future to allow people to pre-register together, and indicate that they would like to be put into the same run group? I do realize that evenly splitting up the groups would be harder that way, is that something that can be done with our current computerized run group splitting program? (If not, maybe we can hack one up on our own...)

The course design was fun, thanks. Just wondering if 40-ish second courses are the new trends in closed club events though? (I sure do miss those 70-ish courses waaay back when, like last year's.. )

Leslie
99 VW Yetta.

[ April 01, 2002: Message edited by: dnf ]</p>