May 5th Championship post event discussion

[fc-racer]

Hello all,

As was mentioned at the trophy presentation, we are always open to positive feedback and 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.

We've already identified a few key areas that we're going to try and improve, namely:

1. Event duration, we started at 9:34am and ended at 6:15pm which is a bit late for some people. Perhaps a shorter course would work. What are your suggestions?

2. Workers/drivers switch-over. It's still consistently taking 15+ minutes to move the participants around. We have an idea and will test it at a closed club in the near future. Do you have any fresh ideas that might make our events run better?

Thanks to all the drivers that attended today, the course was an excellent design and I felt the event ran very smoothly considering the havoc that Mother Nature caused. Flying run cards, toppled timing equipment, moving timing cells, a hail storm so severe that course workers were called in and a wind that destroyed three umbrellas that I borrowed

You all were very patient and we greatly appreciate that. Thanks!

Farzaan
President,
VCMC Motorsport Club

[SkinnyG]

The late finish is difficult for me, but I'm just the odd one out, so it won't matter.

By the time all was said and done, adding a short break for some gut bombs at Raunchy Ronnie's, avoiding 15cm snow on the Coq. by hitting 2cm snow on the Hope-Princeton, I got home at a little after 1am. Zzzzzzzz.......

Great day. Lots of people. We seemed to get cars cycled through quickly and the changeover was fast, I don't know how we could get more cars through faster. Very soon we'll have to spread it over two days maybe? How does that affect insurance?

Loved the course. Very technical. If you ran the perfect line, you were rewarded. If you blew it somewhere, it was really hard to recover it on course.

Very hard to recover the Sentrifugal Sentra, too....

Greg

[Yarko]

goofy weather asside i thought the event was terrific! (all my runs were in the dry ) Kudos to the course designer for making a fantastic track for us! I love having options as to the line i take in a corner! Thank you to ernest for showing me the ropes for being ACOW (moo)! all the event execs did a fantastic job yesterday!

[ May 06, 2002: Message edited by: Yarko ]</p>

[tomb_racer]

I agree, I thought the course was cool, even though I kept getting caught out of position

To speed up the changeover, how 'bout having the furthest course workers driven out and picked up?

[Mase]

The course kicked *** ! We need more like that

[Audi200tq]

Having the courseworker assignments determined beforehand has really helped the cause.

But here's an idea that MIGHT speed things up:

This might be logistically challenging. However, is there a way to arrange cars in grid such that drivers who, in the next run group are working the furthest distance away, run early?

For example, there are about 15 people on course at the 5 work stations. Before they go out to work, they are running. In their run group, if they finish early, they can be ready to go out to the furthest work stations sooner.

If the last driver to run parks his car way at the back by the broken airplane, then visits the porta potti, then buys a chicken burger because he's starving, then finds the worker-assignment person, and then runs all the way to station 5, it can really slow things down.

One way to facilitate this would be to determine the work assignments for the next group once cars are in grid. Drivers could be told, as they are waiting for their second run, where their next work assignment is. The guys (sorry, girls too) in the first few rows get the jobs furthest away.

Of course, the only group this wouldn't work for is the group that works first.

On another note, I LOVED the course yesterday. Really, really fun. And not quite so mysterious after a morning course-walk with Joe (thanks Joe).

And I thought the event overall was really well organized. 123 cars got 4 runs in on a 60 second course. Keep in mind, that's nearly 500 runs. And with some challenging environmental issues, too. Great work guys!

Further, I'm fairly pleased with the novice standings after the first event!

[ May 06, 2002: Message edited by: Audi200tq ]</p>

[Neon Racer]

I agree with it being a great course - very technical and you had to be patient in areas.

I did the time recording during the afternoon session and was wondering if it's viable to have all the cars of one class line up sequentially. This would help recording and timing significantly I believe. Double drivers would have to be excluded of course.

[VCMC Membership]

I have to apologize for setting up the timing and scoring out on the table and not inside the “official” timing vehicle. In the future, if rain/wind/ice pick is expected in the forecast, the whole timing crew will be staying inside the van. Hopefully, next week’s condition will be much better for our velocity students and our closed club #4.

Thank you Rob Lu for designing a fantastic course, it's almost as good as the one for BC Champ last year!

Lawrence Chan
Membership Director,
VCMC Motorsport Club

[Sead]

Thumbs up for course design! I felt like I could have taken 10 runs on that course, and I could find a faster line every time! Keep this one for closed clubs.

I think course design is really important in how quickly we run through the cars(crossovers and overlaps), where you design it such that you can safely send out the second car long before the first one is done. That was done very well on Sunday. The only thing we could do for an event with this many competitors is eliminate that second loop around the back...or would it be too short than?

[Cliffy]

To make transitions smoother between groups, I think we should go back to our old practice of pre-assigning work areas at Pre-tech and/or Tech. That way less people will need to see the COW after running and they can simply go to their stations. The COW can check them off during the shift. Steve's idea of assigning work areas in grid would also work as this has been done in SCCA-NWR.

But onto other items....

How did our Velocity Grads do? Well, the goal this year was to have a Velocity grad in the trophies in every class they compete in.

S Sport: n/a
A-Stock: 1t Ernest Fanthorpe, class of '98
B-Stock: n/a
C-Stock: 1t Ben Liang, class of '98
D-Stock: 1t Robert Lu, VCMC
2t Tom Brydon, class of 02
E-Stock: 1t Brian Lee, class of 02
2t Darryl Ho, class of 02
F-Stock: n/a
G-Stock: 1t Jeff Yeung, class of '99
2t Marlon Peng, class of 00
3t Neil Armstrong, class of 00
GS-Ladies: VCMC winners
H-Stock: 1t Leslie Yu, class of 01 *
2t Guido Van Duyn, class of 01
* Velocity grad beat an Evolution Grad. Sorry Jean. This was Leslie's first victory. Way to go!!

A/SS: Farzaan Kassam, VCMC
B/SS: Luke Smith, VCMC
C/SS: 1t Yarko Petriw
2t Dion Kwok, class of '00
3t Hyedie Hashimoto, class of '01 * I think this is her first trophy.
D/SS: 1t Sead Causevic, class of '00
2t Gerald Chen, class of '98
3t Damon Chan, class of 02 (May Session)
E/SS: 1t Matt Dramowicz, VCMC
2t Pete Pretorius, class of 01

F/SS: 2t James Slater, VCMC

A/SP: n/a
B/SP: n/a
C/SP: 1t Lawrence Chan, class of 99
2t Chris Chu, VCMC
4t Ed Chan, class of 02
D/SP: 1t Marc Sasso, VCMC
2t Cary Lam, class of 02 (May session)
3t Terence Chu, VCMC
E/SP: 5t Johnny Sandhu, VCMC
6t Andre Yeu, class of 01
F/SP: close but no cigar, usually this is a bigger class.

C-Mod: Another tough class

Looking deeper into the stats, a lot of our grads came close to trophying. Don't get discouraged and keep up the enthusiasm. There's always someone to ask for help available. Congratulations to the 'team'!!

We'll have another batch of 40 students ready to race by next Saturday so watch out everyone!!!

-c.

[ May 06, 2002: Message edited by: Cliffy ]

[ May 06, 2002: Message edited by: Cliffy ]</p>

[Jeff Y]

I didn't start autocrossing until the Spring of 2001 in my D/SS Chevrolet Cavalier. Perhaps you're thinking of a different Jeff Yeung, Cliff?

-Jeff

[Prostrho]

Great event. thanks guys.

I liked the track quite a lot even though i still couldn't get the right lines for the last run. Quite challenging.

[Ahme]

the course is good..
the only problem i have is that i can only make 3 runs because i have to go to work.. and i got beat by another novice with her 4th run... anyways congrats for her which got a nice 4th run.. and i will beat her next time..

[Race Miata]

I think there was some confusion for some who were told to work afternoon but was instead assigned for the morning. Is it possible to post the work assignment sheets together with the run/work sheets?

Also on the run/work sheets, maybe it'll be more clear to put run/work groups into separate sheets and leave out 1 of the 2 columns on each sheet. We can then put a big title for each sheet saying "Workers for Heat 1", "Workers for Heat 2", etc.

On another note, agree that sunday's course was challenging which separated me from the fast drivers. Reviewing my runs thru' my mind, I think I must have brain-faded at the time. People working the last 2 stations watching me went by probably wondered if it was really me driving (strange line, hesitate steering, etc).

May I suggest using the exact same course for this sunday's closed-club? I know Terence will probably kill me :P but it would be interesting to find out:

1. how Marc Sasso manages to get 55.9,
2. what happens if I were not brain-faded,
3. how much slower on street tires for me,
4. any more experiments people wanted to try out but didn't get a chance yesterday?

[Sead]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Jeff Y:
I didn't start autocrossing until the Spring of 2001 in my D/SS Chevrolet Cavalier.
-Jeff<hr></blockquote>
I wanna say congrats to Jeff for driving so damn well on Sunday and placing 2nd PAX! It looked like you had a tough time keeping the big happy smile off your face after the event. Way to go!