Hi David,
I came in 06 and helped out in the end as a Paramedic. Since then I've joined the club and did most of my week this year as an Assistant Starter, wrist band nazi & spent some time in the merchandise van with Carol & Rod when I wasn't hanging around in the Silverton pit.
I got a lot more out of the event as a result of being involved as a helper, and even more out of being able to assist and be involved with the Silverton boys to whom I'm extremely grateful.
Being involved in the event gave me a look at the machinations behind it and while some racers know a bit about how the event is run cos they've been coming for a long time many don't, particularly those who haven't been before this year. I'm sure there are many who due to lack of time off work or distances travelled arrive late Sunday or Monday, race, and go home while racing is still fading on Thursday or Friday.
I like being involved and I don't see my effort during the week as anything at all significant compared to the countless thousands of hours put into vehicle preparation by the members running the vehicles that come to the meet - to them I'm also grateful as they are the heart of the event. No cars or bikes, no event. Not a lot different to - no volunteers, no event.
I'm not looking to blow my own trumpet, just give some background to where I'm coming from when I make the observations or suggestions that follow.
The hours put in behind the scenes are countless and are performed by very few for the benefit of the greater membership. Even the few hours put in checking wristbands I would estimate collected something like $1500-$2000 which would have been lost revenue had we not taken the time to do it. But all of the few hours doing the small jobs add up to a lot of hours during the week, not to mention the time put in during the year by the executive and the time put in setting up and packing up.
There are so many issues with your post that I can see and I'll try and address them one by one as I see them. A lot of them though relate to the number of people involved and the increase required in staffing to facilitate what you suggest but there are other issues also.
Firstly -
running two courses.
Great idea but we struggled to get assistant starters this year for one course. Cled does a sensational job as a starter and was on his feet for the whole event. I don't see anyone else putting their hand up at the moment to do his job for a whole event for the one course we run, let alone two. Don Noble was an asset this year as he, like I wasn't running a vehicle.
Ideally helpers in this area come from non racing personell as they aren't being pulled emotionally (for want of a better word) between the pit and the start line.
The start line requires as a minimum a chief starter and two assistants. Three assistants is better but it functioned with two.
Each course would require timers to man two sets of gear, and for the short course observers to assess the license passes.
The setup time would increase, as would pack up time at the end of the event unless more people get involved.
That's at least another 10 volunteers required to run another track not including rescue staff. I can't see based on previous experience that we have that sort of commitment from volunteers.
Further to that you would need an additional rescue crew to run an additional short track.
Rescue brings me to your
second idea of time/distance separation of vehicles and simultaneous track use.
Short answer is that it can't be done. One car or bike on the track at a time and no second vehicle started until the safety zone is clear. Full stop. No alternative.
The reasons why are various but all relate to safety for participants and rescuers. Airports function the way they do because there are dozens of people involved in controlling access to runways and it is my understanding that separations are based on a second plane either being able to abort a landing if a previous one has become complicated or as a last resort pull up short or power on and take off again.
You can't get away from the fact that in this game cars break or spin and if they break they can catch fire or dump oil & parts, bikes break or worst case riders do
and when it happens they (bikes/cars) are often on the track or are always within the safety zone for quite some time.
You can't eliminate the risk to those racers who are stuck there when another car is already on the track heading toward them. And worse than that you can't put rescuers and paramedics in harms way trying to get access to them to either put out fires, get them out of cars or treat them.
It's bad enough doing a prang here at work on normal roads with the dickheads who don't slow down to rubberneck passing you at near highway speed. You can't safely assist someone in trouble on the race track if the track still has cars/bikes on it, and there is no reliable way of communicating the track closure to someone who is mid run in a safe timeframe.
You would also heighten the risk which has been demonstrated to be present if a part comes off a car, or a track marker is knocked out, to the vehicles following it down the track. The smallest part - and this year we had parachutes, shackles, track markers, nails from track markers, bolts and mars bar wrappers to name a few - any of which end up in the tyre of the next car/bike and we have a big problem.
Work out the time separation between your six cars 1 mile apart on the long track as you propose even if they are doing 120-150mph. It's less than 30 seconds. Even if only two cars were on the track at the same time it can't be done safely for all of the above reasons.
That and the fact that multiple vehicles aren't all going to be capable of doing the same speeds or rates of acceleration even if you were running batches of license passes.
Forget about trying to group cars in similar classes. We couldn't even get starting cars to group in a numbered order
I had a long chat to Colin Clare as we tried to work out how to speed up the rate of runs, which was better than it would have been had we been running more long course cars than 125/150mph license passes which move through fairly quickly. Had we run more fast cars on a longer track the run rate would have dropped of remarkably.
I don't see how we could have put a lot more cars down the track. A few more at times maybe but not a lot more.
One thing that would speed things up is to take prestaging to the next level. What we did this year worked well but there is room for much improvement.
I propose a wireless network at the lake for the week. Details - car/bike #, driver/rider #, lic pass details & class - all collected at prestage. Each batch of 10 cars sent to the start line already knowing their unique run number and given a laminated card with it on it - in chinagraph pencil or marker. (Weighted if necessary so that the objection based on them being blown around as litter is overcome and recycled in batches of 50 or so so that we don't have to generate an endless number of them.)
This would reduce the volunteer load at the start line slightly as the start line would run easily with 2 assistant starters rather than really ideally needing 3. The assistant starter controlling the grid can simply direct people to lanes in order after taking their card and the cards get cleaned off and sent back to prestage.
At the same time as that information was passed to the starter it would be simultaneously available at the timers van, the guys at Sthn Rescue and the Club Animal bus.
The guys at Southern Rescue might seem an odd choice to some but they keep close track of who's running and maintain a heightened sense of response readiness for some cars and will actually chase the fast cars. This is to improve the response time in the event of an incident that they would otherwise be two miles from and minutes away from if it occurs, so they need to know who is on what run number also. (The rescue chase car is another reason why simultaneous separated runs won't work too.)
Each run would have an individual number which reflects the card number given when details are collected. If a run is aborted it doesn't matter whether the driver pulls out of the queue in prestage or in the start line, you just move to the next run number.
It would also solve the problems we had this year of cars/bikes turning up with no idea of where they were in the queue and the ranting from some over losing their place behind so & so. Most drivers were more than happy to shuffle the order to expedite proceedings but some unfortuanately took it out on volunteers when their position was compromised by their and their competitors memory of where they were supposed to be when they moved to the start line. Thank to those who were patient and easy to get along with.
This system would eliminate the time taken to read off and repeatedly give details from the start line to the timer. This may not sound like much but I estimate a saving of 30-40 seconds per run. This equates to about 10% more runs down the track - or maybe 50 more runs in a week long meet. That's a significant increase - the equivalent of an extra half day of racing.
The timer could enter times into the database directly and they would simultaneously be available to Club Animal.
Potentially even competitors/teams in the pit could have access to screens of times and run orders via the same network. This has a lot of potential.
The network gear wouldn't be expensive. A lot of us already have laptops and you'd only need 5 all up. I reckon we could come up with those without having too much difficulty. And you could run the whole thing off an Excel spreadsheet or probably better off a database and I'm sure that someone in the club has the expertise to set it up and work out what sort of wireless access point and aerial is needed to facilitate it.
The other issue is communications. Whether it's liked or not, the starter needs noise a cancelling mike on his radio and preferably a headset. Too much time was lost in repeating details lost in wind or car noise. Use of proper phonetics would go some way to solving this but better comms would speed things up - especially if all the starter had to tell the timer was that the car for run number YYY (from the live database) was coming down the track.
And no one in the management side of things should be using half watt handhelds. 2-5 watts at a minimum to ensure half of conversations isn't lost. The amount of time only half of a conversation made it to the starter was significant.
Wireless timing gear isn't the panacea some may be hoping. Setup time would be reduced and there wouldn't be any more birds nests like 2006 but once the current gear is set up it runs well for what it does. Stiffer brackets and mortein surface spray (for the ant) as it turns out would solve the two problems we had this year. The big saving would be in setup and pack up time, but the transmitters needed to punch the signal reliably over a 6 mile course would need more punch than the ones that may be only transmitting a couple of mile tops on a circuit.
I'm sure there are other suggestions that will come to light from this.
Can I have the next ten forum posters from pit pre-stage please....
Dave