jwr9152

My last time at Barber we came to a complete stop, because our train conductor evidently didn't know the difference between a red flag and a debri flag. How there was no accident, I'll never know. Took three laps to actually get the flow of cars back to a normal pace. I didn't see, but I hope he got educated. It could have ended very badly for several cars.

pcarGTS4.0

While trying to get us Cayman folks (specifically me) out of their mirror...they will make their Ferrari 488 airborne and go off roading in the second to last corner of Pocono before pit in. It looked like the Ferrari in Ferris Bueller's day off.

AN EARLY POINT BY IS THE BEST POINT BY!!!

PaulE

I should have said It's the arrow, not the archer!

Archimedes

Learned long ago to just pull into the pit lane, let the train go, and re-enter into a clear track. A lot easier than stewing about why you can’t fix stupid.

raymort

Also,

1. My outlap is never my fastest. Let all by that want to run hard on cold tires. I push too hard to do that.

2. Work with others at grid up to get people in close to the right order. I often give point bys in the grid to let people know I see them and they will get an immediate pass (e.g. Cup cars).

3. some events throw a yellow for the outlap, but in the advanced group they don’t black flag us for allowing courtesy passes to get ourselves in order.

996AE

Every drivers meeting I have ever attended talks about "that guy" and as track nutts most of us already know

Racing is another story but for HPDE the remarks are always the same

Pull into hot pits and ask for clear track, re enter have fun

That and be nice to fellow drivers. Especially the slower ones.

raymort

Also, try to get to know the people in your group and how they run. Some are out for 3 laps to set a PB, some are trying a new setup and may be slow in areas, some have a passenger and are paying extra attention to them, etc. I have found the more you know others, the better the point bys.

electron mike

Honestly I would just prefer more advanced run groups run open passing and require a racing license and/or appropriate instruction/check ride to help alleviate some of the problems. I ran with Speed Ventures out west and at other tracks and the open passing worked well with experienced drivers.

But even with point by passing an advanced driver should have race awareness and be comfortable passing and being passed anywhere on track BEFORE the person behind is held up at all.

I have been doing the track thing a long time and this kind of ego driven BS is common, just like many other places in life:

- lining up at the front of a marathon/iron man start and end up walking the last five miles.
- folks that shoot 100+ from the back tees and take 5 hours chasing their ball.
- using two heavy bags when others are waiting because you think you are Bruce Lee and are under attack
- hogging 4 sets of dumbells near your bench because you are doing a drop set every 20 minutes after texting on your phone and flexing in the mirror.
- taking up a shooting lane loading ammo into clips instead of doing it at home for the first round
- doing pizza down a black run waiting for ski patrol to save you
- going mental if another surfer gets near the same wave, which is a quarter mile long.

etc. A little common courtesy makes life better for everyone.. either send it or GTF out of the way!

paffinity

I started doing NASA this year and it's open passing in DE4 and TT groups.

Ray brought up cup cars... there was some drama the day after.

Zhao

The problem is with a conga line on a short track you can hit it again very quickly going in to the pits. It also kills 2 laps going into the pits and re-entering if you're running a timed event and on a large 2.5 minute + track that is 5 + a minute to safely navigate the pits and maybe 30 seconds-60 seconds to be put out far away from the conga line, plus the lap you lost getting stuck behind the conga line. Plus if everyone hitting the rolling chicane does that the pits get busy. It just creates unnecessary risk and wastes everyone's time when really the organizer should be dealing with the root of the problem. At schools the mentality 'oh just cycle the pits if there is a traffic jam and htey never black flag instructors for not letting people by. So I get stuck in conga lines all the time because there is always someone very slow with some bonehead instructor and it's really frustrating because I know it's fastest to cycle in and out of the pits so that is what we do, but we often hit the conga multiple times before the session is over doing just that. It adds up to a lot of time lost teaching, plus the interruptions teaching techniques do not help at all.

10+ years ago HPDE's had a problem wiht conga lines where I am, to the point where it was common enough that people asked for another session because theirs was ruined so badly because of 'be nice to slow drivers' don't black flag them or talk to them mentality. Now at HPDE's we don't have conga lines. Eliminating conga lines is such an easy thing to do.

raymort

Wow!! This weekend really seemed like a mess.

Wasn’t there like 7 cars into the walls or gravel pits too?

electron mike

Wow, just wow.

Saturday was crazy, every other session seemed like black flag all with someone getting towed in.

electron mike

Found it.

raymort

HAHAHAHA

Mavzyx

I was in the white Clubsport and this past weekend was a complete shambles. They need to start vetting people for these run groups...