carreracup21

I was just wondering what everyone thought of seperating DE run groups by lap times vs. just using the old Green, Blue, White, Black method. I just did an event where drivers were grided by lap times and it seemed to work a whole lot better at minimizing passing and giving everyone clear run space. Any opinions ?

Glen

Works well but PCA wont allow it as any timing can void the Insurance of the event in addition to potentially voiding any insurance coverage on individuals and their vehicles from their own providers. If it was a PCA event I would suggest You not give any more details at all....

APKhaos

This is an interesting question, because it exposes a fairly common misconception in DE circles.

DE run groups are arranged by driver experience and skill level, because that is the only safe way to do it. The recent slew of GT3 cars entering DE events provides a great example. They are potentially problematic in Green, because of the speed differential. However, an inexperienced driver in a fast car is far more dangerous than an inexperienced driver in slower car, right?? Putting our hypothetical GT3 driver newbie in White would be inviting disaster!

If a driver is genuinely capable and faster than the pack in a given run group, he will be moved up. I spent a grand total of 2.5 days in Green, and have seen quite a few low hours drivers moved up in similarly quick time.

This is easy when that driver runs with the same club. Its much more difficult when the driver runs in a lot of different events, because no one club sees enough of the guy to know that he is ready for promotion. It can be frustrating to run in White with one club, only to find yourself in Green with another club. Believe me, it happens.


The considerations are different for the top run groups. In our region, like many others, the fast, experienced, and safe drivers are in Black and Red. Traditionally, Red was the top of the heap. What emerged over time was that many cars in Red were considerably slower than many cars in Black, but the perception of seniority made people very reluctant to move down from Red to Black. Thanks to some inspired leadership, we've made the change to a world where the both Black and Red are equal top groups, and assignment is made based on a general sense of lap times. This is a great solution. A great driver wringing the last ounce out of a 914 in Red was basically a moving chicane for the Cup Car Crowd. That guy is far happier today running in Black, and being the passer as well as the passee!

There are a few other factors in all this, but hope that gives you something to think about.

carreracup21

No, it was not a PCA event.
I think we are putting our "insurance issues" ahead of safety on the track. In my opinion, the real opportunity for a track disaster comes from situations arrising when cars are stacked up trying to pass. A car to car incident is what we should be trying to avoid at all costs. It seems like the best way to avoid that is to put cars of similiar lap pace out together. Single car incidents are likely not affected by run group assignment. An unsafe driver in a fast GT3 Cup is just as likely to go off track in blue as in black, but he will be less likely to tangle with someone else. Just some thoughts.

JackOlsen

carreracup21, glen is only bringing up one single tangential problem with your idea of dividing run groups based on lap times.

Tony Kelly is explaining why it would be a bad idea, even if it were technically feasible.

The division of drivers into different groups has to based on experience and skill levels. Like Tony says, this is the only safe way to do it.

Learning to navigate traffic safely is part of how your skill level increases -- both for the car holding traffic up, and also for the cars behind it.

Low lap times reflect some very simple driving skills being put into use, and -- of course -- the capabilities of the cars involved. A GT3 in a novice group is a good example. The driver will probably be posting lousy times, relative to skilled GT3 drivers, but will still be faster than a similarly-skilled driver in a 911SC. Obviously, cars with different cpablilites will produce different lap times with evenly-matched drivers.

But lap times have nothing to do with the broader skill set drivers need to build in order to safely share the track with others. The run group divisions are only useful when they're based on how the participants have learned to drive in a manner that's safe, and predictable, to others, and how much they've learned about what to do in the event of another car running into trouble (or behaving unpredictably).

The point of DE's is not to avoid cars ever overtaking each other. That's part of what you're learning. If the goal were only to get lap times down to a bare mimimum, we'd all use driving simulators instead of cars.

ltc

So, under a 'timing' based system, where would you put an instructor driving a 914/6, especially at a track where there are long straights?
Where would you put a novice who shows up at the track in a TT, GT2, CarreraGT?
As mentioned previously, how do you seperate car vs driver if the only metric is laptime? Does consistent laptimes matter, or just a single flying lap?

A properly supervised DE will quickly sort out drivers based on capability/experience, independent of speeds/laptimes.....at least based on my observations.

Just my 2 cents, and I probably owe somebody change.

carreracup21

Jack, I respect your thoughts which seem to be the majority opinion. Still after trying both ways, I find that the lap time method of seperation worked better and gave everybody alot more effective track time. I found it much more enjoyable. It did not totally eliminate passing, but did help to greatly minimize it. It also minimized the frustration of having your session ruined by stacks of slow drivers where nobody learns much of anything. I am also not implying that lap times have an exact correlation with skill set, but if you are trying to get faster and better at handling your car, it sure is easier with some clear track ahead. Nobody likes getting held up. Also, I don't think getting your lap times down to a minimum could ever be accomplished with a simulator. Why would a blue or green driver be more at ease dealing with a "unpredictable" driver than someone in black. I think there is an attitude of "senority" bias in this run group thing which says "hey I'm a black, so why should I be with driving this guy who hasn't been doing it as long as I have" , even though they are going around at similiar speeds.

Z-man

So are you saying that folks that drive 914's, 944's and 356's should be 'banished' to the green run group?

Funny, in racing (club racing and pro) they don't separate the 'slower cars' from the 'faster' ones...

Run groups based on driver experience is the safest solution.
-Z.
Carreracup21: I'm assuming that you are fairly new to the DE scene, and thus, you are running in the lower run groups.

The biggest reason I say this is because there are very little concerns with traffic in the upper run groups (White / Black / Red). Is it because all upper run group drivers have cup cars and 996TT's? Or is it because everyone is within 0.5 seconds of each other's lap times? NO WAY!

The reason the traffic concerns are minimized in the upper run groups is because of a thing called track awareness. With more seat time, a driver becomes more aware of his or her surroundings, and is more skillful in understanding speed differences. This applies to both the faster cars/drivers as well as the slower ones.

Drivers with more seat time have a better track awareness - this allows them to be more harmonious with the rest of the run group.

Carreracup21: you are probably one of the faster cars in your run group - no offense, but honsetly, how much of your speed is based on your driving skill vs. your car's power and handling?

Bottom line: seat time and driver skill are better indicators of what group a person should run in than lap times.

Z-man

Two quick comments:
1. I wonder if those who felt you were slowing them down felt the same way.
2. If you believe your sessions are ruinged by stacks of slow drivers, and that you can't learn from situations like that, then, IMHO, you are missing the whole DE point. Just because you are going at a slower pace does not mean the the learning process is over.

-Zoltan.

carreracup21

Hi Zoltan. I don't mean to start a storm here, but last time I was at a club race ( though not participating yet), they did actually grid drivers by lap times in both the practice sessions and the race. Also, I guess I am missing the point of DE, because I do feel like my session is ruined by stacks of slow drivers. Guilty as charged. As for me holding people up, well that is the point I'm making here, I don't want to hold anybody up and at some tracks you can't really avoid slowing someone down waiting to get to the next passing zone.

Brian P

I used to think the same thing. But as others pointed out, there's a lot more to it than just lap times.

Let's use our novice GT3 driver as an example. He might be turning lap times of 2:25 at the glen. That's very respectable (especially for a novice) and it might place him in the black run group for a lot of regions. Now, let's examine a fast 944NA driver who is also turning 2:25's. What is his experience going to be like? He's going to catch the GT3 in the turns and then watch the guy run away on the straights. He'd going to be completely frustrated because he's being held up by someone driving similar lap times.

What we really want in the run groups is similar cornering speed. I've found that in the higher groups, you generally don't get held up much in the turns. Instead, the place where you catch everybody is on the straights. And, when you do catch them, the pass signals are quick to come out, and you don't lose momentum.

Of course, we can't measure cornering speed by checking lap times. Ultimately, what's needed is someone to be out on the track checking out the drivers and seeing how well they drive and how well courteous they are in traffic.

Karl S

I just instructed at a Viper Days event. They separated drivers into different run groups based on experience, just like PCA. However, they also had a transponder in each students car and they recorded laps times. These times were used to provide some feedback to the students but also to grid the cars within Green and Blue after the first couple of sessions. It did seem to open up things on the track as CarreraCup21 is suggesting and there were very few trains in the remaining sessions. My green student would loose concentration whenever there was someone behind her, so this was a real benefit for her.

This method was not used for the instructors run group, just the blue, green, and, I think, white groups. The only real downside I can see to this method is the additional cost and admin complications of timing the sessions and getting people gridded in the right order. Of course, there is the insurance issue, but somehow the Viper club got insurance for their event, although it may have been more expensive than what PCA pays.

Karl

ltc

carreracup21,
What about merely pitting in if you find yourself in a train?

JackOlsen

I'd take it a step farther than Brian when he says there's a lot more to it than just lap times. I don't think it's about lap times at all. It's about safety.

I've been through four years of DE's, now. When I started, I probably would have agreed with carreracup21 that the reason you went to DE's was to get faster, and that it was easier (and safer) to go faster without traffic in your way. I think a lot of people see it that way, at least up until the first time they are minding their business when someone up ahead of them loses it, tries to save it, zags unpredictably across the track and ends up in a place where our driver can't avoid contact. Or (like me) you're at a track event and you see a car roll, collapsing the roof and pinning the head of its passenger in the space where the window opening had been.

DE's can get ugly, expensive, and even fatal, in a hurry. Now that I've done a few dozen of them, my position is that the most important thing to learn when you're out on a track is what to do when things suddenly start going wrong. Threshhold braking, correct apexing, judicious use of throttle and steering inputs -- these are the really, really, easy part of learning to drive on a track. The tough part is re-training your survival instincts when your car breaks loose, or when you lose a tire in a triple-digit sweeper, or when you hit a patch of coolant or oil, or when someone up ahead of you loses it and starts shooting across the track in front of you. After a handful of DE's, we all know what we're supposed to do in these situations. But knowing the answer and being trained well enough to actually do the correct thing are two different things. Everyone who goes to a DE in a 911 knows that you're supposed to stay on the gas if your rear end breaks loose. That's not going to change the behavior of 99.9% of them the first time it happens. You react out of instinct, and your instincts are pretty clear the first time you feel your car start to loop around on a track. You let up on the gas (and you spin).

But the next time it happens, it's not such a novelty, and you can begin the slow process of training your body to react correctly to the situation. All the reading in the world won't re-shape your instincts. You need to go out there, again and again and again, and slowly condition yourself to do it right.

The different run groups should (they don't, always) reflect seat time and experience, more than anything. You want your beginners traveling at safe enough speeds so that when things go wrong they have more time to react. You want your fast group guys to be able to trust that the other drivers on the track with them are going to react and behave in safe and predictable ways. They can push the limits of their abilities without having to wonder if the guy they're overtaking has ten hours on the track under his belt, or a thousand.

Novice groups can be frustrating for a number of reasons. Partly, guys tend to try and convince themselves that they have more experience, or god-given ability, than they actually do when they start out. They tend to have a skewed notion of what driving on a track is going to be like, as well as how fast they're going to be, relative to other guys. They also tend to think track driving is very safe, which isn't true. What's more, novice groups often have too many cars in them, with too few instructors helping out. Trains often develop as a result. Aside from fewer cars and more instructors, the easy solution to this is to have a hot pit lane where blocked drivers can go to get sent out again with more space in front of them. For some reason, it's always hard to get guys to see the utility of this. A lot of times, they just want to pass the guy holding them up, no matter how much of their time it consumes.

Lap times as the basis for sending people out makes sense in time trials and races. But that's about it. As much as we all tend not to think about it, safety is the most important factor in structuring a track day. When you see someone badly injured in an incident, this point becomes tremendously clear. But then we forget, and start thinking about lap times again. Why? Probably some sort of self-preservation instinct. If we really comprehended the danger of a lot of our normal activity, we'd spend most of our time on the sofa.

Bill Gregory

FWIW, one of the BMW regions I instruct with asks the instructors if they want to be put in the 'faster' or the 'fastest' instructor run groups, which helps provide some differentiation. (For non-instructors they use the experience/skill level basis, like PCA).