yeah, I wonder if we'll see a rash of people jumping ship now. who knows, most of Hart's career was with a NASCAR team, maybe he's going back there.
As far as I know, no, we were all SCCA with a few visitors from Canada and parts unknown thrown in, all organized and under direction of the SCCA Central Florida Region Flag Chief. Thanks! Many times fans asked us to put down the yellows, but after awhile most understood it wasn't our call and we didn't like it anymore than they did. We'd much rather see racing.
I understand why FCY's are out of your control, but I'm troubled by the statements from you and others about not being allowed to cross the wall to assist, instead having to wait on a safety vehicle. that's a very NASCAR-esque move, and in the case of the Viper Inferno could have put the driver at risk. I'm wondering what else you guys have to wait for race control on vs. having autonomy....local yellows? information flags (debris/course condition, slow cars, etc)? generally by the time you're flagging a professional race you have a decade or more of experience in regional amatuer/club racing, it would be a shame to override that experience and wisdom by taking all decision making away and putting it in the hands of the tower, most of whom have never worked a corner in their life.
I'd like to know why its taking so long to get safety crews on scene & take care of situations- like the Viper for example? I've seen Road America's race control & safety team operate firsthand -even up in the tower with Carson (head of safety). When incidents occur he gets his crews into action immediately and those crews are on top of cars fast. No way that Viper would have burnt to that extent on his watch & with his crew.
that's a great question too. same problem in Daytona with a few incidents (the GMG Audi in T1 and the RSR PC in the bus stop). I think part of the problem is the huge field sizes makes it hard to roll safety equipment.
I'd like to see a map of the track marked with every spot safety teams gain access to the track. I'm thinking they could use a few more key locations which would certainly cut down on response time. I was at turn 4 when the Viper caught fire. I watched safety crews and a fire truck come from at least turn 2 and I don't know where they entered. The last vehicle to come around was a huge front end loader. It was doing about 20 mph when it came through turns 3 - 4 - 5 and even though it was a FCY several cars in the back were playing catch up to the pace car and came blasting past the Front End Loader in the turns. The loader was on the track so the cars had to weave around him through the turns. Very little room for error. I was watching them go by as if the loader was racing the other cars thinking how crazy it was and by the time I realized I should be taking video of this the moment had passed. In the middle of the video I posted there is a sequence where a safety worker is pushing a car on back on the track while other cars are driving by and he loses his footing right on the edge of the track. I guess I'm spoiled by watching safety workers at Daytona for NASCAR races and how much area they have to work in compared to the tight confines of Sebring. Even then tragedies happen. A LOT of cars went off track at the race and many of them needed assistance. I can see throwing local yellows but the FCY were certainly unnecessary. As for people jumping ship, if the Sebring race was a debacle then those at fault will have to answer for it. Some will be fired. Some will jump ship before they are fired. Some will leave because they don't want to be part of it and hopefully the necessary changes will be made so next year will be better.
Interesting point. As I had this conversation with someone in the know this week, the problem rests with race control. If there is a car on fire on the track, they tell the corner marshals to stand down in favor of the fire rescue truck. The problem with that becomes what if the fire rescue truck is a mile or more away when there are corner workers with fire extinguishers at the ready. Evidently, this was the issue at Sebring during the Viper incident, a lot of confusion between the corner marshals and race control. There is also discussion of doing away with flag men on the circuit as well and replacing them with lights (a-la the ovals). While in theory this may seem like a good idea, again the instantaneous response from a live person at the scene would seem to be more desirable than having a guy up in a tower making decisions that he may or may not be seeing on a TV monitor. It seems as though the system they've been using for the past several decades has been working fine. BHW
F1 (and other European series) use both, lights plus marshalls both waving flags and there for rescue purposes. I'd have no problem with a system like that. doing away with marshalls completely, not a good idea IMO.
Oh, to be a fly on those fake wood paneled walls in Daytonner the past few days! "Hey, you got your chicken grease in my Mountain Dew!" "Hey, you spilled your Mountain Dew on my friend chicken!" "Mmmmmm, Mountain Dew fried chicken". Dem sports car guy 'll love it! BHW
is there anyone who *isn't* calling for a change? btw I agree with the first comment on that article about dropping PC, a spec prototype makes no sense, it was designed as a field filler, they exist in a weird spot where they are nearly as fast as GTLM (too fast for many amateurs) and yet because of the rules changes (higher ride height) and Conti tires, they are tricky to drive. no wonder so many boneheaded moves come from PC cars.
and we get to watch Daytona Prototypes with "fast and furious" diffusers. sigh. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Blue, debris, single yellow (be it waving or standing), white, green (following a station w an incident) are all our own call. Race Control tells us when to go FCY or black. You're preaching to the choir about incident response, that was the most frustrating part (yet it was better than the Indy Car events ice worked). A piece of debris was knocked into our area of track while under FCY, yet we never got cleared to get it, finally a PC car collected it. If it were a club race we'd easily had it cleared within a minute, maybe two.
From the Magnus Racing website.. Looking at the schedule GTD doesn't run at Long Beach, and the following race is Laguna Seca. Interesting how they worded it though.
that's not what I was referring to official announcement coming later. not sure exactly what it entails but it wasn't about GTD not running at LB.
