Potti mouth: Descriptive notes vs. numeric notes

OK ... i've debated on biting on this one or not but I'll take chance that this could generate some good discussion. Just in case, I've pulled this into its own thread rather than derailing the other one.

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john vanlandingham
Of course in those days we used words since words are descriptive and nuanced where these silly numbers all you young pups seem to like still must be translated in the brain.

When grading corners from a map in a moving car, that's probably a safe bet and a good thing to do. If you used a reference overlay you could probably grade by number consistently and easily, but it would certainly take some trial and error to get it right.

When it comes to words vs. numbers in general, most people would realise that numbers are really nothing but words that are in an immediately recognizable order. Most numeric notes use a combination of numbers and words anyway. (Flat 6R)

Having driven and co-driven on descriptive and numeric (1-6, slow to fast) and co-driven on numeric (10-1) my experience has been that numeric notes carry clearer information and need far less 'translation' than descriptive notes do.

Pace notes are, without a doubt, a language of their own. Co-driving the 10-1 notes was a real challenge to adjust to.

All that said, it is about the language you are comfortable with and what you can do with it. Richard Burns used descriptive notes and was blindingly fast in poor visibility. I understand that some of the top finns today are using descriptive notes.

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john vanlandingham
The thing I liked was that the co-driver has to do something other than merely recite numbers on a piece of paper.

The thing is that in a well paired team that works together comfortably the co-driver does an awful lot more than merely recite numbers. If you've never been in a car where the driver fully commits to the notes then you won't fully appreciate it.

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Whatever - the main point is VARIETY of ways to do a rally is - in the end - a part of the challenge...

I think we all need to apply that a bit more, particularly on these forums.

What does Loeb, Petter, Jari, and Latvala use currently?

Since i started with numbers (1-6) its clicking for me really good. I've played the richard burns game, and its default is descriptive. it took me a while to get used to his descriptions but after a while they seem to work just as fine.

i still sorta prefer numbers, i really try to draw the corner in my head and most of the time what i draw is what the road is. just this year Jeana and I started replacing ! , !!, !!! from just saying "caution, double cuation, tripple cuation" to "care, caution , danger" and when driving as a baseline i tend to tread them as
Care = don't accelerate
Caustion treat it as a note lower than was read
Danger treat it as 1/2 the note that was read, danger 6R , i'de attack like a 3R

But i also don't like to put in a caution for exposures or anything on the side of th road that shouldn't be a problem, rocks, trees, sharks with lasers on them, or spectators.

i don't "Plan" on going there so i don't want to hear about what there, just tell me about what the road does (where i'm supposed to be)

I love Flat, we use flat/Crest and some times for a series of crests that you can be flat with certain road position i'll change the notes to say
Flat right into flat left into flat middle. Flat what? well you can usually see a crest so there's no point in saying it , also since that's the only time we really don't say "what" i know if the navigator just says flat right, its a crest

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A1337STI
What does Loeb, Petter, Jari, and Latvala use currently?

Petter uses a numeric system - can't say for sure about the rest.

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Just this year Jeana and I started replacing ! , !!, !!! from just saying "caution, double cuation, tripple cuation" to "care, caution , danger" and when driving as a baseline i tend to tread them as
Care = don't accelerate
Caustion treat it as a note lower than was read
Danger treat it as 1/2 the note that was read, danger 6R , i'de attack like a 3R

The corner should be noted as what the corner is. I've heard of people purposely downgrading corners for the same reason and all that will do is shake your confidence in your corner grading.

We had a road that had massive exposures for probably 80% of the stage and noted and drove it conservatively. Always a tough road, always tiring. One year we decided to change that. We noted the road as it was and drove the right line through the stage and not 'hugging' the inside of the line because of the exposures. we were significantly faster and finished with less fatigue.

I think it is better that you assume leaving the road is a bad idea but where the consequences are significantly worse you make a note of it.

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...well you can usually see a crest so there's no point in saying it.

I couldn't disagree with this more.
Having the 'obvious' in your notes builds confidence in the notes and that the co-driver is on the notes. If the only time you use 'flat' is in association with crests, I can see why you think it would be better. WE certainly used 'flat' for more than just crests. (Absolute is probably a better word since flat could describe the physical nature of the crest as well. I've never used it though.)

I've said the co-driver's job is to stop the driver from thinking. If you think about it. 'Flat Left' needs processing by the driver to add in information. 'Keep Left over flat Crest' (_KPL/^flatCr) flows in as an instruction. Yes, this takes longer to say, but It isn't that much of a mouthful and is MUCH easier to process and act on for the driver.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2011 02:35PM by Morison.

Back in the day..when we used descriptive TULIPS we pretty much quit calling single cautions if it was a road,area,route book we were familiar with. Doubles and triples got mentioned as such however. Also we found that noting the fast stuff really helped the 2nd time around.

Crests always need to be called because drivers can get into a zone and muss up....maybe a glance at the gauges or spectators or thought drifting back to you buddy you passed in the ditch.

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Morison
I've heard of people purposely downgrading corners for the same reason and all that will do is shake your confidence in your corner grading.

We had a road that had massive exposures for probably 80% of the stage and noted and drove it conservatively. Always a tough road, always tiring. One year we decided to change that. We noted the road as it was and drove the right line through the stage and not 'hugging' the inside of the line because of the exposures. we were significantly faster and finished with less fatigue.

My first driver would do that when we were making pace notes. It really depends upon what the scale of 1-6 is. If it is an absolute angle description your best of marking the steering wheel on recce and the number is determined by steering input. Jemba is essentially this.
The other option is that the number is a combination of aggression and angle. A fairly mild corner could be a six if it's proceeded by a tight corner. If it is a long straight it might be a five because it requires a little more caution. That makes sense to some people I think.

I tell my codrivers to remove most of the cautions and all of the exposure calls. They are just unneeded distractions in my opinion and fuck with your focus.

Mikko uses descriptive, Loeb uses a numeric angle, it sounds like rotation speed, not compass speed. There was a cool video posted recently with the same corner and Loeb, Mukko, and Block describing their notes.

Mikko's was the best in my opinion. less fluff, only essential info. Block had twice as much info for the same corner.

Solberg's notes are also very wordy with a lot of information in them... so I suppose it depends on preference and ability to 'buffer' information. That said, Phil Mills' delivery in all of the in-car I've seen has been very close to the car on the road, none of this two or three corners ahead stuff for Petter.

Ken's been trained on Jemba notes which are very wordy for no reason (and wordy in a strange way.) I go through a bunch of correction tape at jemba events.

Grant:
I'm a strong advocate of the taped steering wheel method for a couple of reasons. If you're going back and forth from Jemba to pace notes it provides some consistency in how the notes are generated and what they mean. Additionally, to be able to commit to any notes they need to be consistent. Particularly when starting out, measuring corners with steering wheel input is going to give you consistent corner grades as you learn.

Conditional grading of corners just doesn't make sense to me but I guess it could work for others. I know a few people who have done that but without a lot of success.

Funny you mention that Keith . I originally wanted my navigator to say "keep flat left / Crest , Keep flat right/Crest , Keep flat left over crest "

he thought we would be going too fast over those 3 crests to get it all out. so we decided to shorten it to "flat left, flat right, flat left " I agree the less thinking the notes make me do, the better.

But i also knew for me personally, I'm just not going to get confused when i hear
R5+ L5 60 Flat left , Flat Right ,Flat Left 80 R6 ... it was 2 pass reccee to boot so i already heard it that way for one of the passes. definitely a case where more is better.

We ended up wining out class @ idaho 2 years in a row doing that style of notes, not that winning means "its the best technique", or i couldn't have done it better, but merely it was more than adequate to get the job done.

I'm always looking to improve whether I'm first , last or anywhere in between.

Most of the exposures I've rallied on, were obvious exposures and no amount of red haze would make me think otherwise.

The first 3 miles of Prescott comes to mind. If you can't notice there is a huge fucking cliff on the side, you are probably too dumb to have started your car and so its not a problem. (also it has 2 pass recce)

But i imagine you aren't talking about a stage like that. maybe more like Mendocino where you hammer through 30 corners , all of them look the same, but 1 has a really good sized drop on it. (but you wouldn't notice it while driving ) something like that, ya i agree with leaving the exposure call in there .. though i don't think you need to drive differently , unless you are starting to lose it around there.

also to clarify I've only ever used Stage Notes (Jemba and human made) , and I did Routebook for 1 stage of gorman last year, and Mencodino rally. I've never ever used "Pace notes" .

and i also agree with not changing the note to fit the speed of the corner. if a 4L needs to be taken at a normal "2L" speed i'll just put !!! so i hear Danger 4 left, i automatically slow down to 1/2 speed. no thinking, just doing.

an other thing is when a note is wrapped with massive amounts of description i tend to slow down (probably just to process, which a few here have made as a point, if you have to slow down to think about what was said, you should change your style of notes ..... .. . )
4L O.C. Slippy, Tidy, Rox outside, Rough on exit. (i'll slow down just to compute that) LOL hmmm... guess that's where !!!4L is better, way less to say , and i slow down . hmmmm

this is very helpful a few weeks out before gorman



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2011 05:07PM by A1337STI.

My Co driver has found "Get your car done!" to be fairly effective.

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A1337STI
he thought we would be going too fast over those 3 crests to get it all out.

Unlikely.
But if it were a quick succession I'd look for a different note like 'keep Left over 3 crests' or 'keep left line through 3 crests'

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A1337STI
I'm just not going to get confused when i hear
R5+ L5 60 Flat left , Flat Right ,Flat Left 80 R6

But only if you always use 'flat' as a modifier for a crest and nothing else. You also want consistency when you do have a corner that carrys on over a crest rather than just placement coming into a crest.

What if the road you mention above was actually this:

R5^{+ flat}L5 ^flatL/CR ^flatR6⁺into CR 20

CR into L6^- 80 R6



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2011 05:29PM by Morison.

I honestly felt he should be able to spit that out , I was in a fricken P car. But he convinced himself it wasn't possible

and if you stayed WOT you specifically had to stay left, then stay right, then stay left or you were going off the road (or so i Convinced myself ... lol)

at that point in time i had never used flat before , and not for anything else. this year at Idaho my navigator (new navi, my GF) put in a flat/R5< and introduced the situation you are talking about..

answer? i don't have one

she has yet to tell me a sequence of notes is impossible to spit out ... so maybe i should just convince she can, and buy her music with fast rappers or something?

What are some other ways of noting that would prevent the issue?

One thing i started doing as well is combining like crests , Flat / 4 Crests / 280 yards . i picked that up from mark ukatech's 09 videos

or when we can keep flat left / 3 crests/ 160 into keep flat right / crest into braking crest into 3R :O



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2011 05:46PM by A1337STI.

Billy mentioned to me at olympus a good way to remember which crest is what, mark them on recce if they go up or down after the crest. A few straights had 4-5 crests, with a R2 or something at the end. I find it tough to remember to count if the note at the beginning is 5 crests to R2..

Link to the Seb/Loeb/Ken notes bit.





Ken is clearly taking the Jemba style notes, which I think is kinda the common way of doing it around here. I personally don't really note if the surface is 'ok', but I don't have a gravel crew.

Mikko's system seems pretty good... I don't really like the don't cut instructions all that much either. Makes a lot of sense if you're doing your own notes, but practically in the US it would be a bit of a burden to have the co-driver translate from numeric to descriptive.

Loeb is not human. I don't know how he car parse all those numbers and visualize. Sure it is more specific, but seems like it would take a lot of training (which he has invested) to make that system work.

1-10 scale .. wow ! that's inhuman :O

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krisdahl
Loeb is not human. I don't know how he car parse all those numbers and visualize. Sure it is more specific, but seems like it would take a lot of training (which he has invested) to make that system work.

Ultimately, you can't take the time to visualise. Commitment to the notes is doing what you're told not seeing what you hear. The driver's focus should be on road condition and picking out what isn't expected. If you try to hear, see, drive you'll have trouble when you get going fast. Obviously you do have to work through the visualisation stage as you build trust in your notes and your co-driver.

Loeb had a fairly big off when Elena called just a plus plus instead of a plus once. a fairly minor change in the notes but when you are committing and using all of the road that's all it takes.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2011 10:52AM by Morison.