How about:
Where delays of over 10 minutes are expected competitors are allowed to 'service' their cars up until the time they are given notice the stage will start. In these cases, the notice of FCO from the held start will be a minimum of 5 minutes.

Grant I respectfully disagree.

There certainly won't be MORE volunteers standing around then are already there and don't worry since we are always low on volunteers

And I think bit makes perfect sense to limit work by competition crews only and not service crews.

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simoniac
I think Anders posted this just for his personal entertainment.

What, I'm not allowed to have fun?

Anders

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Grassroots rally. It's what I think about.

A risk 'analysis' as well as safety discussion.

Dangerous..backing up out of a control to check under your hood. That seems to me to be the bigger risk. Danger to anyone standing outside of a car. Helmets on, other engines running, tires on gravel, limited visability...all a recipe for disaster. Backing out of a control zone seems a very risky procedure.

Stopping past the start clock/flag. Some risk here as other competitors will be starting shortly. If something happens it may drag spectators or workers into the fray. Would need to be triangled like any onstage situation. Problem with this is there may be a slightly increased sense of urgency as cars are starting the stage and emotions get jacked up a bit when that happens.

Sending a car onstage with a fuel leak, coolant leak, belt coming off, flat tire any other number of minor or major issues which could be mitigated with a check under the hood or some simple procedure has the potential for disaster. Could start a bigassed fire, bad wreck, puts competitors on stage on foot, may involve spectators OR a relatively minor, avoidable issues could cost someone an engine and that expense. Racing always has risk, we have to decide what to do with it.

Long layovers everyone gets the same chance, short layovers the crew will likely take a time penalty at least. Now if they request a different start time because they don't want to 'hold up' others cars then wonderful!! assign a new time with a penalty for doing so. That way they don't unduly benefit from the situation.

But no outside help. No service crews, no parts waiting conveniently at the start of a stage. More in the spirit of patching not fixing kind of deal. Parts and tools must be carried on a competing rally car. No one has fun losing an engine when a ziptie could have saved the day.

Edit...REGIONAL events, regional competitors only...nationals can be a bit more stringent.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2011 11:44AM by heymagic.

Dammit Gene, your posts are risking some manner of common sense overdose.

What about, you can do anything but need to start at your given minute?

That way you can't fool around to get a dust minute. Well you can, but will be already one minute on your time when you really start.

I know once I forgot to stop to clean some snow stuck into my front grille after a snow bank visit and was not too happy that I could not get out of the car to clean it since I had plenty of time to do so before my starting minute. At least some of the snow mysteriously disapeared when a control worker "looked" at it. But I did not saw him do anything to it! hehe (too bad there was still too much of it and my car started to overheat if I kept it floored)

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Francois

We filled a wheel with mud on stage at 100AW. We stopped before the control to scrape the mud out. We were partially done when Scott decided he didn't want to check in late so we jumped back in, checked into the control, had the usual 3 minutes or so of waiting and started the stage. We had massive vibrations due to the lack of balance. We should have either scraped none or all of it and taken a time penalty. If we're allowed to do stuff in controls we would have pulled into the control and jumped out and scraped until we had it all out. Of course, that would have meant us running around and climbing under the car while other drivers were squeezing past us trying to get up to the start line, while fully buckled in, helmeted, and control workers talking to them. I see that as decreasing safety myself.
We could have prepped the car with wheel scrapers since I know from first hand experience how the mud will stick to the wheels at that event so the real cause of the issue was poor prep. We could have taken a little penalty and spent more time outside of the control and scraped it all out. But I don't think having the option to go through the control and then resolve the issue would be appropriate nor added to safety. It's a teams responsibility to make sure they are ready to go before they pull into the control.

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NoCoast
We filled a wheel with mud on stage at 100AW. We stopped before the control to scrape the mud out. We were partially done when Scott decided he didn't want to check in late so we jumped back in, checked into the control, had the usual 3 minutes or so of waiting and started the stage. We had massive vibrations due to the lack of balance. We should have either scraped none or all of it and taken a time penalty. If we're allowed to do stuff in controls we would have pulled into the control and jumped out and scraped until we had it all out. Of course, that would have meant us running around and climbing under the car while other drivers were squeezing past us trying to get up to the start line, while fully buckled in, helmeted, and control workers talking to them. I see that as decreasing safety myself.
We could have prepped the car with wheel scrapers since I know from first hand experience how the mud will stick to the wheels at that event so the real cause of the issue was poor prep. We could have taken a little penalty and spent more time outside of the control and scraped it all out. But I don't think having the option to go through the control and then resolve the issue would be appropriate nor added to safety. It's a teams responsibility to make sure they are ready to go before they pull into the control.

I think many of us were talking about a delayed start scenario though...

If the start is not delayed and you do something that causes you to get out of sequence, I would think that merits a penalty.

A problem that I see with this is sometimes there isn't room in the control zone for all of the stacked up cars waiting for the stage delay to be resolved. Sometimes there isn't even room for the normal flow of cars through the control. Allowing teams to work on their cars can be bad under these circumstances.

I still think that allowing teams to work on their cars in the ATC/start control is creating potential for problems (described above). I think that it could only be considered if there is a stage delay (with a minimum restart time warning) and if there is room in the control zone. But then you get into the discussion of who decides there is room ...

alan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2011 03:02PM by tipo158.

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Jard
I think many of us were talking about a delayed start scenario though...

If the start is not delayed and you do something that causes you to get out of sequence, I would think that merits a penalty.

Yup. But how do you create and enforce rules in that scenario without adding more fluff to the rulebook. The only logical way I see is:
Define control zone by physical location and no vehicular work allowed in physical location (board to board).
Backwards movement is only allowed if permitted by control workers.

So, say the top three have pulled into the control. Say one of them notices he has something to inspect. He now has to ask the control workers to lead him backwards in order to leave the control zone.

In theory, the front guys should have the highest level of prep and hopefully the most skill at avoiding things so the probability of them needing to do something should be lower than back runners.

If we're talking about what should be allowed in case of a delay, we run into the same question of physical space. Should car 67 be allowed to lift the car and beat on a control arm to straighten it? Sure. Should car 1 that's physically sitting on the start line?

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NoCoast

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EricW
Will allowing limited service increase safety.
discuss

No. It will allow clusterfucks in controlled areas that have a bunch of volunteers of varying previous experience standing around.

i agree with Grant this time.

But Grant, it's not always car no. 1 that is in the control area when a delay occurs. Most of the times it's one way further back.

At my first sprint the guy in front of me had a bad crash and the medical crew was needed. I was ready to start when it happened and it was my first event ever so I was far from having the better prep car of the field.

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Francois

OK, none of you guys have talked about moving your cars (that are maybe jacked up in the air) to let the emergency vehicles get by (which might be the reason for the delay).

Discuss further.........

press on,

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just a poor, dumb, Michigan navie

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems futile to me to try and make everything absolutely fair in what is, effectively, a force majeure situation. While delayed starts are more common than we'd like, it's not exactly something a rally _plans_ to do.

I see two options:
1. Once you've checked in to the control, no servicing, regardless of physical location. Fair to everyone, but hard to enforce in the instance of delayed stage start and line of cars checked in.

-or-

2. No servicing inside the physical control. Fair to everyone as long as everything's running as desired. Unfair to those cars 'stuck' in the control during a delay - but, IMO, that's force majeure.

Then again, we could just not bother timing anything, and just give everyone trophies. That way, everyone is a winner in their own special way...

I like Aarons #2 suggestion.

You are not penalizing the front 2-10 cars , but you are giving a self service time advantage to the back of the field. If the only thing keeping the #5 car from moving up to #4 is some minor issue (snow in the grill, etc) sounds good to me.

Its not like time is being added to the front running cars.

Also keep in mind that on the regional level, the front runners are not always "the fast drivers" North nevada last year i was first on the road for a stage or 2. and at Mendocino this year i was leading the rally for the last final stages. I would be fine if a stage got delayed and i wasn't allowed to work on my car but a competitor 4 cars back who checked in, could work on his. why is he 4 cars back? because i had a lead on him that's why. if he can "fix" something and beat me good. I'm sure I'll be in that position someday too.