Sunday, 25 January 2009

Exeter Results and Timing

Interested to see the results and how they were affected by the application of the timing rules.
  • The routecard only sepecified that you could arrive early at the finish. I know a lot of people checked in early at Musbury but there were no early penalties applied. IMHO if timing is to be applied in the future, itermediate controls (where there is no rest halt) should be have no penalty for early arrival.
  • Reading the notes to the results I see that different allowances for delays were given according to where yoy were running in the field. Seems pretty reasonable to me. Except for Class 0 where a lot of people were penalsied for being late at Islington, presumably because they were held up at Fingle where they got caught up with the main trial after their delays at Windout.
  • I see quite a few of the Bikes were penalised for being late at Haynes. Wonder if this was because they had to go very slowly in the freezing fog?
  • Is it my imagination or were quite a few of the cars penalised for lateness in the main trial old ones, A7, Buckler etc. Could that be because they don't go very fast on the road and get overtaken? No sure about that one

Lot of comments but I actually thought it worked OK. Be interesting to hear some other opinions.

Michael

9 comments:

  1. From what I remember (I don't have the route card to hand) the time controls had a ETA (earliest time of arrival) listed as well as the competitors due time - so that gave a reasonable window in which to arrive before you started to run late

    MikeW

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  2. Mike - Just looked and you are right. I had taken ETA to mean Estimated Time of Arrival. Looking at the Abbreviations on p1 of the routecard I see in the context of the routecard it mans Earliest Time of Arrival as you say.   Michael

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  3. The exeter provisional results show us 107 minutes late at Ilsington. We were delayed in the queues at Windout and Fingle, but other than that we just cracked on without stops or delay. How are we supposed to stay on time? I could not have made up the delays by driving faster! Should i have pushed in at Fingle? Should we have checked into Musworth garage when we got there instead of waiting up the road for nearly an hour? Then we would have been an hour early everywhere. I was applying my road rallying brain to timing where early=really bad, late not so bad until really late.

    Wot's a man supposed to do?

    I understand the comments about ETA and we will look at that for the Land's End, I too thought it would be estimated time of arrival not earliest! The timimg issue is academic to us as we failed Windout so would not pick up a Tin award, however if I had cleared Windout I would have failed to get a Tin award on timin so I want to know what we are supposed to do to stay on time in future events.

    Cheers

    Graham

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  4. Well put Graham. The only time we stopped was waiting for sections to clear. We too were penalised and did run clear. Is it time to blame the main event for being in the way or ask for parity in timing with main event timing considerations. Whatever thats motorsport and it was a Great event. I would have given any medal away just to get off the Windout restart.  The ice just built up with every car through the ford and even the marshals could not stand up - brilliant.

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  5. We got off the restart, just couldn't get round the corner as the road was a sheet of ice all round the bend and we needed more momentum to get across the ice.

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  6. What happened was - as they say - After half an hour of listening to car after car spinning away I could not make up my mind  if a restart on ice was tyre pressures up or right down. Decided to go for 15psi . We melted the way off the restart. When I backed off the car shot forward about two cars length to the second slab of iced road upon the bend which we just got over. I know a lot of the car competitors did not drop their pressures much in the main event. But what do you do to get off Ice ? 

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  7. But what do you do to get off Ice ?

    Well if it is like it next year I am fitting two small gas blowlamps into the end of the sills.

    Graham

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  8. Graham, why stop there - try rocket.

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