Toby Pennycuff

Mike, Dave or someone from the team running the event at COTA this year.... Can someone please answer as to whether the gridding of cars has been rectified this year? Last year, grid was right to the east of the Media Center and when the cars were released to go on-track, we had to drive the length of the pit lane. Coming off track, we had to also drive the length of the pit lane to the exit for the paddock area. This seems to be the case again this year - at least that is what is found on the COTA Club Race site - cota.clubregistration.net It seems that this particular arrangement was a contributor to some of the delays and shortened track time for all, racers and DE participants, alike.

I hope someone will consider how COTA itself ran the Practice Day last year (Thursday prior to the Club Race). The staging area was at the SOUTH END of the paddock, at the end of the garage facility. This entrance to the track required a minimal amount of time in the pit lane. Likewise, exiting the track following a session, we used the exit off of Pit Lane immediately in between the Media Center and the Garage Facility.

Traffic flow was SO MUCH BETTER on Thursday. Can anyone describe what traffic flow will be this year? Please, please, PLEASE - can PCA emulate what COTA itself did last year?

Toby

Toby Pennycuff

OK, so now I see that there is contradictory information on the COTA.clubregistration.net site. Some of the info from last year must not have been updated. There is a Grid Procedures file that describes how grid will operate this year - which is similar to what COTA did last year at its Open Track Day prior to the Club Race. I certainly hope this will be the case for our race this year. Can anyone confirm?

Also, will RaceMonitor be available for timing and scoring at COTA?

ProCoach

SVRA's procedure last October (with 530+ cars) was as COTA's Test Day last year. Works great!

Veloce Raptor

Toby, I am pretty sure that grid will not be f'ed up this year. I am pretty sure it will be just as COTA does it, which is the smart way.

Toby Pennycuff

Peter, you are absolutely correct. Last year's Test Day worked great (in spite of the rain!). THEN we had the club race weekend. I hope we all learned a lot from that event and are applying lessons wherever possible.

Dave - glad to hear that info from you. Please keep whispering in David's ear!

Toby

mglobe

National decides how and where we grid. Last I heard they were planning to use the same basic setup as last year, though they were hoping to at least make grid bigger.

SoClose

Run groups posted.
Interesting- GTB1 in the Cup Car group.

Veloce Raptor

Oh no What a terrible idea.

Toby Pennycuff

^ Agree. Terrible idea!!!

TXE36

Regretting not going a little less .

Gridding up between the medical building and the grandstand works so much better. It's got to be a 1/2 mile from the back of the media center to the actual track entry.

I hope you can knock some sense into the powers that be.

-Mike

dizzyj

where at?

SoClose

Clubregistration.net

Vonschmidt

As Mike said National sets the grid guidelines and several folks have spoken to them about this issue or setup location and they are what I would call set in their ways. It's been explained to me they are concerned with the high traffic area right at the exit. This has merit however I believe based on my experience at the track with a. Variety of groups that this grid location costs several minutes per cycle.

One group must recover all its cars before the first car from the next run group can be launched. With the very long pit lane this eats up tons of time. Reversing would allow the next group to launch as soon as the last driver in the previous group acknowledges the checker or at the minimum when they enter the pit complex. Just a humble opinion but I think its issues like this that are stunting the attendance as much as price.

TXE36

I can see why someone would be concerned about that at first blush, but taking cars off the track between the media center and grandstands works pretty well. If they are that worried about it, put a flagger in front of the media center and cover it extensively in the driver's meeting.

-Mike

Veloce Raptor

Agreed. Every single car of each 75 car group has to traverse the full length of pit lane, at no more than 35 MPH, not once but TWICE each session. Pretty easy to calculate the insane time sink this is.

National is suffering from Acute Cranial Rectosis if they think this is somehow a good idea.