2018 Nationals

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Scoob
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by Scoob »

Steve, to the contrary I think there would be more time for socializing and fun rather than less. Up to 100' tall light towers are available with relatively few actually needed to simulate late afternoon/early evening light. It would give the organizers much more leeway to work around adverse conditions (weather or course) while building up participation numbers as the National Office wants to do. I wrote my letter already.
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by John Brown »

after running full road courses at night,under the lights.
naw.

its never natural .
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by steverife »

I mean, if you run first, you are still getting up at 5 or 6 AM. And you can't walk course until 11 PM? It just makes it tougher to have that group dinner, paddock beer, commute to your hotel or whatever with your roommate (you guys may be running 12 hours apart), etc. It makes travel tougher, banquet, etc, etc, etc.

I mean the primary complaint is the days are too long and this resolution is to make them 50% longer.
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by Buck05Sti »

Seems to me that the most logical and least painful resolution would be to run two extra days. With 1400 plus people it's just going to get worse IMO.
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by jcox07 »

They will not run at night period, even with lights and the cost of those lights would be way more than they would be willing to pay as I have first hand witnessed the cost of putting on solo nationals and it is way more than I thought....
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by Buck05Sti »

jcox07 wrote: Mon Sep 10, 2018 9:06 am They will not run at night period, even with lights and the cost of those lights would be way more than they would be willing to pay as I have first hand witnessed the cost of putting on solo nationals and it is way more than I thought....
How feasible would it be to add two days to offset all the extra competitors?
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by Scoob »

I've heard that two more days isn't going to happen for staff and chief reasons, thus my ideas for extending the four days they have.
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by jcox07 »

They will not add 2 more days either....
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by Buck05Sti »

jcox07 wrote: Mon Sep 10, 2018 9:14 am They will not add 2 more days either....
So how do they plan to mitigate this in the future? It just seems to me like something would have to give. Either a lower entrant cap or longer/more days. It all seems to come down to math IMO. Assuming the weather had held out, seems like 1400 is about the maximum could be handled.
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by jcox07 »

Lowering the cap is our suggestion.....
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by thrdeye »

What a weird nationals. From the course cloning issue, to the number of incidents, to the poor handling of certain situations, and even sololive - there's a lot that needs fixing. I feel really bad for those heat 6 people that had to run in the dark on Tuesday.

Mathematically, 1400 should be doable even with issues, but there were some really silly things that happened that caused tremendous slowdowns. I think one of the biggest issues was that East course. The number of DNF's was mind boggling.

We dodged most of the problems in CS/CSL, but the girls almost bailed on Wed (East Course) runs since we only got 2.5 walks in. Limited walks exacerbated the DNF issues. After some convincing, they ran, but both Lin and Mish had DNF struggles. Mish got a clean run in though. Very proud of her on this because she wasy WAY WAY WAY out of her comfort zone with those limited walks, difficult course, and broken car.

I didn't finish so well, but I learned a heck of a lot, especially when it comes to wet weather racing and overcoming adversity. On day two, we had no idea what tire to go with. Conditions were "wet-ish", and still some puddles, but there was a fine mist/fog that was coming down. We knew that if we wanted to run the BFG's we needed to do that from run 1 to have any hope of building heat for the run that would count. That turned out to be the right call, as conditions continued to dry and improve.

However, on run two, the car developed a knocking sound and started to handle very very strange. It would turn in, seem to take a set, then wiggle as soon as you made any other input. We had the car in the air after every run, called a mechanical....couldn't find anything. Since we knew it wasn't in the suspension, we decided we had no option except to #justsendit.

In drying conditions, it comes down to your final run because it's the only one that will matter. After run two I was still in the trophies, but been there done that and I also knew it wouldn't stick once we got into run 3. No way I'd catch the guys at the very front, but I thought I could match Ogburns time and get into top 5...maybe. So I just went into #fullsend mode and ended up spinning in the slalom after the car went wonky.

I pulled the car back in grid, and we double checked everything....still no obvious issues but it was driving funny. So Andrew went out and when he went to shift to second, he figured out the problem....broken motor mount. It didn't want to slot into second easily. We were lucky that the course did not require any additional shifting, like most have this year. So he got it into 2nd and absolutley laid it down and won. Andrew has won every single championship after coming from behind.

Too bad the ND2 will likely kill my car in CS or I'd consider selling it :D
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by thrdeye »

There have been a few folks that suggested running Jr. Karts on Monday. I think this is an excellent idea. Yes, they will have to do two courses in one day, but maybe give them 4 runs. You could even save time by running one course on Monday and the other course on Tuesday. Normally I would say that Jr. Karts do not have that much impact, but they were holding BOTH courses when they ran (this caused a stink as well because the courses were held during drying conditions and not between sets of runs. So half of STX had taken run 2 and the other half had not.
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by John Brown »

thrdeye wrote: Mon Sep 10, 2018 10:03 am There have been a few folks that suggested running Jr. Karts on Monday. I think this is an excellent idea. Yes, they will have to do two courses in one day, but maybe give them 4 runs. You could even save time by running one course on Monday and the other course on Tuesday. Normally I would say that Jr. Karts do not have that much impact, but they were holding BOTH courses when they ran (this caused a stink as well because the courses were held during drying conditions and not between sets of runs. So half of STX had taken run 2 and the other half had not.
this.. would have done it for me!
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by thrdeye »

Yeah, cars were all over the place. Starting east and finishing west and vice versa. It was then that they noticed the large course dividing cones were not setup.
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Re: 2018 Nationals

Post by Teufelshund »

So how do the heats work? Are people running/working on consecutive days, or does everyone have to be there the entire time? It's hard to justify taking 6 or 7 days off work for 6 runs. We're definitely planning on going next year, so I'm trying to get my head wrapped around the logistics.
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