Postby Pope on a Rope » Sun May 01, 2016 1:01 pm
Competition issues aside, Making buggy easier to do, without changing the nature of buggy is a goodly goal.
To that end, there are a bunch of ideas.
Fewer but longer practices. Yes, go past 9 am. This will take cmu using some political clout. Get rid of the ones in late fall and early spring (which are typically the coldest ones and the ones mostly likely to have weather issues). This also gives the drivers a chance to practice in lighting conditions more like what they will see on raceday.
Get rid of the notion of the follow car. A designated recovery vehicle (with a driver who knows what is up) can be dispatched from the top of the hill with a mechanic and tools and get to the chute within under a minute of when the current follow car could arrive. No only does this speed up rolls, it gets rid of one of the biggest risks related to free rolls: follow cars. Cars and buggies clearly do not mix. They are not needed to teach new drovers as each org has access to hours of roll footage from their garmins or go-pros to show new drivers (or could borrow some). Less obvious but equally important is that follow car drivers have been known to do stupid things (like having passengers hang out of open doors or taking the chute turn too fast) so getting rid of them would also improve safety. This also frees up a follow car driver for every org. So, the flow would be. Get the buggies ready to roll. Have the same mechanics that would jump in the follow car, jump into the recovery vehicle. When the buggies are past the driveway, they get back out. If the buggy does not get past the driveway, they take a drive. There may be more than one bunch in the car when that happens. More often than not, they would end up with more wrenching time and less, driving around the course time.
Get rid of the idea of a pass "test. The current pass test does very little to prep the driver for a real world pass. It seems like a pointless waste of time that invites all sorts of chaos as "lazy" orgs use this as a means to get additional rolls late in the game. The lack of roll order above, should generate plenty of passing opportunities in a natural way.
And insert this rule. If you are not qualified before truck weekend, you are not allowed to roll truck weekend (or in the race). harsh but if you know it is coming, less so. The good is that it allows the roll order during truck weekend to be snappy and reliable which is important for the leading orgs to get their truck mojo optimized. It also gets rid of new buggies that show up late which is probably a good thing. It also encourages all orgs to get out there earlier. If that happens and then they find that they have truck weekend for extra practice, they might get better which might in turn lead to more participation.