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This is the type of course people want to drive… Or maybe just me…
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvKO8Acn2LQ[/video]
I wish I had seen Josh’s video before my runs at AAS #5. 🙁
Rich, you drive like me with lots of right foot modulation. Josh tends to not lift as much. Interesting, what a concept!
I agree that AAS courses are more fun than GGC’s. PCA courses are also usually more fun. I think 50 ft. slaloms are tedious, Slow, low rpm corners are not that much fun, either.
I also see a lot of new people at GGC events and I don’t think they are as discerning as some of us who are exposed to a lot of events. I also think GGC might have a fair number of new people at each event that I don’t see again at later events (I haven’t done a study of that, but it seems that way, and it seems to me that if it’s true, it indicates that they didn’t have as much fun as organizers think they had…) Retention is a good thing.
There is one older driver who gets lost at GGC events. The same guy doesn’t get lost at AAS events. This has to tell you something about confusing course markings…
Just my opinion.
We all just got back from SoCal and saw how they run. Very different philosophy with cone usage and transitions. The courses may have been larger but the flow into the elements was smooth and wide lanes to choose a line.
Here’s a video of what Hal is talking about
I know courses like that can’t be achieved at Marina, but SCCA has a “new” local site up its sleeve that can accommodate something similar.
I would say that once a course is found to be deficient during setup it can be changed so that it flows better. I know we publish the map but it should be stated that it’s only a guide that may be changed so that power steering pumps are quite after a run.
I would love to see courses like this tried out at GGC, as long as they meet the safety precautions that we have to include due to legal reasons. I highly doubt any other club is under more scrutiny than ours. Does anyone have access to the course maps? Do they publish them ahead of time?
Charlie, this year has been great for retention. We have a far greater number of repeat new drivers this year, selling out all events so far. The main reason is the coaching and getting to know the new folks, not whether the course is slow or fast. Also, if there are better ways to set up a course for less confusion, we’d love to hear it (or just help set up the course in the morning). In the past, even many of the regulars were getting lost, these days a handful out of 100 is not so bad. The new drivers I coached last month were not lost. I need to sit in with the guy you are mentioning.
Also to be fair to Dave, I’ve done 40+ courses with GGC and many of them have been open and fast, though the last 3 have been pretty tight admittedly. I’m a fan of both slow and fast courses, more variety makes it a surprise each month. Since we do publish the course ahead of time, before cancellation, it’s very easy to just skip a course you don’t like. I’m not sure if other clubs even offer that option do they?
Talking of getting lost, sometimes there are just too many cones, and the extra cones just confuse matters. Back at the May event (track map: http://ggcbmwcca.org/media/kunena/attachments/47/20130525-autocrossCourseDesign-FINAL.jpg) those first few corners were a sea of cones. All that was important were the apex cones. My wife was having real problems with those corners, I persuaded her to just look at the apex cones and it becomes a slalom.
[quote=”dacat” post=1646]I would love to see courses like this tried out at GGC, as long as they meet the safety precautions that we have to include due to legal reasons. I highly doubt any other club is under more scrutiny than ours. Does anyone have access to the course maps? Do they publish them ahead of time?
Charlie, this year has been great for retention. We have a far greater number of repeat new drivers this year, selling out all events so far. The main reason is the coaching and getting to know the new folks, not whether the course is slow or fast. Also, if there are better ways to set up a course for less confusion, we’d love to hear it (or just help set up the course in the morning). In the past, even many of the regulars were getting lost, these days a handful out of 100 is not so bad. The new drivers I coached last month were not lost. I need to sit in with the guy you are mentioning.
Also to be fair to Dave, I’ve done 40+ courses with GGC and many of them have been open and fast, though the last 3 have been pretty tight admittedly. I’m a fan of both slow and fast courses, more variety makes it a surprise each month. Since we do publish the course ahead of time, before cancellation, it’s very easy to just skip a course you don’t like. I’m not sure if other clubs even offer that option do they?[/quote]
Admittedly, new people are more likely to come back to a marque club with good coaching and a great social atmosphere. And new folks are just glad to be out there, and are less picky about course design. The other side of that is when you lose the more experienced people due to course design, and they aren’t around to help coach.
Most clubs with a point series allow somewhere around 1 drop for every 4 events. Marque clubs tend to publish course maps ahead of time. The rest don’t tend to. I’m not sure why that is, though I know as a course designer that publishing a map at candlestick or Oakland Coliseum is pretty pointless due to changing barrier configurations, surface problems, etc. You get there and find that your corner goes right through a really rough patch or someone left a lot of barbecue detritus, etc. and the course ends up varying from the map.
As for marking, one of the cardinal sins of course design is to have cones spaced the same distance apart down the sides of the course as the course is wide. I see a fair number of courses at Marina that have sections that are 20 feet wide, with cones down the side 20 feet apart. This is visually confusing. The current accepted standard at SCCA and AAS events is that every cone should have a purpose. It should be an apex cone, a pointer cone to an apex cone, the outside of a corner, a gate to keep you on course between corners, or a slalom cone. This makes the driver look at a cone or group of cones and say “there is something going on there.” Being consistent with marking helps him to continue with “and I know what to do when I get there.”
I also think that GGC uses that number of cones to avoid lining the course. I prefer lined courses with fewer cones from a visual standpoint, but there is an added benefit in course worker safety. If you go over the line between corners, your penalty is that you may have driven farther, but you haven’t hit any cones that need to be replaced. Course workers can concentrate on the actual maneuver areas, are not distracted from the car on course by calling in cones, etc. Fewer cones hit benefits everyone.
To most people, and in most instances on every course, a pointered cone says “I’m an apex cone, you will want to turn around me, at least to some degree.” Pointered slaloms say the same thing, though the amount of turning is more slight. We had at least one “outside pointered cone” at the last event. Cones on the outside of a turn should never have a pointer cone. There is a better way to mark that area.
I think everyone is under a lot of scrutiny at Marina. The problems that clubs have had are largely the safety of workers and spectators. Course design has little to do with that, unless you put course workers between cars going past them on both sides. Even drivers getting lost have little to do with it, since they are seldom headed toward workers at a high rate of speed. The really lost driver is rarely going very fast in the area of workers. The insurance regulations for all clubs other than SCCA are pretty much the same. I’m not sure, but I think there is ultimately only one insurer (K&K?) underwriting all the clubs. Even SCCA, with its own risk management dept. and the highest number of events per year by far has pretty much the same safety rules.
Charlie
I agree with you on all the cone placement advice, we should do more with less cones for sure. We even have line chalk if we want to try that out.
Without going into detail, you still have no idea how much scrutiny we are under, specifically our club, and I don’t expect you to know or make guesses; so if you’d like to know more, come talk to me in person. Good course design has very much to do with safety of workers and spectators. And lost people don’t always go slow, I’ve seen someone blow through a wall quite fast just two months ago. Nothing SCCA does has anything to do with how our national chapter manages our club and our insurance.
New people eventually (and recently) have become coaches voluntarily, and damn good ones too! We love coaches who are enthusiastic about teaching new folks, with a positive attitude, and we have many of them as regulars who not only coach, but do a ton of other things to help out. Honestly, if you don’t like the course and are complaining about it during the day…we rather just put you down as a different type of worker. The motivation for being a coach isn’t about whether you like the course or not.
Jack, courses don’t have to have 50 foot slaloms to be safe. More cones are hit in 50 foot slaloms than in slaloms with longer spacing. More cones hit = more worker exposure to being hit by the next car. Too many cones to hit in other areas of course design is the same exact issue. GGC has some of the busiest course workers I see anywhere. We are exposing them to unnecessary risk by our course designs. Your “blowing through a wall” analogy doesn’t work. There shouldn’t be a worker station in a place where that is a problem. A wall is on the outside of a turn and you don’t put worker stations there.
I don’t rip on the course when instructing. I’ll try to prevail on the course designer to make something friendlier beforehand. I’ve been autocrossing for nearly 40 years and designing courses nearly as long. My suggestions are constructive. I want our sport to be better, and I want GGC to be better. My motivation for coaching for the last 30 years is to help them become better and faster drivers, not to complain about the course.
Fewer cones and lining the course is the standard for everyone and it is safer. Fewer cones to hit, fewer cones to distract drivers and get them lost no matter what the speed. Those are all good things.
Sorry Charlie, I didn’t mean “you” specifically were ripping on the course, you’ve only been to one event so far and I didn’t even get a chance to talk with you. I meant “if you (people) are not positive, then very unlikely will be good coaches”. I’ve heard from Jeff you are a great coach!
Again, I agree on the less cone approach, it would be great if you help set up the course to show us how.
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