MoKan Motorsports Forums

7.8 SCOREBOARD
A scoreboard must list the driver’s name, car number, class,
corrected times and penalties. In Divisional and National events the
times and penalties for each competitor must be posted prior to the
next run of that competitor.

Yea, I was thinking that as well. I know that audit was only done after the 2nd and 4th runs on Sunday, so it would be impossible to post accurate times/penalties in that case.

Posting the results would be a start though...

The reason I bring this up is because a fellow competitor DNF all four runs on Sunday. The times given out at the finish had indicated good runs. Corner 3 called in all the DNFs. No one notified the driver about the DNFs. The DNFs were not discovered until the heat was finished and heat 2 workers were called to check in.

This was not an isolated incident last weekend, unfortunately. Happened to one of my competitors too.

EDIT FOR CLARITY: My competitor did not DNF his runs, but he coned them all and wasn't aware of that until the awards ceremony.

Frank, for what it's worth, course workers were radioing like mad to try to get the corvette driver informed of the DNF issue ...

And, on a personal, at a KC Midiv a few years back, I DNF'd every run and never knew until the Day One results were posted and I was DFL.

Not a pleasant experience. Nobody else really seemed too concerned either.

d.hitchcock

I'm thinking this is something for the event organizers and/or the divisional solo steward to address. It is mentined in the Midiv Event Manual but I don't recall seeing a scoreboard at any recent Midiv's.

At our events, we try to make sure that Grid is informed if someone DNF's twice in a row and certainly three times. Hopefully, the driver can be advised where they are missing the course and get at least one clean run in. We also try to provide an instructor for a ride along if this is happening as it is usually newbies that are having problems.

I will bring it up to the KC Midiv event chair for their consideration.

This is not a new rule, and all Divisionals should comply. This is not the first time that hosting regions have failed to do so. I would think that if Donna reminded the hosting regions before hand, that they need do this, they'd do it. I'm sure it was just overlooked/forgotten/didn't know...etc.

My oversight. This is my 6th divisional as dss and haven't done it at any of them that I can remember and this is first mention of it. IIRC, Kansas region divisionals had hand-written postings...is that considered official times with penalties????? If not - then it will mean waiting for the audit and printing between runs if it must be posted before the next run...someone put some clarity on this pretty please

What about using a label printer? A lot of timing softwares will support label printers.

In the past for large heats that require quite a bit of time for audit, we have done a "split" in the middle of runs to do an additional audit. So for a 4 run event, you would do 8 audits in order to provide timely results to the competitors.

Having someone writing times and penalties is definitely a good thing also (that person needs a radio so they can listen for penalties). It's not official, but can give people a good idea of where they stand until the official times can be posted.

Dave G.

Thanks, Dave.

Dave explained it. It should not be a big deal, split the heat if possible and post right after the audit. The audit shouldn't take that long and if you split, the entire heat doesn't need to be done before the next run, only the first half. E.G. group 1a will be audited while 1b is running and posted before 2a runs start. 1b gets audited during 2a runs.

I am as much to blame (or more) than anyone on this, but our T&S is pretty lax at divisional events and IMO, it probably hurts the series long term.

DaveW

[/quote]Dave explained it. It should not be a big deal, split the heat if possible and post right after the audit. The audit shouldn't take that long and if you split, the entire heat doesn't need to be done before the next run, only the first half. E.G. group 1a will be audited while 1b is running and posted before 2a runs start. 1b gets audited during 2a runs.

DaveW[/quote]

How would that work? The audit sheets were picked up after the second runs.

Does any Region use software that prints to a label printer?

With printed time slips you can set the software to allow for a delay (20 seconds is usually plenty) before the time slip prints. That usually gives T&S plenty of time to insert a penality that is called in.

FYI, AXWare supports use of label printers according to their website. Not sure about other timing software.

Regarding delayed printing of time slips, during the Salina Divisional there were a couple of times at the corner I was working where penalties were called in at least a couple of minutes after they occurred due to other activity on course taking up radio time or uncertainty about whether it was just a cone or a DNF. A call in that late would not show up on an automatically generated time slip.

The years that I was involved in the Divisionals at KC we used either a sheet of paper posted on the side of the truck or a dry erase board on which the times were hand written. That was one of the work assignemnts.

Printing time slips from the software before the audit is complete doesn't really fix the problem or meet the rule. The intent/concept is that the driver knows their official time with all penalties before starting their next run.

In the past, for smaller events with smaller 20-30 car heats, we have not pulled the corner audit sheets or run a sweep car until the end of the heat and used them only in case of disputes. You would still have the radio log, master log and computer operator as checks against errors for each audit. Sweep cars/drivers are a lot of overhead and trouble for the organizers of a 100 car or smaller divisional event.

CenDiv/GLDiv used to/does a radio audit where the Course Control person has each corner captain read the penalties back over the radio. This saves the need for a sweep car, but still takes a lot of time.

FWIW, IMO, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel here. The National style T&S works pretty well for a divisional, and since Mama Sam kinda invented it for use in Midiv, it would seem to fit our needs.

DaveW

We could just meet the rule halfway and run a hand written scoreboard with times taken from the display and penalties taken from radio calls. Call the whole thing "unofficial" or "unaudited" to prevent possible protests if the audited results are different. At least if there are DNF's, the competitor can (hopefully) know about them if they bother to look at the scoreboard.

Yep, but where that falls apart sometimes is that it takes another worker to write them down, or you pull the worker giving time slips at finish, which may not be popular (I wouldn't like it)

Splitting the each run group internally and auditing halfway (or just quickly) and posting printed results doesn't require any additional workers. It also scales right up for the 250+ car event in Lincoln.

DaveW

If I remember correctly when Nationals was at Forbes this was done and no time slips at the finish.

Okay - another stupid question...sorry. The mid-run audit...how do you do it? Surely you don't sweep 8 times a heat do you? I can understand after every run then post the official results as audit is complete but that means the first 15 cars or so would not know their prior run stats. National does not hold up a heat waiting for the official results to post...I am SO confused.

I'll commit to scheduling a person for sweep and audit at both events left. And sweeping at every heat will slow things down a little bit (not much). And posting heat audited results in grid or on the truck.

That work?

If you watch at a tour/nationals, they do sweep twice per run, once halfway and once at the completion. As I said, run 1, group A gets audited and posted while 1B is running. Then 1B gets audited and posted while 2A is running. Rinse, repeat.

FWIW, IMO, mid run sweeping (actually sweeping at all) is probably an unneccesary delay for most Midiv events. As a former T&S person/chief/a$$hole I would be pretty comfortable putting out results based an auditing radio to master log, master to computer and using course corner logs in the event of problems. (We did it this way for years) This would seem to fulfill Frank's very valid concern and have us meet the letter of the rule while working within the framework of a smaller heat size that we typically have. Note, you still have to split your runs internally to avoid delays.

But, if you are going to sweep at all, then it seems to only make sense if you do it mid run no matter what, otherwise, you will have a delay while sweeping and then another while the audit is happening, making the time between runs pretty long.

Hope all of this comes across as constructive, that was certainly my intention.

DaveW

DaveW has it exactly right. I agree a sweep car is not needed for our size events. It will work just fine without it, and meets the letter of the rule. Again, when the Whitworths were in charge of T&S, this worked just fine.