Autocross starting line - staging to timing lights

I saw this yesterday at an autocross.  I don't know if I am sad I didn't consider it or if there is a reason that it is not technically allowed. 

The course started with a left hand  90 degree angle turn from the car staging position to the timing light  start line.  There were no cones placed to the right of the staging line. One car on their last run of the day lined up facing a bit to the right (as opposed to all other cars facing a bit left) and then proceeded to make a loop in the gap to the right to get a better running start through the timing lights. Of course this could be prevented with cone placement, but in this case it wasn't. Clever move, a little squirmy, or against the rules? 

It ended up being the drivers fastest run of the day by about .9 seconds so it appears to have been quite effective. 

I used to do stuff like that all the time, to the point where the organizers would put out special cones just for me.

We were at a Car and Driver shootout a few years back that involved a number of different tests, but one was a run up to 150 and then stop. There were big bragging rights to winning this thing and it was reported in the magazine. To make sure the cars didn't hit 150 on the banked curve of the speedway, there was a big chicane made of a wall of cones. 

Keith: "you know, if you blasted straight through one of those cones you'd get a 2 second penalty but you'd save a massive amount of time."
Csere: "but you'd wreck your front bumper!"
Everyone: "worth it."
Csere: "okay, new rule."

Something similar happened at Solo Nats one year, and as I recall the decision was that not much could be done at the moment it was happening, but that in the future such exploits could be dealt with by sportsmanship clauses in the rulebook, since technically drivers engaging in that practice are creating an event delay to gain an advantage. 

Also, it's a colossal course design fail that's easily avoided. 

I'll agree that it was a course design failure.  Just a slight variation of cone layout could have prevented this. 

But, I will admit, I'm now gonna put this little nugget of wisdom in the back of my brain to look for the similar advantage in the future!  

It's not often that the longer path can lead to the shorter time but I like this.  

This reminds me of another "legal cheat" that can happen in sailboat racing.  On rare occasion there can be the combination of low or no wind (low or no forward movement) and an opposing current flow or tide.  This might mean that your boat is only moving forward at 1 knot but the flowing water is flowing back at 3 knots.  The result is then 1 forward for every 3 backward or a net result of 2 knots backward.  On this rare occasion, it is legal in sailboat racing to throw over an anchor and wait out the tide.  The race then becomes about holding position rather than loosing position.  

against the rules? No, but he may have known the rules and worked them to his advantage.

Back when I AutoXd in SoCal, pre SCCA, there was a rule about getting a rerun if a pylon was down. A course was set up with a line of pylons you drove past did a 180 around the last pylon and drove past the same pylons on the other side. Luckily another GRA Team member was walking the course with us and had the rule book. The rule didn't say anything about stopping if you had been the one to hit that pylon (intentionally or otherwise).

On my 2nd run I popped a pylon came around and stopped for the pylon on the course. Mayhem ensued, but my rerun was allowed.

The rule was amended by the next event and named after me.

On a similar note, I've seen a course design where there was a sharp turn right after the finish lights to try to force drivers to slow down before the lights.  Unfortunately they didn't space the cones closely enough together, so it was faster to charge through the lights, stand on the brakes, shoot through the gap between the cones (now off course), stop, and then reverse back through the gap onto the post-lights course.

This was recognized as legal, but immediately afterwards someone walked over to the finish and added another 5 or 6 cones to close the gap(s). :)

JG Pasterjak said:

Something similar happened at Solo Nats one year, and as I recall the decision was that not much could be done at the moment it was happening, but that in the future such exploits could be dealt with by sportsmanship clauses in the rulebook, since technically drivers engaging in that practice are creating an event delay to gain an advantage. 

Also, it's a colossal course design fail that's easily avoided. 

This is all correct, not strictly illegal, but definitely unsportsmanlike. Also silly to set the course up in a way that allows it. I'd be a little upset if that happened even at a local event, especially with the results from this instance.

File with a lot of other things under "Legal But Douchey".

I do this all the time. And I'm not alone. We had a course start out with a slalom to the left, I pulled into stage facing left. Everyone looked at me like "hey!" But the prez looked at me and said "I was wondering when you'd do that."  Totally legal. And totally the "fault" of course design. The people that get pissed are the folks that didn't think of it first, and if they did, they'd be the first to campaign it as legal and "you're just sad you didn't think of it first!"

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

I have a whole rant about courses that require severe dynamic braking events after the lights. I'll boil it down to calling it unsafe and a waste of tires.

It's just taking a faster line through the course, nothing more.  Isn't that the goal of the whole thing?

I could say it's like the one RXNC where the apex of a sloppy hairpin turn was marked by one cone, and I found it faster to cut the corner across the relatively grippy grass and hit the cone with the rear bumper for a 2 second penalty than it was to try to get the car turned around in soup.

But it's not like that.  It's more like shallow staging at a dragstrip - you get up a larger head of speed before you actually cross the start line.

JG Pasterjak said:

Also, it's a colossal course design fail that's easily avoided. 

THIS^^^

The 90 degree turn is there to negate the value of a drag/hard launch at the start..

If anyone hasn't read through/seen the full powerpoint presentation Roger "The Real" Johnson has, then i suggest reaching out to him about it. He wrote the literally book on modern course design and the powerpoint presentation is the documentation in modern form. Roger will field questions and is a genuinely awesome person, if you wanna learn about course design, send Roger an email.. he's the man. He was a mentor and resource in Houston when I designed a few courses in 2016 and 2017.

 

spacecadet (Forum Supporter) said:

JG Pasterjak said:

Also, it's a colossal course design fail that's easily avoided. 

THIS^^^

The 90 degree turn is there to negate the value of a drag/hard launch at the start..

If anyone hasn't read through/seen the full powerpoint presentation Roger "The Real" Johnson has, then i suggest reaching out to him about it. He wrote the literally book on modern course design and the powerpoint presentation is the documentation in modern form. Roger will field questions and is a genuinely awesome person, if you wanna learn about course design, send Roger an email.. he's the man. He was a mentor and resource in Houston when I designed a few courses in 2016 and 2017.

Technically the only way to guard against it is to line the whole thing with cones, otherwise you could DNF then un-DNF like in the braking after the finish example above.

On that note, the impossibly hard braking after the finish thing is technically illegal by the course design rules but the wording is all very vague and non-committal so it gets ignored/stretched a lot.

JG Pasterjak said:

since technically drivers engaging in that practice are creating an event delay to gain an advantage. 

Serious question: If they start moving after getting the go ahead, how are they delaying? I'd wager there would be a huge debate around that. Proposed sound byte quote: Technically, they're underway, so how can there be a delay?

I don't think it's unsportsmanlike or jerky in any way. If you don't want people to do it, prevent them from doing it, and don't get irritated if they find a loophole you didn't think of and exploit it.

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

It certainly takes less time than stopping on course for a down cone, and getting a rerun.

Or having a slower car...

Drivers are clever so you have to anticipate that someone will do this.

Won FTD one time a long time ago by figuring out that the same beam was being used for both start and finish, and the beam was shooting across the track at a 45 degree angle.   It was critical to trigger it on the far side on the start and the near side on the finish.  Not a big deal?  Won by a few thousands of a second.

dps214 said:

spacecadet (Forum Supporter) said:

JG Pasterjak said:

Also, it's a colossal course design fail that's easily avoided. 

THIS^^^

The 90 degree turn is there to negate the value of a drag/hard launch at the start..

If anyone hasn't read through/seen the full powerpoint presentation Roger "The Real" Johnson has, then i suggest reaching out to him about it. He wrote the literally book on modern course design and the powerpoint presentation is the documentation in modern form. Roger will field questions and is a genuinely awesome person, if you wanna learn about course design, send Roger an email.. he's the man. He was a mentor and resource in Houston when I designed a few courses in 2016 and 2017.

Technically the only way to guard against it is to line the whole thing with cones, otherwise you could DNF then un-DNF like in the braking after the finish example above.

On that note, the impossibly hard braking after the finish thing is technically illegal by the course design rules but the wording is all very vague and non-committal so it gets ignored/stretched a lot.

Why a whole line of cones?  Add two and there would not be space to run wide, done.

What would have been more amusing is if this was totally intentional.  Not something I would have put into a course, as we would have the staging line pretty close to the start line, anyway.  Personally, I think it was a clever solution to the problem.

But it also reminds me of the complaints from SCCA people who came to our events when there wasn't a WOT area just prior to the finish line.  Never understood why a WOT area was *required* before the finish- it's an arbitrary line anyway.  We normally would put a tight corner prior to the finish to keep speeds down after the finish line.

In reply to alfadriver :

Why would anyone want a WOT area right before the finish line?  Desire to max the brakes' heat load before putting it back in grid?

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

I honestly have no idea.  But the only ones who ever complained were SCCA regulars.

Not necessary a full throttle moment needed, but super slow finishes are disappointing. Anticlimactic in a way. That said I wouldn't complain about it...publicly, at least.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to alfadriver :

Why would anyone want a WOT area right before the finish line?  Desire to max the brakes' heat load before putting it back in grid?

When I started autocrossing in Canada, they were still using stop boxes. And the Porsche club in Edmonton would set up on an airport and have a high speed run straight into the stop box for maximum checkoutmyporschesbrakes-ness. Talk about a pad cooker.

The problem with a slow turn right before the finish is you can end up with people getting all squirrely right by your expensive timing lights.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I did all my autocrossing in Ontario before moving to Michigan. The first time I stopped to watch a local SCCA autocross my initial reaction was "Hey, there's no stop box!"  I had never seen that before.

In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :

I'm autocrossing in Ontario, we still use stop boxes with the two groups I run with. I think it is partly because of the size of site we have to use and how tight they can be. Because of that speeds into them tend not to be too crazy but it can be a bit hairy getting the car stopped at times.

.9 seconds! 

wow - I have always argued that the autox start is much more important than people think and here's some good self-selected-because-it-agrees-with-me proof. 

I get that this is an extraordinarily good start, but still.