Christmas meeting

[hashiriya]

OK so Scott has asked us to start discussing ideas on what we should do on the Christmas fun meet. I had suggested at the meeting last Friday that maybe an endurance race would be good fun.

I thought a bit about how we could run it. Maybe have a few teams (maybe 4 or 5 maximum) and have a relay endurance race using 1 transponder per team. Pit stops would require a car to pull in and a team member to take the transponder out of the car and into the next car. It’ll take a bit of time to do it but it could be an interesting part of the tactics to see how each team organises themselves to make the pit stops fast and smooth.

When I briefly suggested this idea to people at the last race meeting, the general thought was that they liked the idea of the team endurance race but was concerned about the touring cars and the minis being on the track at the same time. This is a very understandable issue and so I thought about some solutions. Someone (I think it was Scott) suggested that we could run 2 separate races for the TC and mardaves but I think it would be a shame to not be able to involve everyone in one race and so I thought of the suggestion that maybe we could have everyone in 1 race but restrict the type of cars which can be on track at a given time. For example, if each team contains 6 cars of 3 TC and 3 Mardaves then we could say that the first 15 minutes of the race that only touring cars can be on track, at the 15 minute mark, the track would then be mini only meaning that all teams must make a pit stop and change over to a mardave. What do you all think?

I think that there only needs to be a couple of rules with this format to be able to keep the racing fair for all in terms of track time etc.

Each member of the team must go out on track before a member can go out for a 2nd leg, similarly all members must do 2 legs before anyone goes out for their 3rd.

Teams to marshal their own team cars only.

There are a few things that we would need to decide on if we do decide to go with a team endurance race.

Do we run all class types together like my suggestion above or have 2 separate races?

How long should we run the races for? Should we have a few races? For example if we have all cars in one team should we have say a single 90 minute race or 2 45 minute races with a break in between?

How should we pick the teams? Should we allow people to pick their own teams or should we pick them out of a hat or at random? Should we base it on the results of this current championship?

Any other suggestions on what we could do?

[learnerdriver]

Teams to marshal their own team cars only.

sounds like a good idea, however, concerned about marshalling your own car, could lead to people all over the track - easier just to say each team must provide a marshall at all times

how about a safety car ?

[HPI Paul]

Agree with Chris on the marshalling, plus say 2 cars crashed into each other, you would have 2 drivers running across the track together. Got me thinking tho, we should definately have a le-mans style start like we did that time before .

How about if we just have one endurance race with the mardaves? We could have it for one hour, I reckon should get at least 10-15 mins run time from the packs we are using so we wouldn't need too many packs for one hour. I was thinking of doing a longer endurance run (say 3 hours or more) at some point so this would be a good practice run and a bit if fun at the christmas meet. Running for one hour would give us time then to have a few other silly games (but not football cos none of you can match my effort from last year )

Mardaves I think would be better than TC's because less wear and tear than on expensive TC's and breakages are cheap and quick to fix, just use the one car for the whole race. Pit stops would involve changing the battery only (keep transponder plugged in) - just have couple of basic rules like start and finish the race with the same chassis plate and body shell. How about a requirement for each team to have a special xmas painted bodyshell and a seperate prize for best shell?

[bedsrcmcc]

Paul,

I think you have to be very careful in saying we only race Mardaves in an endurance race during our Xmas meeting as you are then alienating over half of the club's members.

Maz, I think your suggestion is spot on in terms of how we handle running both Touring Cars and Minis.

I would therefore suggest that those who wish to race at the Xmas party meeting let us know and which car they would like to run, either TC or Mini. I would then put all the F1 drivers into a hat, F2 into a hat and so on then select at random 3 teams made up of both TC and Mini drivers with a mixed range of skill levels to race. As Maz cleverly suggests, the race is split into two parts - TCs and Minis not then racing side by side.

We can then fine tune the rules to keep it simple and easy to follow and then we can all enjoy the nights racing

I would also like to suggest a last man standing race. This would be loads of cars on track and you just race until only one is left. Zero tolerance on contact - if you hit another car your out. If you crash out the marshall removes your car and your out. Just keep driving around the track until your the last one running. To prevent someone driving very very very slowly and therefore conserving batteries, we could have a minimum lap time that drivers must keep to - that'll be interesting for the drivers

[HPI Paul]

Originally Posted by bedsrcmcc

Paul,

I think you have to be very careful in saying we only race Mardaves in an endurance race during our Xmas meeting as you are then alienating over half of the club's members.

Scott you donkey, everyone would be involved, we would just be using the mardaves - anyone with a TC would form a team with someone that had a mardave - i have a spare car and battery packs that a team can borrow if necessary.......

[bedsrcmcc]

Originally Posted by HPI Paul

Scott you donkey, everyone would be involved, we would just be using the mardaves - anyone with a TC would form a team with someone that had a mardave - i have a spare car and battery packs that a team can borrow if necessary.......

I'm sure I'm not the only TC driver who actually wants to race their own car.

Maz's idea works very well, we simply have to change Transponder from one car to the next, making the pit change-over just as exciting as the racing itself.

I'm in favour of us all racing our own cars in teams, we all know our car's better than someone else's and therefore it's only fair that we are allowed to race our own.