19 replies to this topic

[Odseybod]

A thought crept into my onboard computer during a lull in the Donington Historic proceedings.

Until recently, most race durations were quoted in Laps- notable exceptions being Le Mans (of course), other long-distance sports/GT races such as the Silverstone 6 hours and 1000k, and one-offs like the Motor 6 Hours Oh, OK, plus the Indy 500, Daytona, Sebring, and maybe a few others. There were also slightly quirky things, such as the One Hour High-Speed Trial that traditionally started the VSCC's April meeting at Silverstone, even after it wa shorteneded by the 1970s fuel crisis (We all understood perfectly what the commentator meant when he told us, "This year's One Hour High-Speed Trial will last for 45 minutes", though it took some explaining to a companion who'd previously had a rather sheltered upbringing).

Then out of the blue, programmes started showing some race durations in minutes rather than laps, which became an increasing trend until at this weekend's Donington, all races legnths were quotesd in Minutes. I can see some obvious benefits for programme organisers and spectators - organisers can build in some timetable slack (as railways might call it) to allow for small delays and sweepings-up, while spectators can go for a Paddock potter, confident that if they return at (say) 4pm, they'll still catch the start of a particular race. Having said which, I don't think I've attended a race meeting that hasn't run behind schedule, whether quoted in laps, minutes or possibly lunar phases.

I just wondered who - or what - prompted the change and also whether we like it.

[ExFlagMan]

I just wondered who - or what - prompted the change and also whether we like it.

I think it came in with the increased use of safety cars/red flags/Black&Yellow flags etc. Probably also had something to do with the need for clubs to cram as many races as possible into the schedule to help pay increasing circuit hire fees.
One thing it does do is limit the consequence of competitors throwing cars into the scenery to just that race, rather than the guys at the end of the day suffering because of the 'efforts' of others

[Cirrus]

I think one of the contributory factors is that many circuits now have strict curfew times and having races based on a time rather than number of laps results in a much more predictable timetable, especially if safety cars need to be deployed.

Edit - ExFlagMan beat me to it!

Edited by Cirrus, 07 May 2013 - 12:16.

[arttidesco]

Not sure what has prompted the change but amongst the reasons might be fewer race day's as individual tracks have lost battles with local residents upset by noise and stricter curfew enforcement which has left clubs trying to fit more races into fewer days.

I'd be interested to know what competitors make of it, from a spectators point of view I do not feel it makes that much difference, but then my favorite race always has been the Le Mans 24 hours.

Edit beaten to it by ExFalgMan and Cirrus

Edited by arttidesco, 07 May 2013 - 12:21.

[D-Type]

Even the Goodwood Revival works to time not distance these days. 2004 was still laps while 2009 was times but i don't have programmes for the intervening tears to narrow it down.

[Derwent Motorsport]

The main reason is to get as many races in as possible so as to pay for the track hire and finish before curfew time. There have been cases in recent years where the last race has been shortened or canned. The practical reason is the weather. A ten lapper in the dry takes much less time than ten laps in the wet. Over a whole wet day the programme of ten lappers can get way behind schedule. If a set time is given for each race then the meeting finishes on time and everyone gets their due time on track.
Its also the reason that many clubs are running longer races as one twenty minute race takes less time to run than two ten minutes ones.

[alansart]

The advent of gravel traps - and cars getting stuck in them - has also led to more use of the safety car. I last raced in 1994 and I think at the time only Donington had gravel/sand traps (but I stand to be corrected). In 15 years of racing, nearly all in FF1600, I was only in 4 races that were stopped and never had to follow a safety car. Health and safety has moved on since then and with stricter curfew problems I can see it makes sense to run to time rather than race distance so that everyone gets a race. It can be frustrating to be in the last race of the day and have it shortened by earlier problems.

On one occasion at Mallory some of our Formula Forder's didn't listen to Don Truemans COC lecture after a stoppage in practise and when the race was stopped after a pile up at the start, as a reward we were banished to the end of the meeting and would run to what time was left. We got a full race but it was only fair that our exploits didn't spoil it for others.

[ErleMin]

...and certainly the reason why one club adopted it a few years ago was to standardise the entry fee for competitors in races for different formulae with different lap times to ease admin. So this prevents different race distances and track time for the same money. This has been slightly modifed to be "so many minutes plus a lap" for the ease of their officials.

[Odseybod]

Thanks for all the interesting perspectives - much appreciated.

[Allan Lupton]

Having retired from handicapping at about the time that scratch races started being duration-based, I hope my successors don't now have to handicap sprint-length duration-based events.
We did have one class of race which was duration-based which was the 750MC Six-Hour Relay, and similar events run by Jaguar D.C. and others. When a pace car was introduced, we had to modify the declared handicaps to allow for the pace car time during which the competitors all had to lap at the same speed, so one year when we had a lot of accidents we were reduced to little over four hours for the handicap aspect of the Six Hour Race.

[D-Type]

What did you do? Simply ignore laps under the pace car? Or was the handicapping on an 'equivalent laps' basis - one lap in a Clubman's car is equivalent to 2 laps in an E Type Jaguar etc in which case pace car laps simply weren't factored?
Just out of curiosity with cars of disparate performance in the same team did you handicap the team on the basis of the average lap or on the basis of the fastest car covers its full allowance then the second fastest does the same, etc even if, in working out the handicap, the slowest doesn't get to run at all.

Edited by D-Type, 07 May 2013 - 21:53.

[Odseybod]

What did you do? Simply ignore laps under the pace car? Or was the handicapping on an 'equivalent laps' bsis - one lap in a Clubman's car is equivalent to 2 laps in an E Type Jaguar etc in which case pace car laps simply weren't factored?
Just out of curiosity with cars of disparate performance in the same team did you handicap the team on the basis of the average lap or on the basis of the fastest car covers its full allowance then the second fastest does the same, etc even if, in working out the handicap, the slowest doesn't get to run at all.

Glad you mentioned it, Allan - I was thinking of VSCC 5-laps handicaps and how they'd be assimilated into a Minute-limited format (not to be confused with the minute man, of course) and decided it would be too complicated - then Duncan goes and reveals the full (potential) horror :-)

[Allan Lupton]

What did you do? Simply ignore laps under the pace car? Or was the handicapping on an 'equivalent laps' basis - one lap in a Clubman's car is equivalent to 2 laps in an E Type Jaguar etc in which case pace car laps simply weren't factored?
Just out of curiosity with cars of disparate performance in the same team did you handicap the team on the basis of the average lap or on the basis of the fastest car covers its full allowance then the second fastest does the same, etc even if, in working out the handicap, the slowest doesn't get to run at all.

The handicapping of the relay race was/is a bit complex for this thread, but the fundamental method of handicapping was to try to estimate each team's probable number of laps and then give them an allowance of the difference between that number of laps and that of the fastest team. Disparate performance was always a potential problem in a free relay (i.e. teams could run cars for as many minutes as they liked) - as you imply we usually assumed a single slow car wouldn't run, but on the other hand a single fast car could do the lot and we usually negotiated a limited number of laps for him with the team to allow us to calculate a handicap which included running the other cars.

Once our system was computerised there was the facility to change the duration of the race and it would print a list of the revised numbers of benefit laps - so if we had a 10 minute Pace Car we'd tell it 5h 50m, and when the next Pace Car period happened 5h 30m (say).

[Stephen W]

Just been watching the first two DVDs of "A Gentleman's Motor Racing Diary" covering 1954 through to the end of 1955 and there were a lot of time races - e.g. one hour races being very popular. There were also a lot of Handicap races especially at the 'club' level meetings some of which featured people like Salvadori, Brooks, Parnell and Hawthorn.

[Derwent Motorsport]

Are there any real handicap racess till run in terms of cars being flaggedd off at intervals? the nearest I have seen is at BDC where they go from the pit lane in groups. Not quite the same thing.

[Odseybod]

Are there any real handicap racess till run in terms of cars being flaggedd off at intervals? the nearest I have seen is at BDC where they go from the pit lane in groups. Not quite the same thing.

Are they not still started that way at the VSCC's Silverstone Spring Start? I'm usually out in the boondocks for such races so never actually see them set off, just their arrival at Becketts or wherever in clusters - so quite prepared to believe some new-fangled system has replacedr the gent walking down the grid with his little flag.

[Allan Lupton]

Are there any real handicap racess till run in terms of cars being flaggedd off at intervals? the nearest I have seen is at BDC where they go from the pit lane in groups. Not quite the same thing.

When I was last involved with BDC we only used the pit-lane start for one race, the Bentley handicap, where the speed differential was too great for a staggered start from the grid to be done without giving a lot of slow cars a lot of credit laps. All the other races were easier as a very few credit laps were required by only a few cars, so they started from the grid.
The pit lane start allowed the slow cars, released first, to pass those faster cars which had not yet started so every competitor had the full number of laps to cover.
Because of the narrowness of the pit lane we could not send more than two cars off together, something that was not a problem for the BDC race, but made it impossible when we tried it at the Eight Clubs once because the speed spread was much less. We had about 8 sec/lap difference between fastest and slowest and a 25-30 car field doing five laps, which translates as an average of almost four cars starting every 5 seconds.

I just turned down a request to handicap a 45 minute race with a two-minute pit-stop for a driver change - mainly on the grounds that I'd never had to work out how it should be done yet, and wasn't going to learn a new skill now. My contact told me that the main reason for time-based racing is that the timetable isn't affected by wet/dry considerations but he did admit that spectators and competitors seemed to prefer a specific number of laps.

Edited by Allan Lupton, 09 May 2013 - 16:41.

[D-Type]

Why, why, why for club races can't they just do 15 laps or 45 minutes - whichever comes first. I've based the arbitrary numbers on the assumption that the predicted race time is 30-35 minutes.

[2Bob]

When I moved from Australia to Canada in late 1973 I was surprised to find that the races at Westwood were based on times, 20 minutes being the norm I think.

Running in historics (back in Australia now) at most local meetings (Mallala) we have 4 races over 2 days, 2 of them being handicaps with the cars starting from the normal start line at staggered intervals. Occasionally a car has to be given a bonus lap too! Makes for interesting last couple of corners if the handicappers get it right which they usually do!

[Lee Nicolle]

When I moved from Australia to Canada in late 1973 I was surprised to find that the races at Westwood were based on times, 20 minutes being the norm I think.

Running in historics (back in Australia now) at most local meetings (Mallala) we have 4 races over 2 days, 2 of them being handicaps with the cars starting from the normal start line at staggered intervals. Occasionally a car has to be given a bonus lap too! Makes for interesting last couple of corners if the handicappers get it right which they usually do!

I seem to remember you recently winning a handicap Bob.
Timed races make handicaps a near impossibility. Shortening a race by 2 laps or whatever is silly really. They may save 3 min at most tracks. Though if there is a 'Safety Car' ??? situation waving the checker makes sense if the program is running late.
Any decent organiser will know to the minute how long a race for whatever category takes without intervention.

With speedway though they sometimes lose the plot totally, spend way too long on track prep for then little time before the curfew. I have had 6 lap events shortened to 4, saving 30 seconds!!! If the race is cautioned, again, wave the checker when the schedule is tight. but other wise shortening race by 30 sec is stupid. Categorys that have constant restarts should have a 2 start and your off policy though. Especially the push start Sprinters and midgets. Then maybe they would drive better and crash a lot less.