[Noah]

Originally Posted by VaSteve

And to factor in Noah's point...it was a Red driver that f'ed up the whole schedule for everyone when going out in the pouring rain last May.

[VaSteve]

Originally Posted by Noah

Sorry, I mean Eli.

[Noah]

You're getting your Biblical names confused.

[ttrew]

Ah, the never ending debate about 3 vs. 4 sessions. First let me say that this is not a new schedule. This is almost exactly the same schedule we used for all Summit events in 2005 and even 2004. We really have looked at this very hard, and debated the relative merits of both approaches. Neither Alan, Mike, nor I are married to either approach, and I could probably argue either side with equal passion. Realize that when you compare a Potomac Summit event with 160 participants (like March) to an event run by another region where they may have only 100 or so attendees, you really are comparing apples and oranges.

Our contract with Summit says we have the track from 9am to 5pm with a mandatory 1 hour lunch break. That means there is 7 hours of hot track time. Our insurance regulations also tell us the maximum number of cars we can have on the track at one time which limits run group size. So, given 160 cars, you must have 5 run groups, which means you get a theoretical maximum of 84 minutes per day. We also found out years ago, that we need to plan short breaks to allow instructors to move from their cars to their students cars. It will take time to do that, and if you don't build it into the schedule, you just end up with students sitting on the grid waiting anyway. So we need a few short breaks which reduces the 84 down to more like 80. The question is then, how to divide that 80 minutes up.

Here is some of the analysis that went into this:

We generally felt that there are three main considerations that should go into the decision to run either 3 or 4 sessions:

1 - The cumulative time lost during the day due to warm up, cool down, and track swap time which grows as you run more sessions.

2 - The number of hot laps a driver gets per session, and whether it is enough to actually learn and improve without being so long that someone looses concentration.

3 - The instructor impact of more sessions which means more running between cars.

Track Analysis assuming 5 run groups:

- The DE Committee all agreed that at short busy tracks like Shenandoah, 4 sessions makes perfect sense.

- We also agreed that at long tracks like VIR and WG, 3 sessions is the way to go. The issue there is that with student laps times in the 2:20 - 2:30 range at those tracks, a 20 minute session really means about 5 hot laps when you consider warm up, cool down, and swap over. That is simply not enough time for a student to learn anything, and it is certainly not enough time for advanced drivers to have any fun. With 3 sessions a driver would get about 9 laps per session.

- At MO, student lap times are more in 1:55 range. Three sessions means that a student will get about 12 hot laps vs. 7 laps with 4 sessions. My feeling there is that 3 sessions is the way to go.

- At Summit, student lap times are more like 1:35. Since we already figured out that we have 80 minutes of track time, we are really comparing 4x20 minute sessions vs. 3 sessions of length 25,25,30. The extra 5 minutes in the last session becomes a buffer if we should have some down time. In other words the first thing we do is cut that last set of sessions down to 25 minutes each, which means we have a built in 25 minute reserve. A "20 minute" session is not 20 minutes long. If you subtract 2 minutes for swap over, and assume warm up and cool down laps are 30 seconds slower than hot laps, you really only get 14 minutes of fun. So, running 4 sessions means about 9 hot laps per session and running 3 sessions means about 12, or as much as 15 if we run for the full 30 minutes.

Again, all of this is predicated on running 5 run groups. If we decide to run only 4 groups at some away events, then we would certainly move to 4 sessions per day. If we were to cap the event registration at Summit to 120 cars, we could move to 4 run groups. Talk to management if you are a proponent of that approach.

Some additional data; We have talked about trying hot swaps to minimize downtime between groups. We would flag the next group out when the last car of the previous group passed turn 5 for instance. This could get us back 1-2 minutes of hot lap time per session. There are down sides, like the first few cars back in sitting still on the hot grid with a hot car waiting while all the other cars stream off the grid. It was felt that this March event is just too busy with a large group of promotion evaluations and new Instructor training issues to attempt that. Perhaps that is something we can attempt later in the year, and it would get us back a couple of minutes of hot lap time per session.

The biggest argument I can think of for moving to 4 run groups has to do with lost sessions if we have an extended clean up to deal with. The potential is there to lose an entire session, and 1 out of 3 is worse than 1 out of 4. We have tried in the past to penalize the group in which the event happened more than the other groups. Using peer pressure to keep drivers on the track. We will also try to reset the run sessions so that no one is penalized excessively. Of course, having a schedule that changes constantly creates it's own problems since the PA system at Summit leaves a little to be desired.

The Potomac DE Team really is trying to give you the best product we can deliver. It is easy when everyone agrees on something, much harder when a point is debatable. Potomac has been doing this for many years now, and we have tried to build on things learned in the past. We need to serve everyone from the first time Green student to the 20 year veteran in Red. Also realize our instructors work pretty damn hard for a free lunch and a small discount. We need to be sensitive to them, not run them ragged, and make sure they get their fair share of track time too. We all pay our dues to PCA, and we all have the same right to have fun.

Tom

[BlackTalon]

Tom -- thanks for the post. Although not everyone may agree with the DE Committee's final decisions, it's helpful to know how you guys arrived at those decisions. Lack of info always leads to speculation and misinformation.

Hopefully at some point Potomac will consider hot pulls for cars that are broken down/ in the gravel when no real track clean up is needed. It really does help save the run sessions. NASA seems to do it without any increased potential for carnage. It may be intimidating for the beginner group(s), but I think the upper groups could handle it.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain.

[VaSteve]

Originally Posted by BlackTalon

Tom -- thanks for the post. Although not everyone may agree with the DE Committee's final decisions, it's helpful to know how you guys arrived at those decisions. Lack of info always leads to speculation and misinformation.

It's hard to argue when you see the thought that went into it.

[TD in DC]

Originally Posted by BlackTalon

Tom -- thanks for the post. Although not everyone may agree with the DE Committee's final decisions, it's helpful to know how you guys arrived at those decisions. Lack of info always leads to speculation and misinformation.

Hopefully at some point Potomac will consider hot pulls for cars that are broken down/ in the gravel when no real track clean up is needed. It really does help save the run sessions. NASA seems to do it without any increased potential for carnage. It may be intimidating for the beginner group(s), but I think the upper groups could handle it.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain.

x2 Thank you very much and for all the time you put into the DE program.

[}{arlequin]

does this mean that we still have to wake up early??

[Vicegrip]

Originally Posted by ttrew

The Potomac DE Team really is trying to give you the best product we can deliver. It is easy when everyone agrees on something, much harder when a point is debatable. Potomac has been doing this for many years now, and we have tried to build on things learned in the past. We need to serve everyone from the first time Green student to the 20 year veteran in Red. Also realize our instructors work pretty damn hard for a free lunch and a small discount. We need to be sensitive to them, not run them ragged, and make sure they get their fair share of track time too. We all pay our dues to PCA, and we all have the same right to have fun.

Tom

Well said and all well and good.
How was it that for years were were able to fit in 4 runs a day?

When I started driving with Potomac we had less instructors per student than we do now. Has the number of hours per track day gone down? Can we purchase more hours? I understand that the contract calls for 7 hours but what sets the # of hours? The local laws, the track, us? If us, and if we ever run a surplus of $ at home events, can this be used towards more track time for all?

Have the instructors been complaining? The students have.

[TD in DC]

Originally Posted by ttrew

The biggest argument I can think of for moving to 4 run groups has to do with lost sessions if we have an extended clean up to deal with. The potential is there to lose an entire session, and 1 out of 3 is worse than 1 out of 4. We have tried in the past to penalize the group in which the event happened more than the other groups. Using peer pressure to keep drivers on the track.

Tom,

I disagree with penalizing an entire group for the incidents of presumably a few of its members. Moreover, I am pretty sure that nobody really wants to go off track. I would rather have offs evaluated on a case-by-case basis and dealt with individually as necessary than by dealing with it as a group. I just cannot imagine peer pressure will change much of anything.

Just my two cents.

TD