The 2011 Autocross thread

[dknv]

Thanks guys! And thanks to Kevin & Van for chairing the events this weekend, courses were fun!

[cody]

Awesome weekend. I had a lot of trouble with both courses but enjoyed the challenge. I really liked the "walls" element. Today I felt like I had zero grip, but I was jacked up on Dayquil and was probably just pushing my car too hard despite the cold tires. Unlike most days, I couldn't go WOT through much of the course at all. Thanks for another great weekend despite the weather. ...really looking forward to Winnemucca.

...and congrats to all the people who kicked ass today.

[MattR]

FWD for the win! Yeah, traction was at a premium on sunday, grip levels were very different from saturday.

Winnemucca should be awesome. Last time we were there the course was insane...

[dknv]

Winnemucca was quite the experience. Congrats to all of SECCS' fast drivers!

Some misunderstandings & communication snafus came up throughout the weekend. The biggie from Saturday was that the airport gave us permission to use a taxiway and parking pad area, however, on Saturday morning the BLM crew (who had been away fighting fires) returned to Winnemucca airport and needed exclusive access to part of the area that was used for the course (and on which run group 1 had already run). The net result was that we had to clear their area, and had to reconfigure a new course for run groups 2 & 3. I know Dave Deborde is eternally thankful to those people who helped him through that huge challenge. So, Saturday results could not be fairly factored in for the challenge results.

Another item was with respect to how the Challenge results were scored. In a nutshell, we scored all points class drivers from both regions based on raw time only, then averaged that time. I'm super glad Reno had some FAST drivers with FAST times (John Townley, Matt, Kevin, Kevin, Cody, Silvio, Vic, Bryan Nelson) - who all helped to raise Reno's average.

In the end, Snake River won the Challenge event with a small number of fast drivers in fast cars. But I know at least one SECCS and probably more drivers who will be happy with the Reno Region pax points from Sunday's results.

As is typical with an event at places like Winnemucca, Lovelock and Hawthorne, there were a good number of drivers off in the dirt, who will likely be finding little rocks & dirt in the crevices of their cars for a good while. I'll just say, it's a good thing Vic won a Car Care/Cleaning kit at Saturday night's banquet! And you all should also ask Matt about his 'big tips'. lol.

[sperry]

Wait... RAW times were used for the challenge? Seriously? No one even used some basic class separation? So if either region had one or two drivers in go-karts they would have won handily? Or if one region had 5 stock class national champs, but the other had 5 newbs in heavily modded SM cars, they'd essentially cancel out?

PAX has its problems and all, but scoring the challenge by raw times alone basically scream "if you have a slow car, we don't care how good of a driver you are, stay home".

[cody]

Originally Posted by sperry

Wait... RAW times were used for the challenge? Seriously? No one even used some basic class separation? So if either region had one or two drivers in go-karts they would have won handily? Or if one region had 5 stock class national champs, but the other had 5 newbs in heavily modded SM cars, they'd essentially cancel out?

PAX has its problems and all, but scoring the challenge by raw times alone basically scream "if you have a slow car, we don't care how good of a driver you are, stay home".

I did "Paper" in the bus during the rungroup that I was not scheduled to be working or running both days. I'm not sure if this is related, but the person running the laptop had a barrage of issues that seemed to result from inexperience and possibly lack of training. If she ever steps down, I'd be happy to take her place. I was able to help fix a couple of issues she was having, but not all of them. Anyway, I'm guessing a computer issue prevented us from using PAX? Or was it something else?

[k-dogg39]

Originally Posted by cody

I did "Paper" in the bus during the rungroup that I was not scheduled to be working or running both days. I'm not sure if this is related, but the person running the laptop had a barrage of issues that seemed to result from inexperience and possibly lack of training. If she ever steps down, I'd be happy to take her place.

THIS BIG TIME! And not just running the laptop.

I had a great time over the weekend even with all of the issues on Sat. Thanks to everyone that put together the second course so that we could continue the event.

A big time thank you to Cory, Matt and Bob at Kspeed for getting my car together for the event. It felt amazing! I am having to re-learn my car all over again. But it sure is fun!

[cody]

Originally Posted by k-dogg39

THIS BIG TIME! And not just running the laptop.

I had a great time over the weekend even with all of the issues on Sat. Thanks to everyone that put together the second course so that we could continue the event.

A big time thank you to Cory, Matt and Bob at Kspeed for getting my car together for the event. It felt amazing! I am having to re-learn my car all over again. But it sure is fun!

Even with all the frustrations this weekend, it was a good time overall and I was really impressed with the good attitude of most everyone I met/saw. I guess with the costs and difficulties, these away events are getting harder and harder to put on. I hope we do this same event again next year but I hope it goes off without a hitch. I do miss getting into 3rd gear like I did in Hawthorne though. High speed slaloming FTW.

[MattR]

Yeah Scott, I agree, a RAW-time challenge is not really a challenge, most of their region is on race tires, and they had some fast mod cars, there was no way we could have won. Dave made the decision, not sure what factors he was weighing, maybe he wanted to get rid of that huge trophy? Interesting enough, the difference in average time was about 2 seconds.

CODY, I suggest you talk to Don Smith asap...hint.

[dknv]

Originally Posted by sperry

Wait... RAW times were used for the challenge? Seriously? No one even used some basic class separation? So if either region had one or two drivers in go-karts they would have won handily? Or if one region had 5 stock class national champs, but the other had 5 newbs in heavily modded SM cars, they'd essentially cancel out?

PAX has its problems and all, but scoring the challenge by raw times alone basically scream "if you have a slow car, we don't care how good of a driver you are, stay home".

I posted over on the Renoscca forum about some of the reasoning for using raw time for scoring. This was a small event, only 40-something drivers for the challenge with many 1-driver classes. If it was a bigger event, and if there were monetary payouts, I think I might be more concerned about refining the scoring approach for the Challenge event itself. Maybe it will be bigger next year. For Reno drivers, it is best to keep in mind that our street tire factors & pax will still be used for our region's points scoring.

Cody: like you (and thanks for your extra efforts, both in doing the morning reg/waivers, plus working the extra run group) -- Rach & I and many others in both regions worked extra run groups both days. I know Dave & Carol appreciate our extra efforts tremendously.

Just a little comment about the 'inexperience/lack of training' situation -- I was frustrated by some of this as well, but am also trying to keep the perspective that this volunteer hasn't been out all season until now, and spent quite a bit of effort before the event started, after the end of each day, and didn't even drive.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by dknv

I posted over on the Renoscca forum about some of the reasoning for using raw time for scoring. This was a small event, only 40-something drivers for the challenge with many 1-driver classes. If it was a bigger event, and if there were monetary payouts, I think I might be more concerned about refining the scoring approach for the Challenge event itself. Maybe it will be bigger next year. For Reno drivers, it is best to keep in mind that our street tire factors & pax will still be used for our region's points scoring.

Cody: like you (and thanks for your extra efforts, both in doing the morning reg/waivers, plus working the extra run group) -- Rach & I and many others in both regions worked extra run groups both days. I know Dave & Carol appreciate our extra efforts tremendously.

Just a little comment about the 'inexperience/lack of training' situation -- I was frustrated by some of this as well, but am also trying to keep the perspective that this volunteer hasn't been out all season until now, and spent quite a bit of effort before the event started, after the end of each day, and didn't even drive.

Considering the software MikeK wrote can automatically calculate the results for Hawthorne, I'm surprised we didn't just use that, since it can take into account all the classes as long as we have a PAX for each... and even if it's a PAX of 1.0 for some of the odd-ball classes, it allows them to still contribute to the results at least as fairly as scoring the whole thing on raw times.

I guess it doesn't really make a difference to me, since I wasn't even there. And I'm certainly not bitter at all over losing the trophy, again because I'm not much into autocross these days. I think I'm just irked mostly because the difficulty of scoring a challenge is really non-existent due to Mike's hard work, which was based on the Dean's big effort when designing the original spreadsheet for scoring Hawethorne. To hear that we scored the event on raw times because doing it in a way that would encourage participation was "too complicated" is disappointing.

And it's not like there was any real discussion on how the event was going to be scored before hand. I read the threads on the RenoSCCA board... and at no point was the scoring method for the event made public. I just assumed they you guys would use the existing scoring method from Hawthorne and previous Winnemucca events... not just make something up at the event. Really, the decision should have been made and publicized before hand... if it had, I probably would have suggested using our existing software, but as a non-competitor I wouldn't have pushed for it. If raw times really were the way everyone wanted to do it, then that's an awesome "run what you brung" battle... I just don't get the feeling that's how it went down.

[MikeK]

Originally Posted by sperry

Considering the software MikeK wrote can automatically calculate the results for Hawthorne, I'm surprised we didn't just use that, since it can take into account all the classes as long as we have a PAX for each... and even if it's a PAX of 1.0 for some of the odd-ball classes, it allows them to still contribute to the results at least as fairly as scoring the whole thing on raw times.

The reason this software wasn't used (and I believe the reason that raw time was used) is that I couldn't be at the event and no one wanted to rely on spotty internet connection to get me the results over the weekend. I know how to use the software I wrote, but it isn't exactly minesweeper

Being pragmatic about it, it was probably the right decision.

Originally Posted by sperry

And it's not like there was any real discussion on how the event was going to be scored before hand. I read the threads on the RenoSCCA board... and at no point was the scoring method for the event made public. I just assumed they you guys would use the existing scoring method from Hawthorne and previous Winnemucca events... not just make something up at the event. Really, the decision should have been made and publicized before hand... if it had, I probably would have suggested using our existing software, but as a non-competitor I wouldn't have pushed for it. If raw times really were the way everyone wanted to do it, then that's an awesome "run what you brung" battle... I just don't get the feeling that's how it went down.

There was an email chain that went around, but it was essentially "hey, how do we score this thing". I said what it would take to use the software I wrote, then essentially a few days before the event the decision was made to just use excel at the event to calculate who won.

Honestly what I have is powerful but isn't user friendly at all. I cannot say that doing the calculations manually was the wrong way to go. And using PAX instead of raw time was probably mathematically preferable, but given the reality of having someone at the event who might not be so computer literate trying to do those calculations, it can be quite a risk. I remember the last year before I wrote that software when you and I (mostly you) did those calculations by hand in excel, and it took a couple of hours.

Originally Posted by dknv

Just a little comment about the 'inexperience/lack of training' situation -- I was frustrated by some of this as well, but am also trying to keep the perspective that this volunteer hasn't been out all season until now, and spent quite a bit of effort before the event started, after the end of each day, and didn't even drive.

As someone who has been stuck with that awful thankless job for years, I can say that whoever the person was, they should be thanked for even showing up and doing it. I took a year off from the sport just to get out of that shitty position. There is no training, the software sucks balls (an not in a good way), and the only time you hear from anyone about the job you are doing is when stuff starts going wrong.

[sperry]

The long time in the Hawthorne calculations wasn't due to PAX or anything... it was due to having to audit all the messed up times in the results vs. the paper. Back then we couldn't rely on AXWare at all, not only did the software itself crash all the time and screw up the results, the user interface was bad enough that user errors were constantly occurring and introducing discrepancies. Plus, IIRC, the software didn't score times the way we did PAX back then either, so there was still another manual step using that software I wrote that took the exported results from AXWare. So there were a ton of steps, none of which had anything really to do with calculating the final average PAX results... the spreadsheet Dean made did that great, assuming the data you had to paste into it was right.

[dknv]

omg, I'm thankful we didn't have issues with the timing lights as well. Remember when we couldn't even run 2 cars in a row before something interfered with one set of lights, and more timers would start running? You guys used to have to deal with those issues too.

[cody]

Originally Posted by MattR

Yeah Scott, I agree, a RAW-time challenge is not really a challenge, most of their region is on race tires, and they had some fast mod cars, there was no way we could have won. Dave made the decision, not sure what factors he was weighing, maybe he wanted to get rid of that huge trophy? Interesting enough, the difference in average time was about 2 seconds.

CODY, I suggest you talk to Don Smith asap...hint.

PM'd him. Mike's description sold me.

[MikeK]

Originally Posted by cody

PM'd him. Mike's description sold me.

Unless you PM'd him to say "fuck that", I would have to say that my description didn't sell you

[k-dogg39]

Originally Posted by MikeK

As someone who has been stuck with that awful thankless job for years, I can say that whoever the person was, they should be thanked for even showing up and doing it.

I would thank that person, but I would probably get yelled at again for nothing.

[Kevin M]

I asked Dave about it, and basically he said that raw times were used instead of PAX because of the large number of Tuner class drivers, and he was concerned about having a number of drivers who were there who wouldn't count for scoring the challenge.

In the future, we can call all W-class cars TSU cars, since they're all legal there and we have a long-established PAX factor. PAX times are every bit as easy to write down and average as raw times are (especially when there are fewer than 50 per day) so I think we can safely say that there is no call for punting the challenge again.

After Sunday I was in the bus and was poking around menus looking to figure out how to plug the event in to the scoring software that I know Mike has written, but have never laid eyes on. Mike, I'd be willing to learn exactly how to do it for next year so we can get complete results on site.

[Dean]

Understanding ALL the equipment in the bus, PA, timing, etc. and being able to set it up and troubleshoot it is a skill that needs to be spread around. We keep killing the one person that knows how to do it.

We really need one or more people from every run group that actually understands computers and electronics to some extent. None of it is difficult if you have most any sort of hands dirty tech background.

Cables have to be plugged in to the right places and have continuity. Things have to be turned on/have power. PC has to be connected to other stuff correctly and files/directories managed. Last but not least, actually know the software and how to setup an event and add/edit driver and time info in real time and post run group.

Results are only a nightmare when you are trying to recreate them after the fact with bad paper. They are trivial to fix before a driver takes a run, during the run group or right after a run group and get exponentially harder after that.

As Scott said, Hawthorne scoring via spreadsheet was easy when the data was clean.

[MikeK]

Round 6 results are up.

If I ever get the round 5 results and they aren't completely hosed, they might be used to add an extra day of class points. There won't be any pax points since the course changed during the day.

Don't hold your breath though!

[cody]

Thanks Mike! I think Street Prepared Two is labeled incorrectly as Street Prepared Three. Obviously no biggie though. I got beat up by a Cobalt! If only my 7th run had counted.

[van]

Originally Posted by MikeK

If I ever get the round 5 results and they aren't completely hosed,

They are.

[MikeK]

Round 7 results posted

[van]

Thanks Mike

[MikeK]

Round 8 results posted