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Road Atlanta Major 2016 Gen2

PostPosted: Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:42 pm
by harps17
This is my onboard of the Sunday race at Road Atlanta. The group elected to do a split start with a single green flag, so the Gen2s got the "green" at about turn 10. Due to two full course yellows, the Sunday race consisted of three segments with two roughly equal length green flag runs with a one lap green-checker shootout.

I started 5th on Sunday, but moved to 4th in the first green run. The second yellow came out at a very bad time for Quentin Nelson and I since we had just caught up to Cliff and Scott. I believe we were over 5 seconds ahead of 5th place when the yellow came out. Then we got screwed on the restart and couldn't make the ground back up in one lap. The cluster that was the second restart is at about 19:55

https://youtu.be/bIuwwFaZjmc

Re: Road Atlanta Major 2016 Gen2

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 9:23 am
by scott schweitzer
Great drive, thank you for posting this video. It looked like you guys had a heck of a race going.

On the start and restarts was their a second flag stand or was everyone relying on radio calls from what was gong on at the start finish line? Just a coincidence that it was right before 10a every time?

Re: Road Atlanta Major 2016 Gen2

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 12:30 pm
by harps17
Everyone had to rely on radio calls, but I think Scott tried to time it so we weren't in the middle of turn 10 when the green came out.

Re: Road Atlanta Major 2016 Gen2

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 3:32 pm
by boomboom
Unfortunately, the arbitrary start works alright if you have a repeatable acceleration point, but with the pole sitter having god like control and no flagger in control, it creates a situation where cars with radios can jump, and cars without radios get swallowed up in the pack. This practice worked well on Saturday when we accelerated in 10a/b because the corner naturally creates a choke point. On Sunday acceleration started in the brake zone for 10a.

The restarts were just as hair raising for me without a radio. Specifically, the last restart where we had a single lap shootout, and I saw 4 wide barreling into 10a behind me with my only notice of a start is Scott's acceleration. Scott was able to jump out to a 8 car length lead with only one lap remaining.

I'm glad everyone seemed to make it out of these restarts without significant damage.

Re: Road Atlanta Major 2016 Gen2

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 4:20 pm
by Racer X
It's a concern that's absolutely exacerbated by the layout of Road Atlanta. Last year I was on pole there in Gen2 and had no radios. They informed us just like this year of a "self start, no second pace car". That means one green which means drivers without radios are at a disadvantage. As such, I chose to not hang back for a split and instead start right on the back of the Gen3's. At least I could see the starter or see when the Gen3's began accelerating. The cost of that choice was dealing with some Gen3's for the entirety of the race. I did the same thing on restarts as I recall for the express reason that I didn't want to get swamped by cars with radios.

Re: Road Atlanta Major 2016 Gen2

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 4:57 pm
by MikeMiz11
What a goofy sounding situation :?: :shock:

Why not have a green flag for Gen3s and then a 2nd green flag (at the start stand) for Gen2s like a normal split start?

Re: Road Atlanta Major 2016 Gen2

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 5:39 pm
by boomboom
Consensus is the root of all evil. The gen3 drivers didn't want a split start because of how quickly they run up on the back of the gen2 pack and the gen2 drivers wanted one because there were 3-4 gen2 drivers that were running similar lap times to the gen2 leaders. We figured we would be able to create a smaller gap and not disrupt the two races.

It worked, in that the G3 leaders never lapped the G2 leaders, and that by the time we caught the G3 slow pack, we were able to create a gap from the second pack of G2 cars. Saturday was much better than Sunday because we didn't run into a full course yellow, and we started accelerating in the middle of 10a/b which created a single file start.

Re: Road Atlanta Major 2016 Gen2

PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 6:44 pm
by Racer X
Dave, as much as it pains me to say it (to the tune of 48 thousandths of a second)... we need to get Mr BoomBoom listed as a National Champion. :)