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Just returned from club night where we experimented with a new format to fill in the time caused by an early finish and low turnout. (This might be old news to some people, it's just the first time I'd heard of it. I apologise if it's a format that has been going for donkeys years!).
What we did was form 4 teams of three and draw for lanes, using the four centre ones. The lap counter was set to 99 laps (we wanted to do a set time but couldn't work out how to get the software to do it) and each team stayed on one lane for all 99 laps - so we were on yellow lane all race.
The trick is that at some point during the race you have to stop at a designated place (in our clubroom this was the corner past the drivers position), then a team mate swops the car to his and takes your place on the rostrum. The lap counter is still ticking so speed is of the essence. The second trick is that only your team are to marshall your car.
This means that you really have to be careful with pace because if you come off and your team mates are in the far corner (more of a problem for our team since we only had 2 in it!!!) you can lose perhaps a lap and a half while the car is recovered. You have to discipline yourself not to go on auto-pilot and marshal any car that lands near you unless it is yours. Its a fairly strange feeling to attend to a multi-car pileup, recover your team mates and leave the rest to stew and all perfectly above board!
It also means that not only driver speed is important but your team-mates are sort of representing your pit crew so they have to keep on their toes all the time as if they are slow you are slow.
We lost out on the first one because we elected to run 4 x 25 lap stints (where others were running 3 x 33) and come the final run the brake lead had fallen out of my controller plug and lost us laps while my team mate was frantically swopping cars and tweaking braids. Second one did better as we chose to run 2 x 50 lap and therefore made one less stop than everyone else. Good fun, worth a try.
Coop
What we did was form 4 teams of three and draw for lanes, using the four centre ones. The lap counter was set to 99 laps (we wanted to do a set time but couldn't work out how to get the software to do it) and each team stayed on one lane for all 99 laps - so we were on yellow lane all race.
The trick is that at some point during the race you have to stop at a designated place (in our clubroom this was the corner past the drivers position), then a team mate swops the car to his and takes your place on the rostrum. The lap counter is still ticking so speed is of the essence. The second trick is that only your team are to marshall your car.
This means that you really have to be careful with pace because if you come off and your team mates are in the far corner (more of a problem for our team since we only had 2 in it!!!) you can lose perhaps a lap and a half while the car is recovered. You have to discipline yourself not to go on auto-pilot and marshal any car that lands near you unless it is yours. Its a fairly strange feeling to attend to a multi-car pileup, recover your team mates and leave the rest to stew and all perfectly above board!
It also means that not only driver speed is important but your team-mates are sort of representing your pit crew so they have to keep on their toes all the time as if they are slow you are slow.
We lost out on the first one because we elected to run 4 x 25 lap stints (where others were running 3 x 33) and come the final run the brake lead had fallen out of my controller plug and lost us laps while my team mate was frantically swopping cars and tweaking braids. Second one did better as we chose to run 2 x 50 lap and therefore made one less stop than everyone else. Good fun, worth a try.
Coop
