right on, im actually excited to see what people come up with to keep things fresh @ seneca, im not a negative nancy im welcoming creativity and thinking out of the box
from what i hear going to MBR is a guaranteed trophy:gotme:. weksos would be seneca 5x with up and down slaloms and offsets. im a n00b but still its fun when there are chicago boxes and step boxes (the ones that look like stairs) or other elements that aren’t seen too often. i enjoy obstacles that traverse the entire width of the runway (but know its not easy to design courses like this due to spacing of cars every few seconds etc etc). I know people bitch all the time that seneca isn’t fast enough, or some people think it should be tighter, so im just interested to see what people come up with this time to please everyone. i loved it when the designers at RIT event 1 last year made 2 separate legs of a course, one tight and short, and one long and fast, i think its much more fun when you are faced with options.
any news as to when we can register for FLR events?
Wow, a bold statement from someone that only ran there once.
Dale didn’t trophy the last time we were down there.
Maybe you should try designing a course. We are always looking for volunteers to chair events. Then you get your chance to make the course just how you want it.
I think 3rd gear is plenty fast enough.
Options usually = traps. One way is faster, all of the others are there to screw up people that don’t know better.
whats bold about anticipating the creativity, novelty, and a little appreciation and respect for the ideas course designers come up with? theres no patronage, heavy sarcasm, nor chauvinism in my statements, i laud course designers–my expectations were exceeded at ECCN this yr (my first yr) how even in such a small space they made challenging elements that differed from event to event. yeah its true i only made it to 1 seneca event, but i still ask around and try to get a general consensus of the courses from other drivers, so its not hard to determine that people sometimes find certain elements monotonous and taciturn. as in my previous post i liked the seneca event, i like the fact that larger elements were made and the extra space of the venue was utilized, it was fun.
sorry i was misled about MBR, maybe it was lost in translation but thats just what i heard you said from michelle.
i’ll give course design a shot, i just need the dimensions of the place, number of cones available, and safety regulations as to spacing of cones, and aprx how often youd want to send cars. anything to help out WNY.
3rd gear is pretty fast, but it’d be a lie to say you dont hear people bitch at every event anywhere that it was either too fast or too slow. Dale thought RIT 1 wasn’t worth the drive out last season because it was too tight, while other people thought it was great. It’s impossible to please everyone since every car is different and has different weaknesses; everyone wants to win, everyone wants a course that will help them win.
like i said im a noob so bring on the traps, it just helps me get better at the sport and its fun to give the driver a chance to exercise both hemispheres of their brain. thanks for the pointers
cool ill look on like google earth or something, i know you guys used that P-shaped thing, but are there any unusable parts of the runway? and how far up does grid usually go?
well ive been there before, look it up i know you constantly check results from the past few yrs, but i dont know how receptive people would be to relocating grid further down… this is that thinking out of the box i was talking about
I want to preface this by saying this isn’t meant to be a slam at all, more of an explination. Since I’ve done proabably about 75% of the WNY courses over the past 3 years, I just wanted to say that the reason I never use Chicago boxes is that I consider them a waste of cones. Chicago boxes are just 3 cone slolams surrounded by a wall. It’s even stated in the rule book that Chicago box is a slolam in the rule book I believe.
Anyways, in that line of thinking, the most challenging courses aren’t fast or slow, they’re the ones that leave room for interpretation, allow you have mulitple choises in what line to take. That’s why I generally try to use as few cones as possible to start, and then add cones for safety purposes.
Out of the box thinking is great. It’s embarassing how much time I’ve used to try to make ECCN more interesting, but there are other considerations to be made. So in judging how receptive people would be to moving grid further down, which way are you talking about? If you mean to make the area we normally run in bigger, what you’d be doing is making the course longer, and adding to the space where you’d be having to use the runway where you’re forced to use slolams and offsets. So just a warning, when we started running there, we were having 90+ second courses, which don’t bother me at all, more bang for the buck. But Prepared and Mod drivers weren’t too happy about it as their cars are designed with 50-60 second courses in mind and they were running into mechanical difficulties because of the long courses. Plus you also run into things like more OCs, stupid high cone counts, more reruns.
Now if you had something else in mind I’m all ears. One thing that I wanted to do this year was to try to get more people to design the courses to get some fresh ideas.
thanks for the pointers dave, ill try to come up with something fun, ive got a few months so far, lol. excellent point about the mod drivers, those are things i didnt consider but am glad i know now. :tup:
Marnie, thanks for the pics and links, the blank template of seneca will come in handy
Also, when considering course design down at Seneca, you have to take into consideration workers. It’s typically baking hot, and it’s already tough on workers to walk out to the stations (that’s why they started running trucks through the areas on either side of the runway to drop people off/pick people up). If you move grid up the runway, you need to take into consideration the worker process.
I’m pretty sure it’s details like this which are why Jim is suggesting you come out to a few more of the events out there. There is a lot to take into consideration when course designing that are specific to that given location, that you probably never noticed/knew about if you’ve only been there once.
You can always pair up with someone who has designed at the location before, too. They can help fill you in on quirks of the place that need to be considered.
cassie thanks for the advice. i remember the stations the one time i was at seneca, ill try to come up with a design that maybe will get used late in the season or next yr so i can take lots into consideration. course working stations are definitely important, my gf and i both thought it was bogus because they kept sending us out to the P area which was getting hit like mad, and that was the furthest station to walk to whereas people who were just as far out but not in the P area had the truck to drive them, and with people having to walk so far they would drag their feet and we would always be 2 run groups behind because of this… its by no means an easy task nor is there an easy solution but im still going to give it a shot…
Requirements:
-Must be a novice with less than 3 events experience.
-Should know how to drive stick.
-Limit 2 for novice school, 3 for events.
-Maintainence & gas donations welcome.
That’s not a thumbs up, that’s me trying to hitch a ride since I don’t have an autocrossable vehicle this year. Yeah I could race my wife’s protege but I don’t want to get my skirt caught in the door (she won’t let me race it.)
To the novices… Don’t feel like you have to wait until novice school to get started. Just show up to the first event after reading the rule book. It’s really not that intimidating and if you promise to buy me a hamburger I’d be willing to show up and help you find your way through your first morning. I don’t mean I’ll be giving you pointers on going fast, since I don’t know enough and that’s what the OG’s and the novice walk through are for. I just mean I’ll help you figure out where to register, when to go to tech inspection, how it’s not creepy to follow other people through the course, etc…
Cassandra do you still have that “novice guide” you wrote online?
