So how did we do at Nelson Ledges? (Page 5 of 7)

You're welcome. We did this for 5 cars. Only looked at about 20 cars. Not good odds.

Here are the yellow flag rules from the NASA CCR:

Yea, that's pretty much the standard for all racing series other than NAPCAR when they throw full course yellows for hot dog wrappers...
And yea, maybe we could post the results somewhere besides the side of a tent blowing in the wind!!! They were very hard to read. Usually during the LD's, you would get the hourly passed out along the pitlane. But with 130 cars, it's three pages and we don't have room for that many cars in the pitlane. Remind me for next year and we'll put up some plywood in the tech shed for the results.

I think the resemblance is more coincidence.   I wonder if these guys were in it together as part of a diabolical plan to confuse the corner workers,and judges and deflect penalties and continue driving badly............   if that was the case    it worked     at least for awhile     I was in the penalty box while all this bad driving and penalizing was going on        the gig was up when they BOTH came in for penalties within 5 minutes of each other and we realized the similarity of the cars                       but  nice try

OK, I'll take all your criticism for being a racing noob. On the other hand, this clearly ain't SCCA or NASA, I'm not a member of either, I've never read their rules, and this is a series where $50 buys a license.

The SCCA rules quoted say nothing about SEEING the non-yellow flag station, and SEEING (not PASSING) the non-yellow flag station is what was in the meeting.

It's not a distinction that's obvious from watching TV. I carefully followed the instructions given during the driver's meeting. This is my first race with local yellows (Stafford was all-or-none).  It seemed that the other drivers around me did the same. Honest mistake.

Of course, I never put the spun/off-track car in any danger. That part is common sense.

There's nothing about yellow flags (either way) in the Lemons written rules.

Thanks for the corner-worker perspective, Wave-it.  What you said makes sense.  You must be fair and impartial, and focusing on the cars with the most potential for problems is exactly what you should do.  It's the same thing WE do as drivers!  After driving with them for a while, you learn who's predictable, who's squirrelly, who's fast, who's not, who takes wide lines, who doesn't...

Again, thanks for flagging our crappy race!

Another vote for making NL a permanent part of the schedule.   I came in from every shift hooting about how much fun the track is to drive.

Please do not overlook the fact that the promoter/sanctioning body sets the flag standards for the event. The changes may not have been relayed to the workers.
In 2009, some of the flag group at Nelson have worked with the flag standards including, ALMS(modified FIA), IRL, SCCA, NASA, WERA, AMA, SVRA and NASCAR.
All are a bit different.
The best solution is to use a Lemons modified flag standard for road courses.
The single yellow all around is from ovals. The concept that a driver cannot understand the difference between a single and double yellow has led to NASCAR using a single yellow for course yellow and blue for a local yellow?

Calls to control regarding contact, cars off, etc are supposed to be Numbers ,Colors and car location. We DO NOT call anyone by name. Although we may know the driver they are to be treated as if we do not.  I think if they knew it was me they would have found something.....
The most important thing is numbers which can be read. We attempt to provide eyes and ears for race control without passing judgement. Just the facts no opinion. Its not a perfect system but works pretty well. There are times when calls get delayed to check numbers the next time around in an effort to make sure you have the correct cars.

A follow up suggestion for Lemons flags, would be the following,
Yellow- local yellow-NO PASSING until past the next station ( as you may not know that there could be two cars off). FIA requires a following green at the next clear station.
Double Yellow- full course yellow NO PASSING ANYWHERE.
Blue Flag - this is a tough one, CHECK YOUR MIRRORS ( nothing more). I appreciated the blue flags I saw BECAUSE we were not so fast. Many cars can close very quickly. it does not mean move over, slow down or anything else. It means you have cause to check your mirrors.
White Flag- SLOW MOVING VEHICLE, Probably a wrecker or safety truck.( One does not need to follow the wrecker, go around in control).
Black- Penalty Box
Red- Come to a stop in control on the right side of the track and await instructions.
The corner flag sets are equipped to handle all of these.

We normally use Stationary light for local yellow and flashing for course. At Lemons the flashing was for incident on or close to course(as described at the meeting)

If everyone understand this going in it does make it easier.

Its tough for me to be critical of the flaggers but then I am one.
They are not perfect and they are VOLUNTEERS. We cannot cut their pay.

I can say with high level of certainty that the corner workers saw cars in places on track that they never have before. Like 3 wide in Oak Tree, 4 wide exiting 13, 3 wide in the carosel.
I have worked every corner at Nelson over 15 years and never have seen some of the situations I was driving in............................

In terms of safety, did anyone notice how many cars were in tires and continued?

All in all, We had a BLAST and hope to be favored with a Lemons race at Nelson next year.

That's my $.02

Kick Uranus Racing here.. had the black Saturd #55... (you didn't see us on the track very long)

While in line for Tech inspection Jay came around told us we needed an additional bracket on the head of the seat. I ran up to Bryan & Scott asking who could help us, they sent us to Rick who works at the track and snapped on a new bracket in minutes and we were back in line. Now if only that was our biggest issue over the weekend. Starting the race we had a rod knocking 1 hour into it. We almost gave up, but one of our team cheerleaders was dead set that we would finish and found us an engine on craigs list 63 miles away. So we ran back over to Rick with Nelson and asked if we could use his engine hoist. Not only did he have no issues with it, he helped pull out the engine and help put the new one in. By 9pm we were back out on the track. An hour after that I lost a tire (which we found the next day 50 foot over the tire wall). Got back out on the track after replacing brakes & studs, and about 4am engine #2 starting failing. We decided our luck had run out at the point. We were sooooo impressed by everyone at the track! Scott, Bryan, Kerrie, all of you were so great before the race and during, and we greatly appreciate all of your help. We are determined to be there next year to be on the track more than 3 hours, and so I can do more than 1 lap in the race.  We did 110 laps which was twice our car #55, so next year we might change our car number to 444, so we'll get 888 laps in....

Will definatly see everyone next year!!!!!

Bryan, you were not kidding about how good your wrecker crew was.  I thought they were very expediant about getting cars off the track.  Also I liked how the yellow flag chases the wrecker to avoid full course yellows. 

Is there anyway that crew can go to all of the Lemons events? 

-Scott

That is great!

I also like the idea of putting transponders on the safety vehicles. We were all quite certain that they would not be in last place.

The biggest 'fear factor' with passing in the kink was hoping they saw you coming, and hoping the slower cars that didn't 'need' the race line didn't force the car to take the race line.....  I refrained for a while until the wall of cones vanished.  That made it just a touch easier ;-)