26 (edited by TheEngineer 2018-12-13 12:52 PM)

Re: 2019 Rules are out!

Guildenstern wrote:
VKZ24 wrote:
TheEngineer wrote:

Hell I see so many cars with barely visible brake lights that I would not object to more lighting rules.

Agreed.  I'm still amazed how many teams will do the BARE MINIMUM on every check list item.  Since the rules state you must have one working brake light, I swear some teams will use a single LED, and by single I mean a single diode, not an LED array!  I've also seen teams use LED marker lights as brake lights, and they are not nearly bright enough to perform that function.

When you see that you need to tell the Judges. They can bring the car in to check and recalibrate their tech eyeballs for aceptable brightness. Most of them rarely race and tend to be about a foot from the brake lights when they check them. Feedback is what they need to make the right call in tech. Rules with Lumen figures and candle powers aren’t needed, because then the judges and the teams will have to have light meters on them.

Doesn't need to be that technical. Can be a line stating that brake lights must be OEM or have roughly the same area of illumination as OEM. There's a car in the north east with a bunch of skulls on the trunk deck that have single LED diodes for the eyes that are the brake lights because they pulled the OEM units. They're impossible in bright sun. Requiring something with similar illuminated area to OEM isn't hard, go buy some trailer brake lights and strap them on.

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27 (edited by Guildenstern 2018-12-13 04:45 PM)

Re: 2019 Rules are out!

Requiring OEM is a problem since you get about 15 years or so back and brake light lenses just self-disintigrate.

As for matching area, well, now there's uncertainty about what constitutes the area of the actual light, etc given the many weird stylish designs some cars have.

The skull eyes are cool, but that should have never made it through tech. This again sounds more like a Tech problem not a rules problem.

Given that Lemons is a semi-benevolent dictatorship, not a democracy, it's definitely on the company to get their Tech inspection right without needing to make a massive rule book for volunteer staffers to follow. To do that they need feedback from us goobers out on the track when its happening.

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Re: 2019 Rules are out!

Greg S wrote:
VanillaHaze wrote:

I don't get the complaint about the back straight at Atlanta. I just figured if there was mist, there was probably a car! It worked fine for me all race.  My complaint was that I couldn't see the corner workers in all the mist, so I had no idea if I was passing under yellow. Especially the guy working turn 10 on Sunday. He just stayed in his car and was late to flag, then would wave it from down the fence where you couldn't see him! We went three wide through there one time only to find a car turned around. I was ready to go punch that guy by the time I got out.

On Saturday AM someone wound up in the gravel at 10. The only flag we could see was shown there. The recovery truck was there really quickly and was pulling him out. What must have been a rookie decided that he couldn't pass the recovery truck and just stopped on track, the drivers behind that car were blocked and seemed to be afraid to pass the car & scene.

A group of (5-8) cars that I was in cleared the hill at 9 and came up on the scene driving pretty quick into the mess and had to haul down quick due to the all the crawling or stopped cars on the downhill section before the braking zone.  It was nerve racking thinking of all the cars behind us plowing into us. As I drove forward I was using my left foot to flash the brake lights hoping that the cars behind could see them.

WRT the mist, I really want to see the cars up in front or their taillights in case someone gets sideways before the braking zone. The differential speeds on that straight were massive. If you watch the Hong Norrth Video it give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Its no excuse but I don't envy those corners workers in that cold ass driving rain for 8 plus hours.

But there was a lot of limp wristed half ass flag handling.

We had a similar thing I want to say late saturday (maybe early sunday?) out in turn 6. Flag was out of the esses, then come over the hill to find a parking lot. Managed not to hit anybody, but me and a whole host of cars did a whole lot of passing under yellow. No flags though, I think the workers new it was a bad situation. To my knowledge, nobody took a second hit though.

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