Limiting Speed Creep - Formalizing Penalty Laps? (Page 1 of 3)

I disagree that speed creep is an issue. Your proposal is too hard to follow. I think AER does index racing more or less, or maybe one of the other people. Anyway I like Lemons because the top prize isn’t overall winner.

After reading that, and the other thread, I dug up the spreadsheet of my team's finishes. Between our "speedy" car's debut in 2012 (84th overall) and its last race (B winner, couple laps behind overall) the only mechanical change to the car was some second-hand shock absorbers.

I attribute 100% percent of my teams "speed creep" to learning to drive clean and better organization. Those don't seem like qualities Lemons should limit or penalize.

I think he means that yellow BMW driven by heroes with an engine that sounds like sex.

I like the above ideas, but it would give Lemons something else to police, and they just ain't into that.

This doesn't work.  The leader will simply "sandbag" at the end of the race if they have a big lead.

IMO, if you have an overall win more than once, you should get penalty laps.  How many, I don't have a clue.

I don't think it's even speed creep, it's lack of good, true, class C cars. It's just moving to newer cars, a 1999 is 20 yrs old... And in the Midwest that's usually so far gone it's not even worth it. Someone would rather build something worth while. Just my rant, please continue

Maybe my team is part of the "speed creep" problem that you speak of and none of what I say counts, but I don't think speed creep is as much of an issue as you think.  It took us a year and a half to win a race after we did the Cadillac swap, and the race where we won we were running slower times than previous races.  We won because we stayed out of trouble, took it easy on the car so it wouldn't break, had a team of consistent drivers, got lucky when other teams broke down, and had an average of 90 seconds per pit stop.  Our overall lap count for the race was actually lower than several previous years, so other teams have gone faster in the past.

I also think the main draw to Lemons is that it isn't nearly as "serious" as most other race series out there.  I think that's why Lemons race weekends and the people are so fun, because at the end of the weekend, the biggest prize goes to the IOE and the lower classes.  Adding lots of rules outside of the safety stuff to keep Class A cars in check seems like it would just make Lemons like the rest of them, but with basically no prize money.

I think it must just be the midwest judges (Eric) who have been handing out the penalty laps then.   TaTas and our team usually get the same and usually get 6-10 per race.   It will be 10+ from now on I bet.   We won the last race with 6 penalty laps by 4 laps (but we had not BFs and fast pit stops).  There are some southern teams that’s get a few less laps then we do at Barber also (Eric is usually there also).   

The laps are totally fine to us.  It keeps things interesting.  But having said that, what would a team normally do if they have to make up more laps?  Drive harder?  Make the car faster?  Run longer stints?  Just sayin’

If we are going with the definition of speed creep as "the speed differential between the fastest and slowest classes growing wider" than I just don't know where to go next.

My first Lemons car was/is a class B '95 Ford Probe.

Second Lemons car was a slow-ass '81 Imperial.

Third Lemons car is a spectacularly slow 81 Mazda 626.

I'm doing my part to help expand speed creep by bringing the blunt end of the spear even further lower with every new car.

You're welcome.

Again, is there data to back up "Speed Creep"? What do the lap times say?

Speed Delta can be a problem, but anecdotally it seems more like the majority of the cars are evening out at a steady rate.

Old teams are getting quicker, and new teams are getting up to snuff faster. Sure there's still the good old rolling chicanes out there to make life interesting, But I'm less convinced that we're still seeing lap time improvements of any significance.

I find this topic interesting as I have been looking at my and the team's reaction to the different years of racing. We definitely got a bit of a "need for speed" (Excel-racing after the race, going through the "What if's"). Here's some data from our team.  These are all at High Plains Raceway in a 1996 BMW 318ti (no I6 here - M44) (Sew So Fast - my wife is a quilter and always WOTs her sewing machine, hence the reference)

2017 - BFE-GP - best 2:23.5 - 277 laps - 19th overall
2018 - BFE-GP - best 2:20.6 - 315 laps - 8th overall
2018 - get yer Phil - best 2:17.8 - 334 laps - 2nd overall
2019 - BFE GP - best 2:17.8 - 319 laps - 6th overall
2019 - High Plains Drifter - best 2:18.1 - 333 laps - 2nd overall

Here's what we tried to change over the years:
- No black flags!! Well, that was the plan... but Fewer Black flags!! Sitting in the penalty box wastes laps. We had more in the beginning, and now are looking at none to two per race on average.
- Longer stints.  First race we wanted to make sure everyone got seat time and we kinda doddled around (30-45min stints, 5-8 min driver changes).  Now that we think the car is sorted we start with longer stints 1-2 hours, depending on things)
- First race we didn't really practice fuel stops.  Now we at least do a walk through the night before to figure out the steps and who does what...

Technical changes on the car:
- We put a nicer used suspension on for the last race, along with some 10mm wider tires on lighter wheels.  And then we had a slower fastest lap. Face - meet palm...  Car was a bit easier to drive more consistently, FWIW.  Before that we had cut springs (race 1 and 2) and a slightly nicer, non-cut suspension for race 3 and 4.
- Added a drink-bottle holder.

It's all in the clean/safe driving, efficient fuel-stops, and driver changes. 

What's the future hold?
With the current safety regs I get why people want to have cars that are fairly quick and reliable.  The amount of money that is spent on these things is substantial, and I can understand why people want to do well for the $4k-$5k of car + $1.4k entry fees.  Also, as was mentioned above, of the kind of cars one can get for <$500 most easily, many are really quite good! Our car was $430 at the first race, and we've been putting residuals toward suspension every time.

Having said all that, I feel that we lost a bit of the first year wonder and sheer enjoyment of driving a hooptie on a track. We are currently trying to build a second car that is more in the spirit of Lemons, and damn if it's not a PITA to get this less reliable thing lined up. We frequently ask ourselves if this is a good idea - why not run the "old reliable" instead of pouring money into this new POS that can't be used for anything but this particular race. But we're going to  do it anyhow b/c there will be tons of fun in the end.  I think we have at least this additional car in us.

Lemons is such a unique event, and the people are so much fun. I hope it continues for years to come.  I wonder if re-assigning award funds toward the more lemonsy award-winners isn't a good idea.  Who knows.

I think there is a lot more of this going on than some people realize. We're in the same boat. First race with the saab in 2016 we were running 1:36 or slower at NH and finished in the 30s somewhere overall. This past race at NH we were running fast laps in the 1:29s and had a shot at top 15 before we turned our front passenger brake rotor into the sun. There have been zero mechanical changes to the car to make it faster, just mods for reliability, that speed increase is purely us getting better at driving.

A lot of teams fall into this category of getting faster through just getting better, not dumping money into building a super cheaty car. On the east coast, how many races has mome rath run before finally finding themselves winning this year? Hint, it's a lot. And if you put those gals/guys in almost any other car I guarantee they'll make it fast. Punishing teams for simply getting better seems counter productive.

Balancing classes is usually done on a race by race basis. You don't always have the same field at every race, so you need to balance out who's there. Having mandatory laps, that have to be tracked race to race, region to region sounds awful. Part of what makes Lemons so fun is the fact that the rules are simple, and the judges get to be dictators. Their call is final and that makes it fun, if the rule book grew by 10 pages the whole thing would start to feel just a little too serious.