A note about the "Best. Corner Workers. Ever" at Buttonwillow (Page 3 of 3)

Perhaps we have a record number of black flags at Buttonwillow because the corner workers were so good they actually SAW and CALLED IN every violation... unlike the overwhelmed flaggers at other events.

Spin and Continue....... IE you spun the car for whatever reason but you didn't break anything so your not gonna need a tow to get it out. This makes race control aware that yes some car went off but no need to send the calvary. Now in most raceing venues if ya spin and continue noone cares. Though a steward might have a chat with ya after the race is over just to verify the spin wasn't cause you were being a moron. In Lemons rules however they are trying to keep brand spanking new drivers and from getting clobbered so they just assume if you spun you were in over your head. So they black flag you to tell hey slow down and pay attention.

After the bowling-ball Honda(?) face planted into the chicane on the main straight at Thill, I'm not sure this is really a "safer" alternative.  I felt a whole lot better without them than with.

So, over the course of 13.5 hrs, that's 23 blacks/hr or roughly a black every 3 minutes - which does seem pretty excessive.  At least one of ours was "off to avoid contact" which to me, seems like a perfectly explainable situation.

Honestly, I don't see what should be changed from Bwillow and felt it was a fantastic event.  If there were a select handful of bozos (maybe even a dozen bozos), boot them from the next race rather than re-jigger the format to try and prevent bozos from being bozos - which as we all know is p*ssing in the wind, imo.

Oh, and further - my engineer wife (who is raaaaght sexxxay as well) points out:

How much time was spent under green relative to any other Lemons race?  My gut feel analysis is that we spent probably 2x the time under green than at a previous event - maybe more.  I think there were all of 4-5 full course yellows for maybe an hour out of 13.5hrs...?

So, when you look at total blacks against time under GREEN (ie. actual race-on) you may find that this event was BETTER than other events where you had say 288 blacks, but were 40-50% less time under green.

You know how the saying goes - when all else fails, redefine the problem to fit available data.

One blag flag every three minutes = insanity

There were a few accident avoidance maneuvers i saw that caused two cars to put 4 off to avoid a over zealous driver and all 3 were called in with black flags. Now true they did put 4 off but the other side of the coin would have been a lot worse. So there had to be some number of black flags that were added up that way.

Pen

Hmmm... yeah, we could give out "medals" to drivers who leave the pavement in the name of safety. I've got a couple of Ford 429 cylinder heads and some sturdy chain with which to make those "medals."

I am sure your working with Arc Angel right now! Discussing how she can weld those heads to the tops of the heroes cars so that everyone else knows how they took a bullet in the name of safety.

No no, they wear the medals!

No matter how low-brow the activity, there's always some that think they are superior to the rest. I've been racing SCCA stuff since 1987, and personally, after  3 Lemons events, I don't find the new folks any better or worse than the typical SCCA crowd. Only ones that were a problem were those that though they were at a demolition derby or BMW drivers (same sort seems like), and the black flags seem to sort them out easily enough! Just keep your common sense about you and you'll have the same fun as everybody else. So as an "old-timer" to a "Newbie", I say Welcome!

haha awesome!  I'll admit I almost got t-boned by the stimulator once right before the sweeper.

Now THAT'S good parenting!