This was a national level event, there should be no need for instructors to "sign off" inexperienced competitors. This is a national level event!
Originally posted by ScotcH
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That track is not very forgiving to people who go in too fast to a corner, panic, lift throttle and brake. Less so in the rain. It's not ASE. We thought it prudent to put an instructor with people NEW to the track to show them around the first time to keep THEM and fellow competitors safe, not to make instructors and organizers feel self-important. Once they were comfortable on their own and lapping safely they were fine to lap on their own. (five laps with me driving the new person when practice opened, after that a five lap session with them driving, all during practice was all that this person and I thought was necessary) I'm sure that some were signed off faster than that. One thing that would have helped here though, was for people who were instructors to have known it BEFORE lapping opened rather than after marshaling assignments were given out. I didn't realize I was charged with instructing and just stepped in to help.
Although this was a National event, there was no qualifying procedure. You could have registered for this event if it was your first time on a track. (Should that change?) The decision of the organizer was for one instructor to get a person comfortable with the track. For some people, that meant an instructor in the car, for others there were no instructors available, and they had to try and follow and keep up on an unfamiliar and challenging track, or wait for an in car instructor.
The Ontario series policy, as it was announced in driver's meeting minutes during the year, was that TWO instructors must sign a person new to Ontario Solosprint off as a novice. (I mistakenly thought it was in our ruleset, but it was only in the drivers meeting minutes.) As you mentioned, many of these people at the Nationals were not novices, so that policy was not applied.
Did the host club of the Nationals at ASE in 2006 not put cones on the front straight in the rain? Did that not take track space away from National level competitors? Did anyone really complain about that safety measure though?
If it was their first morning on the big track, one might think that most competitors would be faster WITH an instructor for a session or two than without.
As for the sunroof thing... it is a typical lapping rule with different organizations I've lapped with and something that you expect. Window policy is something that an experienced competitor asks about. There's nothing in the rules about car windows needing to be all the way down, or all the way up either, though that is enforced in Solosprint. Others allow you to lap with windows half-way up or all the way up, but not all the way down without a window net.
Should window and sunroof policy end up in the rulebook?
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