Bike on the outside of the Road America carousel

I don't think Garth needs an explanation...he's ridden the track enough.

There is a cornerworker station just past the bridge at the entrance of the carousel and one just at the exit of the carousel. Both have full view of the whole carousel, just not each other (by maybe 8-10 feet) meaning T9 can see the track up to about 10' from T10. There is a track safety truck and ambulance staged on the other side of the bridge from T9, up track.

There is no pickup in the carousel, in the 12 years I've worked there I've seen maybe 3 bikes down in the carousel. Pickup, if needed, would be covered by track safety and the event would be red flagged because of the danger of having a truck sitting on track at the speeds they travel there. With just a couple of laps left, you'd likely be calling the race complete with a red flag.

Road America also has cameras that cover about 90-95% of the track. If there is ever a question, control can look and evaluate.

Knowing the people in control and their experience, I would never second-guess their call.

 

I watched the race last night and they did mention the bike down in the carousel very breifly. I remember thinking are they going to red flag it, but they didn't.

 

If it was covered by a flag, which it was from what i saw on the replay, then it should have been ok to continue racing.
We do it all the time here in the south with WERA when working corners because maybe the bike was to badly broken and jus couldnt move it without shutting things down.
So we cover it with a flag.

 

Ok, was it your bike and you are just mad cause you couldn't get it to see if you could fix it for your next race?

 

Another thing to mention: while I don't know exactly where this bike ended up, if a bike goes down there it usually carries far enough off track as to not matter too much.