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Some Road Atlanta facts

Discussion in 'WERA National Endurance Series' started by Mongo, Sep 4, 2022.

  1. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    No, tire coverings are allowed. I worded it as I did for clarity but you can use a towel if you prefer.
     
  2. Kyle Brosius

    Kyle Brosius Well-Known Member

    I will say I wish the officials were more consistent from race to race. We had our pit stop stopped at either Roebling or CMP because the guy running the impact for the rear axle was in shorts. Which was our fault and we were in the wrong.

    At Atlanta the team next to us had a guy with no shirt in shorts and crocs swapping the fuel tank off their bike in hot pit with an official less than 5 feet away watching their pit stop. A team on the other side of us had a guy in a t shirt and shorts fuel the bike and a guy in shorts change the tire.
     
    drop likes this.
  3. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    Find me the money to hire a crew to do them all I'd love to have a regular traveling group of officials.
     
  4. drop

    drop Well-Known Member

    Hell of a response. More fitting would be "we will look into what we could do differently".

    But on the other side of that, some of these officials do not know the rule book, and could possibly not know, that, that, is a rule. It's hard enough to get help currently, and making someone understand or expecting some of these volunteers to learn and know the rule book, would be near impossible.
     
  5. Lance Molnar

    Lance Molnar Aoxomoxoa

    I will likely regret wading into this but, from my perspective…

    1) The rules are the rules – they are never going to be perfect for all situations. You have to play by them like them or not…otherwise don’t play. As long as they are fair (i.e., aren’t biased to favor certain teams etc), it is hard to complain too much (even for the ones I don’t like/think are stupid).

    2) Inconsistent (an especially extremely inconsistent) application of the rules, regardless of the reason for that inconsistency, totally undermines the reason there are rules in the first place and is quite annoying/frustrating for those who try to play by those rules. To be honest, there are very few official rules to be followed at pitstops (where we all see the blatant violations, though I’m sure there are others as well). From the rule book, the following is all that technically needs to be evaluated by the officials. And again, tbh, I think pretty much anyone could memorize these basic rules:

    16. All crewmembers over the wall must be wearing shoes, long trousers and a shirt (no tank tops, cropped shirts, or Under Armour type material allowed unless otherwise instructed during the riders meeting. This does not include the person(s) signaling the riders. The crew members operating the fuel can and the fire extinguisher must be wearing all cotton clothing with long sleeves or fire retardant clothing. They must be wearing fire retardant footwear or leather footwear. The footwear should not be vented in any way. Nomex type fire resistant/proof gloves/sleeves are recommended.

    21. Each team must have at least one 10-pound conventional fire extinguisher or two five-pound fire extinguishers in their pit at all time. In both cases they must be fully charged. 22. All fuel must be stored behind pit wall, or in a designated fuel containment area, except during the refueling stop itself:
    a) Engines must be off during refueling
    b) Rider must be off machine during refueling
    c) All refueling cans must be hand-held and designed to contain fuel overflow, with non-sparking (aluminum, brass or plastic) nozzles or fittings contacting the machine fuel tank. Towers and pressurized refueling rigs are not allowed
    d) Exchanging machine gas tanks is not allowed as a refueling method
    e) Fire extinguisher must be manned and aimed at the bike with the pin pulled during refueling
    f) Machine must be on stand while refueling. The machine must be able to remain upright without any human intervention on the stand

    24. Only routine service and minor crash damage repair will be allowed on the hot pit road. Major rebuilding or repair must be done behind pit wall in the cold pits. A Team must notify race officials when moving their racebike behind the pit wall.


    That is not a lot of rules to remember/enforce during pitstops – good clothes, bike turned off and on a stand, fire extinguisher at the ready, and if you’re working on major repairs get it off hot pit. Could make little laminated checklists and put them on lanyards for the officials. Notably, one rule that is always stated at the rider’s meeting and is most commonly ignored is the “you can do no other work on the bike during refueling”. I can’t find this rule in the rulebook. However, since it is stated in the rider’s meeting, many of us follow that rule – many more do not. Not sure if we are morons for following an unwritten rule or if some teams are “playing unfair” by not following this unwritten (but spoken) rule.

    I think there is a very simple and easy path forward here where most of the people are happy most of the time – don’t need to devolve improvements to the process into a war of words and opinions. Set basic, fair and simple rules that can be easily enforced & then simply enforce them. I think we are half way there.
     
  6. Tristan

    Tristan Well-Known Member

    Yeah, lets delay the race some more so people can drag out generators or run a 100' cord across the track from their 300 lb construction genny.
     
  7. Tristan

    Tristan Well-Known Member

    Agree 100%. Make rule changes in the off season, not in the middle of race day.
     
  8. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    We are ALWAYS looking at what we could do differently. We have meetings with the pit officials and have a handbook they get.

    But quite simply they are human and to fix the issue that was complained about would take exactly what I responded. If you ask a question you get an answer, if you complain about something I give you what it would take to fix the issue.
     
  9. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    We don't change rules in the middle of the race.

    If a rule that isn't in the book is stated at riders meeting then speak up at that time or come find me. There is a reason I make sure I'm at every single Endurance round. I can't fix things I don't know about and this is the first I've heard of this particular issue - we do allow working on bikes while refueling. We have always done so. The rider must be off, it must be on stands, and there must be a fire bottle manned.

    I do apologize for inconsistent enforcement, I've apologized repeatedly for it and we absolutely are making strides towards getting rid of the inconsistencies. However once again, those people are merely human and will make mistakes. They are doing this because they love the sport, it sure as hell isn't for the money.
     
  10. Lance Molnar

    Lance Molnar Aoxomoxoa

    1. Thanks for clarity on the rule (or lack thereof I guess)
    2. I would assume everyone knows the officials are doing their best - but is also important for people to bring up where there are areas for improvement (gotta know where the problems are in order to try and fix/address them)

    Thanks!
     
  11. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator


    I absolutely agree on needing to know where issues are, which is why I'm a little floored no one ever told me the race directors were saying that in meetings :crackup:
     
  12. noles19

    noles19 Well-Known Member

    The easiest way to clarify the rules is to send a crew member to race control before or during the race if there is a question. And just be prepared for the answer from mongo and the way he answers it if he's busy. Or have the official radio mongo and ask him.
    We had a similar situation as road Atlanta at CMP last year with the red and confusion on if we could take the green on pit road and do a pit stop I went and asked mongo and avoided the penalty after a official initially told me we could do it.
     
    Kyle Brosius likes this.
  13. Wheel Bearing

    Wheel Bearing Professional low sider

    That doesn't delay anything. Either your team makes it happen or you miss the outlap. It doesn't affect the time frame for the calls? And everyone already has a genny under their ez up. So you run a 25' cord across hot pit to your bike that's sitting on the rear stand...that already has warmers on it (Since as soon as unplugged warmers were allowed, EVERYONE started to put them on).

    The same person that peels the warmers off and grabs the rear stand before you roll out on track takes the cord with them. FFS, didn't think I'd have to spell that out, but here we are :crackup:
     
    Sudowoodo, regularguy and tawzx12r like this.
  14. javyday

    javyday Well-Known Member

    If noise=power everyone can just plug into AOD generator
     
    CleverRiver6, six6two, 50Joe and 5 others like this.
  15. tawzx12r

    tawzx12r Influencer to none

    That thing could power the entire grid and break the sound barrier doing so.
     
    50Joe and Motofun352 like this.

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