More importantly, you guys are applying a basic idea, tweaking it to more suit yourself, and using it to your own benefit. :)

Perfect. :)

I've only finished on the top of the podium a couple of times, but when I did it was when my fast lap and my top 20 lap average were only separated by about 1/4th of a second. In other words I drove very consistently.

Information
 

what is this all about? i m a new user.

The basic premise is that the more consistent driver you are, the better driver you are. If you have a huge variation in your laptimes, you need to work on running more consistent lines before you worry about adding horsepower, better batteries, etc. Conversely, if you run very consistent laps but are slower than everybody else, either your lines aren't very good, or you have equipment issues.

Sorta like golf... if you are a 30 handicapper, it's relatively easy to trim 5 shots off your game, but if you are a 2 handicap, it's a little tougher to do.

What guys at the Gate have done is let some of the fast guys drive their car to see what it is capable of. If you're 2 seconds off their lap times, you need to drive better. If you're 0.2 seconds off, it's not the chassis. If their time with your car is 0.5 seconds off of their time with someone else's car, you can drive the wheels off of it and it won't matter. Start looking at motor, gearing, ESC, or battery issues.

It was a humbling experience for some...

I did some calculations (avg - best) from our local "club level" racing results. Club level means that you often have slower cars that won't or don't know how to let you through. This means that you may have some bad laps that are caused by traffic.

I think based on the racing level you could leave out few worst laps of the run. For an example when running "club level" and you have 20-30 laps results you could leave out 2-3 worst laps. This really made the "error" factor more real representation of your SPEED. I think this tool really needs to describe your SPEED. If you have traffic or some really bad laps (marshaling) you can just leave them out. Your overall performance including those bad laps is described by the results and your position ;)

Here's the WGT from Cleveland.
 

Here's the WGT from Cleveland. Top to bottom. Rather than try and format the information to fit a forum post, I just took a snapshot of it from Excel.

Few things come out from observing it. Firstly, I'd like to comment on the idea of fairness in a triple A main format. Other than adding HOURS to a day and a LOT of expense, things shook out here just about as they should have here in a single A-main format. There are some exceptions where you can see somebody got mugged in traffic. But for the most part the vast majority of people finished where they qualified (+) or (-) two to four spots.

I'll comment on the "C", because I was in it. :D (surely that's some kind of indication that the others must have been cheating...) ...lol...

I was going to build a car at the hotel, but ran out of time. Corally Rob said he had a car built with a body on it, just needed radio gear, so I ran it. Car was good, I just needed more steering to really drop the lap times. BUT, that's a double edged sword, the car was easy to drive as I dialed it in. It's possible if I'd set it up with a LOT more steering it would have lost consistency. My consistency was good, and I was happy with where it ended up. Starkey checked out, I was about a 1/2 lap back and stayed there. Starkey slowed with about a minute to go to keep out of trouble and that slightly slowed his consistency. But it was the correct racing decision. Bean could put about 20' on me on the straight but had trouble in traffic, along with Sweeney who was just generally faster all around. Sweeney got mugged or had car trouble. It was a rough heat if you look at the numbers.

My comments on my car, it wasn't rotating fast enough and I needed more time with it. But it was good. In the 3rd qualifier I ran a 29/5:11 with an error of .2861 and a fast lap of 10.44. That's the setup I went with in the main. It was easiest to drive and was the smart decision. I had a setup that got me some 10.1's but the error was higher. Car was more edgy, and as a "geezer", that's not consistently fast.

With some luck and 3-4 more practices I could have found a few more tenths... but so would everybody else, so it's almost a mute point. the 10.1 lap car was a solid 30 lap car...if it would have been a more consistent setup. Can't blame the car...'DOH...:D

Also I thought it was interesting to see that there were few if any folks running a fast lap in the 10.1-10.2 range. that must be the cutoff for a solid setup. Also, the error on this is brutal, and calculated with every single lap, no throwouts, no top 20 averages.

http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/8...wgt2008tr7.jpg

I was just looking at the A-main results. I think it's worth noting that Eli had the slowest "fastest lap", he then stuck VERY close to it and got himself 2nd. :nod:

I'd like to know who got marshal'd or stuck, and who had a clean run in all the mains. I'd be willing to wager that anything under .6 for consistency was a clean run. Anything over that and you might have gotten mugged or stuck or flipped around, etc. Anything over .8 and it was more than one time. I'll bet that's pretty close. B-main looks the cleanest on paper.

Cleveland 2008, WGT consistency shake down. Top to bottom from the mains. I'd like to see it from Qualifying, be a more accurate representation of a persons best run. Not how you might have gotten hacked in the show.

looking at it, I'd say perhaps only the top 15-20 or so had a clean run, or a run with only a minor bobble. I went looking for qualifying, but it doesn't list fastest lap, so we can't use it. Shame. Perhaps somebody has that somewhere and we can noodle around with it. :)

http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/4...gt20082zq2.jpg

Bob, we talked about this back in Montana last year, but really have not been working on till the last few months. Anyway here are the numbers from my last run in WGT. I only removed the start lap which is off due to "horn" issues.


304.357 305.578 302.294 912.229
Average Lap Time 8.009 8.041 7.955 8.002
Fastest Lap 7.711 7.776 7.634 7.634
Slowest Lap 8.718 8.471 8.257 8.718
Per Slow to Fast 88.45% 91.80% 92.45% 87.57%
Per Ave to Fast 3.87% 3.41% 4.21% 4.82%
Laps - Average 20 20 27 67
Laps + Average 18 18 11 47

And yes I won all the heats and main as well. I did not have the fast lap in any of the runs.

I see a LOT of talk about lap times again.. Time for a bump for the new guys to read up. ;)

-Bob

very nice write up. i think about this all the time at the track, never seen it written up in such detail.

Consistent clean laps have to be what we should all focus on. Check this final,

http://www.ardentracing.com/raceway/...2_Final_05.htm

I came second here, running an error of 0.3, my best lap is some way off the fastest. It just shows that if you run clean consistent laps its gets you somewhere. Unfortunately the guy who won was both crazy fast and even more consistent than me.

TahDAH!!! :nod:

Yea, tough to be fast AND accurate dudes. Just have to pray a corner marshal steps on 'em... :p:lol:

:ha::lol: Yea where were my bro's with the big feet from the B final eh?

:nod: