Have we ever considered grouping practice by times?

[mkdiehl]

.....so not worrying about novice or expert, but put like speed people out together instead?

Someone mentioned this to me at the last race and it sounded good to me.....I would guess this idea isn't new but didn't know the pros/cons.

There are some pretty big speed differentials even as they are grouped now.

Just curious, and trying to keep myself occupied instead of buying a ninja 250....must resist.

[Jon]

What? But you would crush the little self esteem I have left as I would no doubt be forced to practice with the novice slow group?
Seriously though I like the idea but I beleive at this point individuals who are misplaced or have misplaced themselfs in practice sessions either need to look at how their laptimes differ from the others within their chosen sessions or J Brown can address the issue which I beleive he does on occasion.
Matt I beleive you should move up as you're fast safe and by god we like you :lol:

[gsnyder828]

Matt I beleive you should move up as you're fast safe and by god we like you :lol:

Exactly. Seems the simplest way to solve the speed differential is to run expert fast.

[mkdiehl]

yea....was afraid it would turn into this type of thread again.....i think the novice class is pretty entertaining this year.....some pretty close racing with about 5 different people capable of winning (more as people get faster and catch the lead group)....3 winners in Nov u in three races. One of the fastest novices hasn't won yet as he has had some bad luck so far....

I actually don't have an issue with it really, but twice i have heard others come into the pits scared or mad at the differential out in the expert slow practice.

I know there has been talk about time differential in the expert fast as well.

I also do think that some of the faster novices would benefit from being able to ride with some of the experts....so that we could learn better lines etc.

Again, just thinking out loud.

[loujr]

I also do think that some of the faster novices would benefit from being able to ride with some of the experts....so that we could learn better lines etc.

The amateur and endurance races provide a platform for this. I think combination of novice/expert practice by speeds is a good idea however if riders never get on track with faster riders would that slow down their progress?? If we are all out there with people the same speed how are we going to see "better lines". Or "faster lines"???


If a slower rider signs up to race against faster guys do we suggest they try a different class? Or buy a different bike?? Just playing devils advocate....

Some people are fast some are slower, getting by people is part of racing. I think a great example is being on track with 250's is hard because they could be great riders but the speed difference of the bike is huge. Same can be said for any bike that has a different power band than yours. I think this subject has come up and our practice schedule works for most, can't make everyone happy all of the time. :shock:

[NossLou]

I agree with what you are saying and completely understand the time differences. I think its a riders responsibility to judge their practice times with what session they are in. If they can't do that then maybe someone can drop them a word about moving up or what not. It sure is not the clubs responsibility to place riders in sessions, more of an individual responsibility

I also think that it needs to stay in the same structure as expert and novice sessions...just like any other club out there. Mixing the two really makes me think there will be issues.

One session that may make this difficult is the expert slow session... yeah there are 250s/ vintage bikes/ supermotos/ 600 and 1000's all out there at once.. But to be quite honest riding an endurance race is 10 times more difficult than practice with closing speeds and what not.

Another thing to consider is there are a lot of riders that go out and run anywhere from 3-6 seconds a lap slower in practice than at race pace...

Its seems pretty simple. If your passing everyone the entire session then move up... if you are riding up a class and are getting your doors blown off maybe bump down a class.... I do not understand what is so difficult about it. Practice should be just that, time you can go out and work on what you need to for the day. And if there are people that are quite a bit slower, than you can practice your lap traffic timing...most races have it...

[Yeeker]

I'd agree with Matt that I hear slower riders mentioning the speed differential just as often as faster riders. Yes, faster riders can work on passing the slower riders, but we are talking about the extremes here and passing significantly slower riders doesn't take that much practice. It seems to me that the underlying question is: Does the Novice/Expert classification impose unnecessary restrictions on practice?

If a faster rider is passing everyone easily and startles slower riders, he/she isn't permitted to move up (we don't currently have a group faster than Expert Fast and novices aren't allowed to practice with experts). In this situation, self-policing for the faster rider is not a very good option. It's likely that the combined sessions have the greatest speed differential as this grouping includes slower riders (nov or expert) that cannot bump down to a slower group.

If sessions were grouped by speed, then there would ultimately be four groups to choose from, rather than two. If it worked, it seems as if the speed differentials for each group would be lower. I think that Matt was curious about the pitfalls of mixing these groups (primarily Novice Fast and Expert Slow). Note that I haven't seen him have trouble passing many novices :wink: )

One argument for the current system is that it could provide encouragement for fast novices to move to expert. I personally personally would find this to be a very small incentive as I would not want to throw away a half-season of work to move to expert, nor does the fastest novice often have trouble passing the slowest.

Although I'd guess that the the current system works well for the majority of experts, I feel that at times we could make small personal sacrifices to make the club more enjoyable for all because retaining more riders makes the club stronger. I'm not yet suggesting that we change the practice rules, but I haven't heard many strong arguments against it.

[rybo]

As a rider who has practiced in literally EVERY group we offer I can offer the one strong reason for keeping the system we have. It basically works.

Novices practice with novices (yellow plates, easy to police)
Experts with Experts (white plates,again easy for our track personnel to police)

Slow / Medium / Fast - again easily identified colored stickers that are simple for a our track personnel to see as riders are filtering out on to the track.

Self assigning also basically works, so much so that almost every race club and trackday org uses it.



I'm not opposed to hearing a proposal to change the system if riders feel it's fundamentally broken, but in that proposal consider the logistics - how does the person at track entry know if you should be in that group or not?

Also, how do you break the groups up? Riders and bikes are continually getting faster, so how often would we have to review the break out times? What if a rider is having an off day, do they have to bump down that day? What if it's raining? I like the designations of "slow, medium and fast" because they aren't purely objective like lap times. Who becomes responsible for policing it when a rider falls off the pace for a couple of laps?

Again, I'm not against a proposal for a change, but want to consider the operational aspects of the change in addition to the proposed benefits.

S

[gsnyder828]

I know there has been talk about time differential in the expert fast as well.

I hear ya - and agree. I run expert medium b/c I'd get in the way of the truly fast guys. That means I practice in Slow/Med combined a lot and go through a lot of slow traffic. And yet there are folks slower than me who practice in expert fast... I guess there's no perfect system. 8)

[loujr]

I personally think expert medium rocks because there are so few people in it, you can really break the track apart and work section by section to put it together in the race. The expert slow/medium combined really does help with setting up passing . I ran expert fast once and learned that I brake wayyyyyy to early, back to medium to work on it.

[d_mob]

I went out in Exp M last round and almost cornholed someone coming in/out of 3a/3b. I would guess there was a 20sec per lap time difference.

I'm sure I've been the cornholee on a couple of occasions in Exp F as well. :?

At minimum we should at least post recommended group time slots.

For example (HPR)...

Exp F - 1: - 1:57
Exp M - 1:57 - 2:05
Exp S - 2:05 - 2:

PS... Rename it A, B and C like other clubs to not have riders feel criticized for being "slow" (i.e. 250's, NOVs, etc).

PPS... Other orgs like NESBA and WERA make people earn "A" status by running/qualifying with a certain time and being added to a list. FWIW.

[loujr]

That's a great idea!!! However with as busy as the Mra staff is on race day, if someone doesn't follow the "recommendation" do they have the time to have that talk? How can we enforce a recommendation, as its not a rule? I think the fast/slow thing is fine we shouldn't be so sensitive it is really not that big of a deal is it? A, B ,C , still means fast, medium, slow no matter what you name it.

[mkdiehl]

I like Mobley's idea.....but maybe extend it to all 5 (?) practice sessions....meaning don't have it as novice/expert but even more brackets of suggested times.

I say that because I believe there are some experts that may be more comfortable/run similar times to some of the novices....this would get rid of the 20 sec difference between expert slow riders, maybe?

It would also allow the faster novices to learn from the experts that are slightly faster. In my case, for example, I would like to opportunity to follow Mobley, Nick, etc around a little more than the first 4 corners of the AM races to see if I can't pull myself up to them a little more (although still quite a gap). But as Ken suggested, not at the expense of abandoning the Novice season at this point.

Lou; your statment about learning you brake too early makes my point. You were able to ride with a faster group and learned something.....that is my point with mixing novices and experts.

As far as policing it, I don't think that is necessary to have the Board spend time doing that. As it has been suggested before, it is practice; nobody wins. If someone wants to run a faster or slower group, so be it....but right now they don't have that choice in some cases at all. Maybe just a friendly reminder during the 7:45 meeting each day.

Nick suggested the difference in practice times for one given person varying....which i agree with. My first sessions on Saturday are sometimes 8 seconds slower than my final practice session......is that typical for most to warm up gradually? Seems to be from what i see. But i would still know which session i should be in.

Nick: You suggested there may be issues with combining novice and experts. This was the argument that I thought would come up first. I can see experts not necessarily wanting to run practice with novices, regardless of speed....just a fact that we don't have the same amount of track time and could make mistakes causing experts some unneeded stress. I completely get that. We did start a race 4 times last round.....

Rybo; you mentioned that it is easy to tell novices from experts and that makes policing practice easier. Policing what? The pre grid people still check the stickers before we go out on the track.....not our number plates necessarily. If you think that people could go out in multiple sessions easier, I could see that. Although there is some of that going on now already, so the current system doesn't prevent that either. And yes, people progress. Especially novices. So as you progress you get a different color sticker....at reach riders' decision. I would have been on the +2:00 club the first race. Last race I would have moved to a faster group....yippe, I earned my green sticker.

5 colored stickers.......done.

Again, not asking for it to change for this weekend or even this year. In fact, this wasn't supposed to be MY crusade. Just giving a perspective and wondering what others' are.

[mkdiehl]

It also just occurs to me why I like this idea. The 250's do this. For qualifying they all go out together. Last year this allowed me to go out with Tony, Tracy etc and follow their lines. It instantly made me faster, instead of running around hoping not to get run over in novice practice.

[Yeeker]

Since its been brought up here as well as other threads, I'd like to emphasize that I don't see why we couldn't self-police group placement in the speed-based system just as we do the current system (with use of stickers to ensure people go put with their registered group). There may be the tendency for new novices to overestimate their capabilities, however.

Also, since the time guidelines are just guidelines, perhaps they could overlap.
Group x: 1:57-2:10
Group y: 1:53-2:00

[jeff healy]

Crap! Lou let the ex med secret out of the bag! Now it's gonna be packed lol I just run it cuz the sticker matches my bike :shock:

[spideyrdr]

I'd like to specifically point out frustration I have with the novice combined practices. You've got a ton of riders out there with a huge spread in ability on every conceivable machine. Novices on 1000's and even 600's doing sub-2 minute times at HPR coming up on a new racer on a 250 - scary. On the flip side, if you find yourself coming up on a slower rider and decide it's not time to pass (it's practice, no one's getting a trophy to pass deep in a corner during practice), you might get some superstar on a 250 determined to blow by both of you at an inopportune time, and it can get just as unsafe.

I would love to see all novice practices split instead of just the one split practice session. The morning schedule is super tight, I get that, and there is no solution to make everyone happy, but I would be all in favor of having two novice practice sessions per hour to give everyone a chance to get out without it being an exercise in danger avoidance. I definitely like the idea of suggested lap times to help everyone gauge where they fit best, and leave it up to self policing as much as possible.

Just one guys thoughts on it.

Cheers,
Jamie

[d_mob]

It also just occurs to me why I like this idea. The 250's do this. For qualifying they all go out together. Last year this allowed me to go out with Tony, Tracy etc and follow their lines. It instantly made me faster, instead of running around hoping not to get run over in novice practice.

To clarify, if and when we make the change, it shouldn't be so people can follow others and learn, but to make practice safer and keep 'like' speed groups together.

I'm not showing you anything else Matt. You are getting fast enough as-is!

PS... Maybe you should learn to take your tire warmers off before heading out to pre-grid first anyway. Ooooohhh deep burn (literally)!

[mkdiehl]

When we get to moto gp I promise I won't follow you. Until then, I will pick up anything I can from whoever I can.

....and it was practice, not pregrid. :roll:

[KFinn]

I hear what everyone is saying. It took me some time to read the entire thread.

But consider this... We are not new riders to motorcycling. We are more advanced riders. We all have commented about the dangers or being on the track with others.

So a partially rhetorical question for all of you to really think about.... Why do we need to split up the novice practice sessions or change from the current system? We are all adults, we have recognized the risks so don't we just need to make sure we keep our head about us in practice or during a race and always be making good judgements?

I am also not against changing something in the system if it is broke. But we should always keep personal responsibility and good judgements a factor in any process of the system. And I think all that have commented are so I wasn't pointing fingers.

[mkdiehl]

Kevin,
The current system obvioulsy "works" but could it be better and safer.

Better in that you won't have to go through a corner at 60% so that you don't stuff another rider who is significantly slower than you....and can actually use practice to see how changes you made helped or hurt your lap times.

Safer in that there isn't such a large desparity in speed which is dangerous.

[Yeeker]

Why not continual improvement? Would any of us say that the sport is safe enough? If we could prevent a single incident, would the change have been worth it?

It's still not clear to me that there are any disadvantages to the "proposal"other than it works ok for most.

[loujr]

Crap! Lou let the ex med secret out of the bag! Now it's gonna be packed lol I just run it cuz the sticker matches my bike :shock:

:shock: didn't really think about that....crap....forget what I said....expert medium is nuts....ninjas with swords, everywhere....stay away from expert medium its a war zone...

[dave.gallant]

Classification is based on experience, not lap times.

I feel far safer with the closing speeds in expert practices than novice practice simply because white-plate-riders TEND to hold their line consistently from corner to corner and don't dart for the apex.

Your talent is beckoning you for white plates Mr Diehl. Come to the dark side. We have cookies.

[KFinn]

I feel far safer with the closing speeds in expert practices than novice practice

+1