Silverstone race time

[stevengriffin]

I wonder if others feel a little short-changed from our second race at Silverstone? I fully appreciate that it was one of us Mono guys who dribbled a load of oil around most of the track but a nine minute race?
Silverstone took quite a lot of our money for the event and I had a very enjoyable weekend but I did expect to race for slightly longer than I can hold my breath. Four laps is a bit mean to say the least.
I am sure that Simon tried to get more out of them but I feel that they were taking the p*ss and I will think twice about going again to Silverstone for a while.
Am I just being a grumpy old fart or are others of a like mind?

[triple j motorsport]

Steven

I share you disapointment especially as I was having a great dice trying to find away passed Paul.

However I believe the race was longer than 9 minutes as the results are declared at the last full lap that every car running completed. I don't know the exact rules but you have restart races less than 50% completed, I believe.

Like you say unfortunately "we" dropped oil everywhere and had an extra (4 mins?) green flag lap. Waiting 24 hours for a shortened race was particularly hard though.

I feel the race should have run even if it finished under the safety car I am sure many drivers lost places due to the red flag count back, why not throw the chequered flag next time round?

John

[omsracer]

Steven,
As someone who stalled at the start, and thanks to everyone behind for missing me, I like you feel pretty miffed at the shortening of the race as I was just getting into my stride when they threw the yellow and then red.

Call me cynical, but given a chance, they were always going to look for a way to reclaim their time and unfortunately we gave it to them. What every happened to double waved yellows to slow us down to allow the marshalls to remove broken cars. It was very disappointing not to get a full race especially as broken down and crashed cars are part of the race scene.

The crash in the GT's was an example of where some four cars were very badly damaged at Copse and the race was continued under the safety car until they were cleared. One rule for them and another for us it would appear!

Peter

[stevengriffin]

Kevin the winner was given a race time of 9 minutes 3 seconds, to my shame I finished a minute and 10 seconds behind him after four laps of racing .
I waited all night and all morning for 10 minutes 13 seconds of racing!
I don't want to detract from a fun weekend but I had guests that came to see the race and they just couldn't understand why I would bother to go to all that expense and bother for a ten minute race. They had a point.
What's the matter with waved yellows? None of the stopped cars were within track limits, they were all stopped in slow relatively safe corners. On such a long track a safety car effectively stops the race and we had that on Saturday and greatly shortened race Sunday.
Are we getting to the point that any incident causes a red flag or a safety car? Might as well do a track day....
Like I said, I'm not so impressed with Silverstone right now.

[tristancliffe]

Plus Silverstone have the world's most expensive lumps of warm chicken.

On a monthly basis, race tracks appear to hate the competitors more and more. Maybe they hope we'll bugger off so they can build a business park or a hotel on the land and make more money.

[tonybishop]

54 cars is just too many , was it seven or eight racing laps total in TWO races ?
It looks good on paper, but the format has proven to be a very false economy................

[foggy]

We enjoyed it, we raced on the GP track, we had electric and all the facilities for free, nice paddock, only 45 minutes from home and had good racing apart from under the safety car which was a **?* up however, the most frustrating thing about Sunday's delayed start was the fact Luke was down the back of the grid and while drivers at the front were being told to switch off the back half of the grid were cooking, seems that the organisation of getting cars onto the grid in the right order at Silverstone let's it down badly, I was watching Simon on the phone franticly trying to find out what was going on while you lot were on the grid waiting to go, he looked more frustrated than you! It is expensive but great if it all goes to plan, unfortunately in racing it rarely does plus we knew the format when we filled in the entry forms. Tony, I don't think 54 on the GP track is too many as all the quicker cars would be off up the front but the rain in qualifying probably mixed it up a bit lol

[ofarc]

I LOVED IT !!!

As usual a tip top job by Simon, and I overtook 82 cars in 2 days. Awesome good fun

And I would also add that the driving standards were simply incredible.

Well done every driver, especially when that aussie stalled, he was probably dreaming about the days of Shane Warne. (Could not resist that Pete)

Cheers Dax

[stevengriffin]

I haven't overtaken 82 cars in my whole racing career.... Well done. Perhaps we should put you at the back of the grid for all the races?
I did have a good time at Silverstone, it's always nice to be there and the social side of the weekend was great but however you dress it up we didn't actually get much racing done. Perhaps such a large grid is a bit optimistic. Either way like the ever-hopeful idiot that I am I'll be back for more.

[jimblockley]

Steve it seems it was an unfortunate weekend, last year we got to full 20 minute races without any incidents.

if you remember.

How would you analysis it, the big grids have not been a problem before, even when we shared the grid with club f3.

perhaps the officials were to cautious!!!!!

[Wingnut]

My advice, buy a scanner. I was sat with my (legal) scanner listening to the second race issues. They didn't have enough cement to cover the oil and were struggling with people to put it out, they also didn't have enough boards to display the messages at the start that they wanted to show and to top it off when they did radio marshals to say, the message was not being passed on. The end of the race was an issue, they had a car sat in a position they considered unsafe and the marshals could not move it, the race was stopped to save anyone from crashing into it, the venue race control made the best decision it could based on the info coming from the very out of breath marshals that were present.

Having a scanner I knew all of this, was able to get from the grandstand back to me Dad and keep him informed.

You can buy them from maplins and start at £35 - Uniden make the best ones, they have "close call" and will auto tune into any transmitting devices within 50 metres.

Oh and while I'm giving advice we should all use anti vibrate on nuts and bolts

Regards

Jon

[NigelD]

From the 'second' restart green flag - to pulling in the pits , my steering wheel stop watch (posh) read 16 mins.... so i made it circa 13 mins racing if the last lap was SC lap... ...not to bad with all the drama at the start.

cant complain , all 4 wheels are in the right direction and an enjoyable 2 days of close racing, peaks and troughs.

Agreed Simon does a great job,

[tonybishop]

I agree with Jim , we were unfortunate , raced there 2 years ago and it looked like a war zone , but the race continued ! This year it all worked against us, marshalls appear to struggle with just a couple of incidents.
Very frustrating but a great circuit

[stevengriffin]

No issues with Simon or his Hurculean efforts to organise things, just the over enthusism for red flags from the CoC when as far as I could see none of the stopped cars were in a remotely dangerous place. Silverstone is probably the least dangerous track we go to with all those open spaces and huge run off areas, a couple of parked cars are no big deal from my point of view.

[omsracer]

As responsible people and people who lets face it have paid a high price for a nice piece of tarmac to race on for 40 minutes on Saturday and Sunday, it would be nice to know why the race was red flagged given everything that has been said on this thread.

There may have been a logical explanation why the CoC decided the race track was unsafe for us to continue on, but as has been expressed already, we the drives out there, didn't appear to see any real danger. Like a lot of things in life, if we have an explanation for an action we are more likely accept it. When we don't have an explanation, we tend to think 'conspiracy theories' and the like.

A simple explanation from the COC would end our concerns, but what are the chances of that? Transparency is the key word and sooner or later COC's and other people within race management must be made to explain and justify their actions, especially when it is our money contributing to their existence.