Originally Posted by
Rick Kirchner
Chris brings up some good points, but the club doesn't seem to have the critical thinking skills possessed by many of its members.
You don't necessarily need special equipment, just a combination of equipment that's not currently used and folks trained to operate it. If you did have the luxury of specing and owning it, it could be hot-rodded for higher speed operation.
Avoid agricultural equipment and equipment designed to recover street cars. The first group is slow to move and the second is slow to operate, especially in recovering broken race cars in the grass. There are plenty of companies offering drop deck trailers. Spec one out long enough to haul two cars (or have two with standard pickups to tow them) and combine that with a boom crane truck capable of lifting 3500 lb without outriggers and you have the start of a tow team that can hustle to the scene and remove cars quickly. The truck at least, can be rented. The rest is training and practice to go as quickly as possible. It seems like in the days leading up to the runoffs, there's lot of opportunity to get in some practice.
Another question is why do these things go FCY as opposed to black all? Bring the cars in, allow the crews to do whatever they need to do with the idea that they have to do it quickly, and as the cleanup progresses, make the decision when to put the pace car and field out to make a quick start.
Yeah, black all has issues, overheating, difficulty in starting, etc. At the runoffs the crews are going to handle most of that with support equipment anyway. Circulating around behind the pace car counting yellow laps is a bit of nonsense though. It would require race control to look at the time remaining and make a call on how many laps, plus pace, will remain and get the word down to the competitors before the field rolls again.