Can anyone comment about last weekends event at Grattan?
Brian
Grattan Major 2017
Can anyone comment about last weekends event at Grattan?
Brian
Brian,
From what I heard, the previous race group oiled up the track and this caused a full course yellow, and then the
track officials said there was additional oil on the track from the Vee's and others. Due to not enough time left to
clean the track, the field followed the pace car around the track under full course yellow until they completed half
of the laps scheduled and then the race was checkered?
I know there are several drivers on the board who were in attendance and might be able to be more specific than
what I was told, but I understand many were very unhappy.
Mark
Mark,
Actually, the oiling by the previous race did not effect our race other then a delay while they cleaned the track. During our pace lap one Vee lost an oil line and another had some other oiling issue. This resulted in considerable oil on the track which was known to us at the back but unknown to the cars in front of them. Result was a few spinners after the green. Double yellows were thrown and then a black flag all on the next lap. It was decided due to the late hour that the race would be shortened to two laps and we all went home non too happy.
Thanks for the clarification. Did anyone speak with the officials or was it a matter of everyone
just wanting to get out of there including the SOM etc.....?
The only other choices given were to parade around under double yellow for half race distance or race under green with a yellow from turn 2 to 6? Most opted to just go home. At least I got to try out my sparkle plenty car!
I was in FF. I think everyone can question why group 7 was having to take the green flag so close to the track cutoff time in the first place? 10s of minutes downtime between groups all weekend.
Brandon L. #96 FF
-PM me for RF85/86 bellhousing
Grattan
Originally Posted by bassracer
I was also in this group and wrote the WMR SCCA and the race chair explaining why I felt that the schedule was mis managed and asked for a 35% refund of my entry fee based on not getting the number of races or track time i signed up for. I urge others in the group to do the same. Don't bother with the WMR contact us portal on their website...it doesnt work. Just email the Race director straight up.
My position was that if the FF/FV/F5 group was group 2 or any earlier group, the track would have been cleaned up then we would have been sent back out to finish the race. The fact that WMR mis managed the available time Sunday made this impossible because of the sound curfew at Grattan.
I do not know exactly how that day's event schedule played out. The 10 min between groups sounds like a reasonable compromise…. provisions for unknowns vs competitor track time.
Were the schedule times (session starts) fixed or did they float? I would hope that some time could be accumulated during the day but maybe 10 min between sessions is statistically well developed for the average event management and does not really accumulate.
There is simply the element of bad luck on the part of last group of the day. If you compete in enough SCCA events this last group of the day problem is going to bite you. At a minimum you should have observed it happening to other groups at events.
Brian
This year's schedule was the same at last year's Major. 15 minute qualifyings and 50 mile/35 minute races on Sunday for 7 groups.
Also, last year's schedule had 10 minute breaks between race sessions. We should have started the race around 4:45p and not 5:45p.
Does anyone know if Group 7 (SRF/SRF3) last year started as close to 6p as we did?
I, for one, was pretty upset.
the day was SO mismanaged, and 10 min between groups is being generous. Just being the last group is no reason to get completely screwed out of basically an entire race. in my opinion, we should have just kept running. There was some oil on the track, but we managed 2 laps under green without an issue, so I think we could have run the race. We waited 7 hours from qualifying for a 2 lap race. I also wrote the SCCA, and I think everyone in that group should get a refund.
Looks like last year's group 7 race started at 5:34 pm, and duration was nearly 35 minutes. Also looks like the "planned" start time was 4:45. Results were printed at 6:19 pm, and official at 6:40.
Grattan Race
Just found this thread.
Most of the info here is correct. A few issues not pointed out. One of the leading F5 cars spun off in the oil and was just off of the racing surface in turn 2, when the officials went full course yellow the pace car missed the 3 leading F5 cars. The 3 cars were kind of driving around on their own. These 3 events most likely caused the black flag all. It was at this point that the officials made all of the drivers get out of their cars, it was pretty much a done deal at that point.
The officials asked all of the drivers who needed to finish and who needed to "participate". No one needed a finish so that pretty much made the decision for them. As I told the officials in the letter I wrote, none of us waited around all day to "participate". We were there to race. Yes, there was a lot of oil on the track but a few laps under yellow and we could have finished the race. The real issue was that the officials mismanaged the time during the day. The schedule that they created left no room for error. With a schedule like this it is imperative that any delay be made up immediately. The officials needed to start cutting out time from each group as they fell behind. It is totally unfair to make one group suffer for other groups issues.
Jim Dietz
#18 FF
I remember a 1/2 distance race behind the pace car. Gingerman, must have been 2005 or so. Early national in the year, and it snowed pretty bad. They let us vote on whether to race or do the pace car deal. I voted to race but the pace car deal won out. Brian Belardi had qualified first in FC so he won and I was second, I think. Man I'm really starting to sound like the old guy I am. One additional thing I remember about that race. Racing shoes and socks are not made for warmth.
[QUOTE=Jim Dietz;543801]Just found this thread.
Most of the info here is correct. A few issues not pointed out. One of the leading F5 cars spun off in the oil and was just off of the racing surface in turn 2, when the officials went full course yellow the pace car missed the 3 leading F5 cars. The 3 cars were kind of driving around on their own. These 3 events most likely caused the black flag all. It was at this point that the officials made all of the drivers get out of their cars, it was pretty much a done deal at that point.
The officials asked all of the drivers who needed to finish and who needed to "participate". No one needed a finish so that pretty much made the decision for them. As I told the officials in the letter I wrote, none of us waited around all day to "participate". We were there to race. Yes, there was a lot of oil on the track but a few laps under yellow and we could have finished the race. The real issue was that the officials mismanaged the time during the day. The schedule that they created left no room for error. With a schedule like this it is imperative that any delay be made up immediately. The officials needed to start cutting out time from each group as they fell behind. It is totally unfair to make one group suffer for other groups issues.
Jim,
the F5 car did not spin in the oil, he had an electrical issue.
not getting the pace car out in front of the leaders was just another complete F-up in this whole deal.
It was surprising to me that I was the only one voicing my opinion that we should just race. Everyone was thinking it, or at least better than half. If not, why show up in the first place. Would have been nice to get some back up from everyone else rather than being, to quote the race steward, the "ONE guy here who thinks we should race". I had a lot of guys come up to me afterward and tell me I was right, but what good did that do when we were all rolling our cars back in our trailers after a 2 lap race?
After waiting 7 hours to race, that was a long 5 hour drive home to think about why I keep attending SCCA events...
Robert Perona
FF#73
SVRA has a different way
At the Open Wheel Challenge SVRA event at Indy it was pretty common for them to give us the 5 minute warning as the cars were starting to come off the track from their cool off lap. If there was something that needed to be cleaned up that didn't happen but most sessions they just kept the schedule moving.
Doug FST 5
I am one of the two Race Chairs for this event. As I was driving that weekend (HP #80) I was not involved in any decisions once we arrived at the track. Nor was any WMR official. By that point, it was in the hands of the stewards. Yes, my co Race Chair was the operating steward for that session but that was due to an illness (he had to relinquish his Race Chair duties and fill in for an ill steward).
WMR has received a few emails on this subject. We have emailed all the competitors in G7 to tell them that we are working on a partial compensation package but it needs to be approved by our BoD. We ask for your patience. Please keep in mind that this is a VERY unique situation. It'll take some time to deal with it as we have not been down this path before (thank goodness).
We will address the salient point in the emails that were sent to us. We will also answer some of the points brought up in this thread. Since this thread exists, I will post the response letter here so the entire FF, FV F5 community has a chance to see how we handled this situation.
I also ask for your constructive criticism. Name calling and unfounded accusations won't help.
Also understand that WMR has NO control of the event once it begins. We put the pieces in place for the steward, worker and driver corps....its a team effort by all three groups to make sure the weekend goes smoothly.
WMR strives to hold successful events. Anything that we can do to mitigate further incidents like this will be considered. We have already begun preparation for next year's race and are making changes to effect a better event. We'd prefer not to take away track time from each race group but we may have to in order to avoid scenarios like this again.
Thank you for your time and please feel free to email me offline (hdf3.wtr80@gmail.com) if you have something to add to this discussion that you'd prefer to keep private.
Dayle Frame
I'd like to ask a stupid question.....how did a guy in CA know there was a goofy end to a race in MI? How did you find out about our event and its outcome? Apex is a rather large set of forums. Is there another thread about our race that I don't know about?
I'm curious about the timeline as this thread started the same date we started receiving letters from the drivers in attendance.
Dayle
I was following the FV group on one of the SCCA live results sites. The lap count and finishing order were very odd.
Brian
Ah ha....that makes sense. I often follow the prod guys at other Majors to see how things are going. Thanks for the update.
Dayel
As promised, WMR is posting the text of the email sent to the G7 drivers via email blast through MSR. We wanted the entire FF, FV and F5 community to know how we responded to this unique situation. Please read the entire message. I know its long......but we wanted to explain some inaccuracies in the emails we received. Please contact me (hdf3.wtr80@gmail.com) if you have any questions.
Dayle
================================================== ============
Dear Group seven competitors,
First of all, on behalf of the region I want to make sure you all hear our heartfelt apology. While “I’m sorry” were literally the first words out of my mouth when I came down to address you, I know that two competitors were incensed that nobody apologized. I did and I regret that you did not hear me. I also sent out a message last week that said we would respond to this issue. I understand that at least a couple of competitors found those messages in their spam folders. I hope this one reaches each and every one of you.
I am Verne Wandell. I was the point race chair for the Majors at Grattan. Our race chairmanship is made up of two people and has been for the past six or seven years. I am a steward and am past Divisional Administrator (DA) of flagging for Great Lakes division. My partner, Dayle Frame, is a competitor in HP for the last 15 years and a flagger as well. We rotate who is on for each race. Between us we have been on all sides of issues like this and, believe me, we share your pain. This was not the event that we planned.
Thus far we have received five letters with varying degrees of complaint. We have also received four letters of condolence or understanding. We are also trying to follow the forums where there seems to be more dissatisfaction and less support. As in all cases of disappointment, I think that there is some misunderstanding about how things work and, more importantly, quite a bit of inaccuracy as to what happened. I hope to put these matters to rest with this message and our Board of Directors agrees that we must do something to try and express our dissatisfaction with how things ended for your group at our event.
Several of you have talked about the “sound curfew” at the track but, from what I have read, there is little knowledge of what our contract actually stipulates. We agree that we will not schedule any sessions to run past 6:00. If a session is delayed sufficiently so that it runs beyond 6 pm, then we are allowed to run it. There is, however, both the letter and a spirit of the agreement. If we are to be allowed to continue racing at Grattan then we must respect the track and their relationship with their neighbors. Because of that respect, when offered the opportunity, WMR runs a “non-schedule, schedule”. If a race has a hard, time certain schedule the stewards are bound to await a published time in order to start any session and, therefore, it is impossible to condense time. If all elements are in place to start a race early it cannot be done. With a non-schedule, schedule, events proceed from one to the next without delay. There were, in fact, two blind schedules for our race. One, an optimistic one created by the race chairs and one, a pessimistic version, created by one of the Assistant Chief Steward-Operating (ACS-Op, the ACS-Op is the steward responsible for making decisions during a session). Just because there was not a schedule published does not mean that we were not working with one. In fact, the schedule for the weekend was the exact same schedule that worked out successfully at the 2016 Grattan Major. This year group seven was released before 6 o’clock with the staff and officials fully anticipating that it would run as planned. It was solely on-track incidents during the session that caused the early termination of the race.
Please understand that the schedule and the rotation of groups is created in March or April, long before we have any idea of what groups will be biggest or smallest. This schedule is reviewed and approved by folks from outside the region long before the race. Once the schedule has been published as a part of the entry packet, it can only be changed by the Stewards of the Meet (SOM). WMR has a practice of rotating the group order every year. If you were first or last (or last before lunch) this year you will not have that position next year. We believe in equal opportunity for all of our racers. If that means one group gets an advantage or disadvantage this season, we guarantee the same group will not be in the same position next year.
You should also know that our pessimistic blind schedule had the same projected 10 minute break between the end of the longest available session time (25 or 35 minutes) and the release of the next group that is employed throughout the division. It obviously didn’t work for us this time but there was ample precedent to believe that it would. Again, I remind you that the same schedule worked in 2016.
There have been several who have said that the lunch started or ended late and that was the result of mismanagement. I will tell you that, at the end of lunch on Saturday, we were ahead of the pessimistic schedule (cars on course at 1:48 instead of 2 o’clock) and we were on-time on Sunday (2:09 release that was scheduled for 2:10). I don’t have any idea where the idea came from that we were late but it is just not factual. On Saturday, we were scheduled to end at 5:55 and, in fact, the checker was displayed at 6:18. All time was lost after lunch. On Sunday, the first two races were run prior to lunch and, as I said, we were on time when we came out of lunch. Group 7 was scheduled to end at 5:45 and you know that did not happen. Again, all time was lost after lunch and after the first two race groups got their allotted time.
A couple of folks have said it was a bad decision to let group seven out at all for their session because of oil on the track. In fact, there was a line between start and one but it was not oil. A car had lost its engine but both the course marshal and a starter walked the course from start to one and neither found it slippery. There were some aluminum pieces on the course and those were cleaned up. No surface condition flag was required on the front straight for the release of group seven. There were a total of 20 minutes between the checker of group 6 and the release of group 7 cars but that was due to the necessity of using the roll-back wrecker to pick up the car at one so that it did not drop oil on the track. Perhaps it would have been wiser to just pull the car farther off into the grass and pick it up at the end but, in the end, it would have made no difference. Starting 10 minutes earlier might have meant 5 laps for group 7 rather than 2 prior to the oil on track but probably not.
It has been suggested that there might not have been enough resources for the cleanup between turn 2 and turn 8. Frankly, I figured that would take about 30 minutes, regardless of resources, since we were talking almost a mile of track surface and the oil was left on the racing line. In fact we had a wrecker, tilt-bed, flat tow and fire-rescue available as well as a truck and tractor provided by the track.
Someone said that there was no apology offered the drivers. As I said at the start that is untrue but I do believe it’s likely not all of the drivers heard the first words out of my mouth. Frankly, I was the one who was more concerned with making sure everyone that came to qualify for the Runoffs had the opportunity than anything else. At the beginning of the weekend fully 10% of those entered for the Runoffs had yet to qualify. Many of them were trying to get in by the divisional process. I was concerned that they may need a finish, not just participation, and nobody seemed to know for sure. The SOM and an operating steward took care of the issue. In retrospect it does seem unfair that I was more concerned about Runoffs than I was that group seven was losing some of the track time they paid for. That was a personal failing on my part and the region hopes you will accept our compensation offer as a gesture of good faith.
There remain a couple of small items:
WMR trophies are always delivered to the track (hopefully in sufficient quantities, again they need to be ordered well ahead of the car count) and we mail each competitor who chose to pick up their trophy an applique that has the driver’s name, class and position. Anyone who did not pick up a trophy at the event but is entitled to one can request that it be mailed to them at their own cost. In 2017 the Majors trophy moved from a national office responsibility to a region responsibility so some of you may not know that.
The Majors sticker that was available in the past was also a national office responsibility that went away with the restructuring of the program in 2017. I understand that it may return in the future. The Great Lakes Division sticker was offered this year as the Majors race was part of the Division Championship series, most pertinent to those seeking the divisional path to the runoffs.
Someone suggested we would have had more complaints if our region’s contact page worked. While our site is undergoing a complete redesign I have tried the contacts page on Windows 10 using both Edge and IE as well as on XP using IE and Chrome and on IOS 10 mobile. It worked for me.
Again, and finally, we are sorry for the loss of your track time. We would do anything we could to have a do-over and we would make some changes. Alas, all we can do is try harder next time and provide some recompense as a token of that apology. Hoping we will be granted a Majors next year we have already modified the schedule. Trying to give you all more track time has proven to be our undoing. While we are required to give you 35 minutes of non-racing time, we gave you 40. It worked last year but not this year. Trying to provide longer races we used 25 minutes, instead of 20, for the short race on Saturday and 50 miles, instead of 45, for the Sunday race distance. Again, it worked last year so we had every expectation that it would work this year. Sadly, it did not. We will not be so hopelessly optimistic in the future because, while it will likely not affect FV, FF and F5, it may well affect someone.
Shortly you will each find a $125 credit in your MSR account that you can use on any WMR race. We hope that you will come back, race Grattan – one of the best road circuits in the country (according to team Jaguar) and partake in our Saturday evening social and barbeque. Our region is number 006. We have been racing a long time in Western Michigan and we hope to be racing a lot longer. Do we make mistakes? Of course we do. We try to get better each time. I am so sorry that we failed you this time.
Respectfully,
Verne Wandell
Race Chair, 2017 “Original” Last Chance Majors at Grattan.
WOW! I am impressed. S(*t happens and mistakes are made. It is nice to see a well thought out response. Grattan is one heck of a race course - hopefully next year will work out better.
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