Flagtronics at the June Sprints

[Speed Sport Engineering]

I had an issue with Flagtronics at the June Sprints that I thought I would mention.

At the drivers meetings they were very clear that before the start and on re-starts the corner stations would drop the FCY and be a no-flag condition prior to a green flag. This would coincide with the flagtronics unit going blank until a green flag is given.

On the re-start of our race (FA,FC) at the June Sprints this weekend, visibility was basically zero due to the rain and size of the field. We had a restart after a FCY and due to the poor visibility I could not clearly see the starter stand therefore I was watching my flagtronics. My Flagtronics went blank as expected leading up to the restart.

However, when the green flag was thrown, my flagtronics flashed local yellow, then FCY for 2-3 seconds prior to going green. This was a very bad situation as the field who was able to see the flag was accelerating while I had a moment of confusion and wasn't at full throttle. Luckily I did not get run over.

It's issues like this that keep giving me very little confidence in the system. So far I've found it completely useless and always lagging the actual corner flag conditions.

[MilesCrabbe]

You're not alone, although my situation was less serious. During practice I ran the checkered unintentionally thanks to it. I was getting passed by a K-Hill car that blew past me on the outside of the exit of T13, and was more focused on not locking wheels than reading the flag. I saw the station was waving something but missed it, checked flagtronics: green. Exit of 14 the K-Hill car dives to pitlane, flagtronics: still green. Climbing the hill the corner workers give the "WTF" hands, flagtronics: still green. Top of the hill flagtronics turns the numbers purple. Never displayed a checkered.

I hawked it on the last lap of every non-race session after that, it never showed a checkered. Occasionally it would match the flagstation when there was a yellow/white but it was only 80% on that too.

[BLS]

Ouch.
That is bad.

[Steve Davis]

At the Runoffs last year, I had SEVERAL instances of DEAD FT info.. so, FT reported NOTHING several times when it SHOULD have been reporting GREEN.. or YELLOW.. or WHITE. I reported that to the FT people each time .. including some video showing it.. but got NOTHING in return and NOTHING changed through out the week.. except that the 'dead areas' did seem to 'move a little'. I was quite disappointed that Road America - early adopters.. and FlagTronics itself, did not seem to be very concerned that the system was NOT FUNCTIONING PROPERLY *ALL* the way around the track. I had THREE dead areas and my antenna was in a 'pretty good spot' and received NO interference from anything in my car (no 'transmit' radio).
OH well.. I'm DONE with Road America/Runoffs anyway.
Steve, FV80

[E1pix]

The more crap that’s forced into our day,
The more our days are trashed by crap.

[CheckeredFlag]

You're not alone, although my situation was less serious. During practice I ran the checkered unintentionally thanks to it. I was getting passed by a K-Hill car that blew past me on the outside of the exit of T13, and was more focused on not locking wheels than reading the flag. I saw the station was waving something but missed it, checked flagtronics: green. Exit of 14 the K-Hill car dives to pitlane, flagtronics: still green. Climbing the hill the corner workers give the "WTF" hands, flagtronics: still green. Top of the hill flagtronics turns the numbers purple. Never displayed a checkered.

I hawked it on the last lap of every non-race session after that, it never showed a checkered. Occasionally it would match the flagstation when there was a yellow/white but it was only 80% on that too.

I'd say show the video to the stewards, but we all know it'd go nowhere. It seems our administration thinks Flagtronics is the cat's meow.

As a corner worker myself having used it, I despise the handheld unit. The screen goes into power-save mode during sessions, making it hard to see it. Not to mention, you have to take your eyes off the track to see it unlike IndyCar's panels that are big and bright, visible even with peripheral vision. The buttons are cheap and have almost no tactile feel to them, especially when wearing gloves. IMO, it's an awful device. The best system is IndyCar's, but that would be $$$.

Edit addendum: Please understand that the corner workers are also having to deal with this "technological advance." There are shortcomings that I've addressed with national, been told my input was good, but nothing improves.

[stonebridge20]

It's threads like this that make me glad that my best years in racing are behind me.

[Teuobk]

I concur with the confusing (read: plain wrong and arguably dangerous) Flagtronics indication on the restart of the FA/FC race at the sprints. Fortunately, Flagtronics had been such a load of steaming hot garbage all weekend that I was no longer paying attention to it anyway.

One example is that it was prompting me with an "OK???" message (meant for after collisions) pretty much every time I went through turns 5 and 8, and sometimes Canada. I wasn't even going over the rumbles; I think it was getting confused by the deceleration in the braking zone. When we asked the SCCA-designated Flagtronics expert at the Sprints about it, the response was, "You're running the wrong firmware. We fixed that." No, buddy, we were on the latest firmware, updated first thing Thursday morning at the track, and you most definitely did not fix that.

At various other times local yellows weren't shown, checkered flags weren't shown, and so on.

Even when the Flagtronics was showing a non-green flag condition that matched the corner (which did happen occasionally), it would always lag the physical flags.

Now, credit where it's due: I can see the potential value in a rain race like we had on Sunday, when visibility was poor enough that seeing the physical flags was difficult. I just wish the system were reliable enough to, you know, rely on.

Jeff

[BLS]

I just wish the system were reliable enough to, you know, rely on.

From reading the above comments, and some made elsewhere, it seems that relying upon it is dangerous.

[DaveW]

I installed the remote display version.

My comment, although it has not been active in my races this year, is that the display is, IMO, not large enough to grab attention and read easily. I installed that version because I needed something flat to fit in a visible location w/o hitting my knuckles on it. I'll try to set it to max brightness before the next event to see if that helps

[DanW]

If these issues continue, throw paper (Protests) at the stewards and write to National. They need to know the equipment operation doesn't function as designed. 50 letters got the FF tire rule changed. 50 letters will get National's attention.

Posting it here, not so much.

[Bob Wright]

FRP has elected to make the Flagtronics units strictly advisory, not mandatory in any way. There are still too many instances as noted above. I think most of them are operator induced, not inherent in the system.

A note that is important; the system is more than what you see in the car. In race control, the stewards can see exactly where all the cars are on the track and how fast they are traveling (including if one goes back to the paddock). They can also get a G force reading in a crash. All of this information can be a huge help running the event more efficiently.

[DaveW]

...I think most of them are operator induced, not inherent in the system....

By operator, do you mean the person(s) sending the alerts? I think that's what you meant. I agree that's likely the issue.

[Bob Wright]

yes, both in the tower and on the corner stations - see above comment by Checkeredflag.

[Teuobk]

For another data point, here's the video at the Kink from the Sunday FA/FC race when John slid his 014 into the wall. Note how the physical yellow flag can be seen waving a moment before the Flagtronics changes:



This made me realize something else: one nice thing about the physical flags is that you can often see them from far away. With Flagtronics, the "zones" are only so big. For example, here's the zone map for Road America from this past weekend:



I wonder if perhaps some of the perceived delay might simply be a car not yet passing into the geofenced zone associated with the incident?

Jeff

[douglap1]

This made me realize something else: one nice thing about the physical flags is that you can often see them from far away. With Flagtronics, the "zones" are only so big. For example, here's the zone map for Road America from this past weekend:



I wonder if perhaps some of the perceived delay might simply be a car not yet passing into the geofenced zone associated with the incident?

Jeff

There is an obvious conflict between Flagtronic zones, and the real yellow flag zones. The GCR Section 6.1.1 says:

"The no passing zone starts at a perpendicular line across the track from the flag and ends at a perpendicular
line across the track from the last component of the incident causing the yellow flag. The last component
may be the car, driver, responding officials, other vehicles and/or large debris."

This discrepancy needs to be resolved at some point.

[Steve Davis]

Another thing that might contribute to what appears to be a DELAY.. is that the corner controller has to be ACTIVATED by someone on the corner.. and that someone MIGHT be faster or slower than the person waving the flag. The presumption is that the FT COULD "see" the event before the flag station comes into view. That, of course, varies significantly from turn to turn. The kink flag station is (was?) well to the left of the view of the corner coming out of the carousel. Depending on exactly WHEN the spinning car spun.. and when exactly the corner station ACTIVATED the FT.. and the driver's view of the flag station, I would expect that the flag would be seen before FT crossed into the Geo boundary for FT for that turn. Both should have been well before the driver HAD to devote his attention to the turn in point. Such might NOT have been the case had the spin happen later, but still before the driver left the straight for 'turn-in'.

SO.. they are not likely to become active at the same time in this case.
Steve

[Bob Wright]

I wrote this in a private message thread, but think its relevant to this discussion:

I think the latency issues are real and I'm not sure that could be fixed. Another issue is the yellow comes on the unit before you reach the flag station as pointed out in one of the above posts. The operator errors are numerous- we had an issue at RAt where the tower hit the checker for the whole track instead of just local, then corrected it and went back to green confusing everybody. That's stuff that will have to be worked out.

I think the flags and the panels should be primary and the in-car advisory only going forward. I find it very useful in some cases and tend to ignore it in others. It is nice to see the checker throughout the lap at the end of a practice or qualifying session, for instance. Same for FCY or BFA.

I don't think we can ever get away from corner workers for full race events, while the in-car units and remote panels should be fine for HPVE and track day events where there is either no or limited passing.

While on the subject of corner workers...the current level of skill and training at most of the tracks FRP goes to is abysmal. They tend not to be SCCA workers, rather paid employees of the tracks. This, in my opinion is on the backs of the tracks themselves. I can quote instance after instance of idiocy. One most recent example happened at PIRC two weeks ago; a car spun and high-centered at the exit of turn 5 absolutely in an impact zone during the FA/F2000 race. The corner worker dutifully put out a local yellow but didn't call it in for two laps and then sort of as an afterthought, This, to me shows a lack of basic understanding of what is going on out there. Huh?! It was a classic need for a FCY and potentially a very dangerous condition.

Had we had an active Flagtronics, the tower would have seen the stationary car.

[John Nesbitt]

I wrote this in a private message thread, but think its relevant to this discussion:

I think the latency issues are real and I'm not sure that could be fixed. Another issue is the yellow comes on the unit before you reach the flag station as pointed out in one of the above posts. The operator errors are numerous- we had an issue at RAt where the tower hit the checker for the whole track instead of just local, then corrected it and went back to green confusing everybody. That's stuff that will have to be worked out.

I think the flags and the panels should be primary and the in-car advisory only going forward. I find it very useful in some cases and tend to ignore it in others. It is nice to see the checker throughout the lap at the end of a practice or qualifying session, for instance. Same for FCY or BFA.

.. The corner worker dutifully put out a local yellow but didn't call it in for two laps and then sort of as an afterthought, This, to me shows a lack of basic understanding of what is going on out there. Huh?! It was a classic need for a FCY and potentially a very dangerous condition.

Had we had an active Flagtronics, the tower would have seen the stationary car.

Bob puts his finger on a critical point. While any remaining bugs in Flagtronics will eventually get worked out, the latency issue will be permanent. Somebody has to notice something, then take an action (wave a flag, call in a report, activate Flagtronics), and usually somebody else has to respond. All that takes time. This is a human artifact, after all.

On top of that, certain tracks/Regions have a history of 'curious' decisions from operating stewards. I can think of a couple of incidents at RA.

And, lest we lay it all on the introduction of Flagtronics, these latency issues were/are very real in the pure-play flag-and-radio architecture.

One way to mitigate this is through selection, training, and feedback for flaggers and race control staff. Another is to enforce a sanitary race control protocol (only essential bodies allowed in the room, clear lines of communication and authority, and a strict prohibition on yakking/kibitzing/interrupting).

[DanW]

Bob puts his finger on a critical point. While any remaining bugs in Flagtronics will eventually get worked out, the latency issue will be permanent. Somebody has to notice something, then take an action (wave a flag, call in a report, activate Flagtronics), and usually somebody else has to respond. All that takes time. This is a human artifact, after all.

On top of that, certain tracks/Regions have a history of 'curious' decisions from operating stewards. I can think of a couple of incidents at RA.

And, lest we lay it all on the introduction of Flagtronics, these latency issues were/are very real in the pure-play flag-and-radio architecture.

One way to mitigate this is through selection, training, and feedback for flaggers and race control staff. Another is to enforce a sanitary race control protocol (only essential bodies allowed in the room, clear lines of communication and authority, and a strict prohibition on yakking/kibitzing/interrupting).

Considering the limited staffing at the corners and in race control I completely understand the latency. We have a great ops chief in SFR, but she is only one person. I'm training as ops steward. There is so much to learn and things happen quickly.

[924RACR]

On top of that, certain tracks/Regions have a history of 'curious' decisions from operating stewards. I can think of a couple of incidents at RA.

Very much this; I've been on the receiving end of one of those RA incidents (and subsequent mishandling and coverup by National), and it's a primary motivating factor to me leaving SCCA and never racing there (RA) again.

[Jerry Kehoe]

Certainly understand the staffing problems at most tracks but the things referenced here are inexcusable. It is easy to see the potential law suits for a bad outcome. Until this is fully working I believe it's a disaster waiting to happen with the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. Sounds like a system not fully thought out before making everyone pay a bunch of money for something that is not trustable!

[Speed Sport Engineering]

Good to know I'm not the only one who has issues.

I did not think about the activation zones and the ability to potentially see the flags from further away.

So given:

a) There is an inherent delay between flag condition and Flagtronic condition.
b) Flag condition may be visible from further away then Flagtronic zones
c) Flagtronic condition has been shown to occasionally be inaccurate.
d) Watching both flag condition and Flagtronic condition can be difficult

Then why the heck would anyone pay any attention to the Flagtronic unit? The only value I see in it from a drivers perspective is VSC speed monitoring. We would have been better off with a non-display unit that was cheaper, smaller and easier to deal with and still allowed race control car location visibility.

[Bill Johnson 42]

Mike, as someone who has had the system from day 1 that's exactly how I use it. Overall I quit looking at it an focus on the flags, I mean there are only so many things you can focus on while driving and especially since the flags takes priority over the Flagtronics that needs to be our focus. Sometimes after a session I couldn't even tell you if mine worked.

It's great for full course yellows, restarts if you can't see the flag and the VSC which I hope to never see again. It can be useful to let you know when you clear an incident but mostly we know that without Flagtronics. I think RA installed the system but not sure who operated it from control at the Sprints, whether it was RA staff or SCCA people.

I think we can all agree the introduction has been awkward at times and it never should have been introduced at the Runoffs. That being said, at some point this will be a very useful tool for both drivers and race control. Clearly there is a learning curve for all sides in this. When you factor in our declining worker base it will be a necessity in the near future if we want to keep racing.

My biggest complaint is they won't show a checker when time is up on a session, the Flagtronics is green but you have to look for a flag somewhere to know you're done - this is the one thing that gives me little trust in it.

[Bob Wright]

Showing the (full course) checker at the end of a session (testing, practice and qualifying) is at the discretion of the tower operator. I've both had it shown and not at different events. It should only be a local at S/F during races until the last car crosses the line, then full track.

[RideMore]

We did put the latest firmware in before the event and it worked perfectly for us the whole weekend. We went through and looked at all our videos which happens to show the unit and no strangeness found.

Loving the VSC especially during qually. Keeps the field spread out for a session restart rather than everyone on top of each other when the session goes back to green.