Cadwell - The Good, The Bad &...

[mikeyb]

GT6_User_and_Abuser wrote:

I doubt he'd actually need them, probly had his foot welded to the floor in 4th all the way round!

ur so not wrong - got a little dent under the rh pedal to proove   ;)

[GreenV8Machine]

hooligan!

[Tim Guy]

Chriss wrote:

Here is an explanation about congestion, and I am not the only one making this point.

There were several sessions - late morning and early afternoon - where Qs formed with the slower cars at the front and faster cars at the back, so apart from the car at the front everyone was trying to get past.  All were obaying the rules but it took nearly all the session to free up the congestion. In some peoples' oppinion these were wasted sessions.

Part of the cause of this was letting all of the cars out one go in random order.  First this bunched cars and second some of the faster cars were towards the back.

Last year at Cadwell the marshalls always let the Q on the lhs of the staging area out first.  Quicker car drivers soon realised this and got into the staging Q early and so did not suffer undue congestion, although there was bunching at the begining of the session.

At Goodwood they let you out one at a time at 8-10 second intervals so there is no bunching and overtaking is straightforward.

Different circuits would need to adopt different approaches and if Cadwell had done what they did last year there would have been less congestion.

Indeed this could have been better on the day Chris.
We do ask in our negotiations with the track, that the pit lane marshals let cars out with a small separation to avoid queues on track. That said, for safety, they like to be sure that the first car out can't lap before the last leaves the pit lane so a 4 sec separation would be the best they could achieve with 25 cars. I was surprised about the random order they seemed to be letting the 3 queues out later in the day and sorry I didn't do anything about it until too late.
One to remember for the next time.
Cadwell is pretty unique (with the possible exception of Castle Combe) in having an assembly area rather than a true pit lane, normally there's one line so no choice.