Hi guys

Don't mean to stir trouble:), but here's something that's bugged me since I first really encountered it last year:

Do I understand the concept of max lateness correctly? If you're (at OWR for example) 30minutes off your predicted time, you're invisible to the rally, and have to hurry to 'catch up', even though that'll mean being early at at least one (or usually more) of your next checkpoints?

I'm having trouble bending my mind around this one, as it seems contrary to all the spirit of safety and sanity that I trully appreciate of the rally community. Take an event like OWR, and a newbie like myself (at least I recognize limits of my skills, which mostly keeps me out of too much of trouble:)). We promote safety and laws; in fact you're never ever supposed to drive over your limits or over the speed limit. But hit those magic 30 minutes (which isn't usually a problem in navexes but is ridiculously easy on an event 9 hours long, especially if we get weather like at Jaunt), and everybody sort of looks the other way, hey no pressure, but catch up, somehow, and we won't ask questions?? (even though CAS is usually only 10% under speed limit, and one has to drive significantly faster to catch up)

If the only reason this rule is implemented is to alleviate the workload on the checkpoint crews, I can't imagine after hours of waiting, another, say 15 minutes would make much of a difference, but extending that to 45 minutes for example would increase the limit by 50% to participants!
I understand drivexes are meant to be more challenging of course, but I'm still in favour of reasonable learning curves, and there is a beginner's category still. There's enough room in intermediate & expert to be unforgiving  . Plus, events like Lanark have successfully ran with "forgivness time pool" (I forget the exact name) for Beginner's category, which seems to have worked well in the past, and certainly enabled us to drive to our limits...


I guess I'm just unused to the extreme and sudden pressure to go faster then reasonable, in tricky conditions, by people otherwise extremely commited to safety and driving within the limits...  

I think you mean Time Allowance (T.A.)

There has to be some defined cutoff time for max lateness, because that is the latest the checkpoint crew will wait for the last car before closing up shop and moving to a new location.

The CP crew needs to be in position at least 15 minutes ahead of the Car-0 time, in case the first car is max early.  Then they're stuck there for an hour as up to 60 teams cycle past.  Then they have to wait another 30 minutes in case the last car is max late.

After that the CP crew has to hustle their butts off to a new location in order to get set up all over again 15 minutes before Car-0 is expected to arrive there.

It would be very nice if the organiser had the luxury of parking enough CP crews in one location each for the entire night waiting for any really late stragglers.  But the reality is that it's a hellishly complicated nightmare to safely orchestrate the movement of CP-crews from one location to the next in order to get everybody set up in time to catch the train when it arrives at the next location.

If you are the last car in the train and are running more than 30 minutes late, you won't find any checkpoints because they're packed up and gone.

However, if you're one of the first cars running and are more than 30 minutes late, you may encounter the checkpoints still in place and collect a timing sticker from them thinking you're okay.  But scoring should notice later that you're running max late and you'll still get dinged for it.

If you think you are falling outside of your 30 minute max late window, do NOT drive like a crazy madman to try to catch up.  Cut your losses, check your End of Section map, and head for the nearest recovery point.  The EOS map should tell you (roughly) what time Car-0 is expected at each End of Section.  Add your Car# to this time, wait until that time comes up and carry on from there.

If you head off-course like this to the nearest End of Section, you may miss a checkpoint or two, but you'll be back on schedule from there on.   However, if you drive like an idiot on the rally route to try to catch up, you will very likely end up in a ditch, or worse...

Nikola,

All of the advice given above is good as well as the rationale.

The OWR has always given an extra 15 minutes of Max Lateness until this year for a number of reasons,  including that none of the other drivexes have given it and it does not seem to cause any trouble.  It not only allows the Checkpoint crews more time to get to their next assignment,  but it also means that the Sweep can get to anyone having a problem (e.g planted in a snowbank) 15 minutes sooner to get them on their way again.  

In the OWR we provide Recovery Points at a minimum of every 75 kilometres with a Car 0 time at the Recovery Point,  so you can cut route and get back on track if you have fallen too far behind.  You are NOT EXPECTED to drive like a maniac to catch up.

At the end of the rally we have a Max Lateness of 60 minutes, so there are almost no teams timed barred at the Finish.

Each year it is getting more and more difficult to convince Checkpoint crews to sit out in the woods all night so that the rallyists can go play.  Believe it or not,  the extra 15 minutes of movement time helps a lot to get more work out of each crew.  It also makes it less boring for the crews.

Hope this explains the situation for you.

Ross

Time Allowances as used in MCO have nothing to do with Max Late.  All a Time Allowance does is lower your penalty in scoring, which hopefully encourages a team accumulating too much lateness to drive safely, instead of making up time like a maniac and somebody getting hurt.  CPs still close at the regular times etc.
Craig
Lanark Highlands Rally, Organiser