On Mon, 4 Mar 2002, Giles Douglas wrote:
> Thats not what I was saying.
>
> The total time it takes to run the event depends on the start time between
> cars.
Yes.
> The start time between cars depends on the overlap of the course (ie the
> number of cars on course at one time).
No. Those two are not related in any practical way. It is dependent ONLY
on the ability to overlap safely. If you had a course that allowed four
cars, with the first five seconds from finishing when the fourth tripped
the lights; and a 50-yard shorter but otherwise identical course that only
allowed three cars at once (the first having finished by the time the
fourth started), there would be absolutely no difference in the start time
between cars.
> The limiting factors here are the
> total the clocks can cope with, and the safety aspects of the course (and
> probably the relative speeds of the drivers).
The clock isn't a practical limit, it will hold 8 cars at once. Yes,
course aspects, potentially, but that isn't typically a real limit either.
You rarely have more than one "sticking point" to avoid.
> Therefore, the total time it takes to run an event depends on (but not
> only on) the number of cars on course at one time, and the length of the
> course. This is the opposite of the earlier poster's comment that
> "Actually the number of cars on course simultaneously has very little to
> do with how many cars can get through the event" since the event time is
> usually constrained by the site.
No. Number of cars on course doesn't affect how quickly you can start
cars. If you have 1000 runs, it will take 20,000 seconds to run the event
at a 20 second overlap, and 25,000 seconds to run at a 25 second overlap.
There are some incidentals involved, such as a 100 second course will take
longer to finish the last run than a 40 second course, but they are down
in the noise level as far as total time is concerned.
> However, it is still true that if you just lengthen the course by 15
> seconds to let you have one more car on the course at the same time then
> you might not, in fact, gain anything, which I think is the point the
> original poster was trying to make.
It is totally irrelevant.
> You could, theorertically, organize the start with particular groupings of
> fast and slow cars (depending on the speed of the car and the skill of the
> driver) to optimize the overlaps and therefore the event length, but in
> practise this would be way too difficult.
No. I mean, yes, it would be too difficult, but the overlap period is
more about time for workers to clear cones and the trailer to handle
entries than it is a safety gap.
KeS
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