On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 11:09:51AM -0400, John Kelly wrote:
> John,
> If you check the rule book, the maneuver called the "Chicago Box" is not a
> legal course.
I don't see anything like that in the rules. Perhaps you are thinking
of 2.2.A, which says that all corners must be negotiable without
backing up by any car that's classified in the rules. Or 2.2.B which
says that any slalom or slalom-like maneuver has to have the gates at
least 45 feet apart.
You can comply with those rules and still have a maneuver that looks
like this:
________________________________________
V
__________ * ________
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|____________________|
It's really equivalent to this:
____ ____
V
____ * * * ____
A A
As long as the entrance and exit cones of the box are 45 feet from the
center cone, it's certainly legal.
I think nowadays when someone says "Chicago box", they are not
necessarily referring to something that's the same size as the one at
the 1982 Nationals. It's just *a* Chicago box, not *the* Chicago box.
In response to people who think that a 45-foot slalom would be keen, a
45-foot extended slalom is super tight, even for a Miata. Check out
Roger Johnson's course design handbook on the Houston SCCA web site
sometime. He recommends that to keep a course fun and flowing, a
slalom with a 45-55 foot slalom spacing should have a cone removed.
I think that the minimum spacing of 45 feet is meant to be applied in
the case of isolated 3-cone slaloms (or "box" maneuvers) where the
entry and exit are on the "easy" side. When the slalom is extended or
the entry and exit are on the "hard" side, you really don't want to be
pushing the minimum limit on spacing.
It's also probably nice for clubs that don't have the benefit of the
large sites that we get to use, and have to keep things slow and
safe in a small parking lot.
--
john@idsfa.net John Stimson
http://www.idsfa.net/~john/ HMC Physics '94
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