Oh, come on, now; when are you guys going to let the rest of us in on
the
joke? What's the story here?
Two years ago at the VTR convention in Boulder, there was a funkhana.
The first portion was a blindfold drive - as I recall there was the
lauch, a slight jog right to a cone, then a left and stop.
Most everyone crept through the section, taking 20 seconds or so (best
was the little kids navigating by pointing). Bob Bownes and John Lye
had their driving suits along (I still don't know why), so as a joke
they suited up, put on helmets, and jumped into the Fat Chance TR4A
(aka "The White Car") which had come *this* close to FTD at the
autocross that year. Bob drove, and he had (I think) paced off the
distance to the cone -- his instruction to John was "just tell me when
we get to the cone and when to brake". They got to the line, Bob
launched, got the signal, turned left, got the signal, braked -- it was
over in about 3 seconds. Of course, they did the rest of the course so
fast that they got penalties for missed tennis balls and such -- each
one cost 5 seconds so they ended up coming in second.
So, mjb and I decided to try the same thing at the BMCU British Car
Field Meet. Mark drove. It was an H pattern -- straight forward,
backwards lane change, then forward again. Mark launched with the
wheels straight, but the car ended up going slightly left. He didn't
realize this, so he was very confused because his mental image had the
car pointing straight and I was giving instructions that didn't match.
He realized later that he'd left the brake on, causing the car to slew when he
launched. I realized later that saying "point the wheel straight" is not a
useful instruction to someone that can't see.
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