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Junior, By Grade
Junior, By Class
Junior Laptimes
A note about lap-scoring
I love to see riders going hard, especially when there is close racing
But, as long as there is a manual lap-scorer, especially an old man with only one hand, there needs to be a chicane of some sort.
Some chicanes work well for me, some work well for the riders, and some are an arse. But we need one. I try to work with what I'm given and, mostly, the riders do too.
Technically riders are supposed to be at a walking pace in first gear and that was definitely not what was happening on Saturday. Some riders were even clicking into second in the chicane and getting hard on the throttle.
But I can almost live with that. What gets to be a pain is re-tying the tape after every bike and trying to straighten the pigtails and get battens back in the ground.
If the chicane gets totally destroyed the riders end up going too fast for me and there is no point in my being there. So I need to fix it. Over and over and over again
My rule of thumb would be that riders can go as fast as they like as long as they DON'T TOUCH the battens or tape. Simple. If I was allowed a second rule I'd suggest that riders shouldn't break traction. (Honestly, most of the field were great. It was just at the front of the pack that the adrenaline was getting the better of people. And I understand that. But my understanding doesn't make it any less frustrating)
If everyone abides by the same guidelines then no one is getting an advantage. And GOOD (smooth?) riders can still go through fast(ish).
I reckon that most riders, at an active pace (slight throttle), and maintaining a steady, walking-speed pace will take about 3–4 seconds to traverse the 15 meters of most chicanes. Really, we are probably talking 10ths or 100ths of a second difference between a rider knocking something over, and riding through clean. If they could just slow down a fraction and respect the chicane (good or bad as it may be) it would make my life so much more pleasant.
Thank you :-)
