5 min heat query
 

He's my latest stupid question...

in heats, when does my "personal" 5 mins start?

Does it start when the computer calls my number?
Or does it start when I cross the loop?

The reason I ask is, you quite often see cars going in the wrong order by accident, and i wonder whether if they go before they're called, do they miss a lap? or are they registered as DNS?

I'm just wondering how keen off the line one needs to be when your number is called...

Any how much i need to push my 5 year old only to go when his number is called (which is not as easy as it sounds when you're 5...)

Thank you

Your 5 minutes starts from when you cross the loop, not when your number is called

As above your 5 minutes start when you cross the loop.

You ideally want to set off on your own number as if you set off on someone else's number it is quite off putting.

If you want to simply it your son could just always set off last, wont be a beep but as mentioned his time wont start until he passes the loop.

Thank you all. And good advice about setting off last. Ta

I was in a heat once with a lot of good drivers on a relatively small circuit. I make a small mistake and was lapped almost before I had completed a lap. The rest of the heat I spent getting out of everyone's way.
The best advice I can give is drive smoothly and make as few mistakes as possible

pretty sure some can start your clock when it announces too, but its a programme setting.
just remember if the first car away does a lap before you set off, he will start your clock.

The other thing to be careful with is what happens at the other end.

The beep for the first car starts the 'master clock' which sets the 5 mins needed for the race. When that finishes there is a set time to finish your final lap before it declares 'race over'. For my club its normally set a 45 seconds.

Why does this matter? Well with a 2 second stagger, car 10 starts 18 seconds after car 1. When the 5 minutes warble sounds, car 1 has 45 seconds to finish his final lap, but car 10 (who's race doesn't actually finish til 5.18) gets only 27 seconds.
This means novice drivers with long lap times are more likely to timeout their final lap starting at the back of the grid than the front.

Really? I always thought each driver had the 5mins? I'm sure that at Batley the heat continues until the last car crosses the line when the auto voice then says "car x finished. Race over"
I could be wrong though

I don't think it does Chris, I saw it only yesterday at Batley. The heat finishing before the last car crossed the line.

Chris

all depends on how you have your system set up, Maximum last lap time will determine when the race finishes, thus why begginers can get timed out when they 1st start racing at a club,

As far as I know the timeout at the end of the race applies to each 5 minute run individually. So if you start 10th with a 1 second stagger between cars and the timeout is say 30 seconds, you would have ~40 seconds from when the main 5 minute timer (started by car 1) finishes.

It'd be a bit unfair in the lower heats if the timeout started when the first car finished!

Every car has a full five minutes, plus up to the timeout parameter to complete a final lap. We would generally use about 40-45 seconds as the timeout parameter indoors, so yes on occasion if the very slowest drivers have a couple of crashes on the last lap, the race could potentially end before they complete that last lap.

Aye, that's what I meant

Chris