Here is the battle with a BMW , RX7, and a Civic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV5r_0RHiTg

Here is my in-car from Saturday's CW1 that has Redavid's impact into the tire barrier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Zd3K3KN-k

  Not sure if anyone else feels the same but that tire barrier seems to be a bit dangerous when reviewing the vid.  If Redavid missed the corner and blew through some cones, no biggie but when he hit the tires it brought them onto the track and left nowhere for Doodson and I to go.  Potentially a safety issue?


But the best video from last weekend by far is the B-spec racing feature!  We need to pump this one to everyone.  What a great presentation of our track and sport to anyone not aware of what we're doing out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewSF3KrRgCg

Sorry guys, I don't see the issue here.. What if Adam had slid his tail out coming through 6 and bounced the back of his car off the concrete wall and spun out between the 2 walls and blocked the track? I think it would have been even more unsettling to the drivers behind him with
their foot to the floor coming out of 6, than in a much more open area like 7b.

There are hazards and obstacles all over the track, and as drivers you are required to have the skill to navigate them at speed.The tire bundles are off the racing line, like any other object that surrounds the track. At least they are rubber, and not a solid, nearly immovable object like the concrete blocks that surround much of the track.

Unfortunately, we had far too many drivers treating the inside of 7B like a shortcut because it was paved and easy to drive over, and everyone knew they could get away with it for a couple of laps before being called in. Compared to some of the other options, the tires are the best option that seems to work.

My 2 cents.., oops no more pennies in Canada. ...my 5 cents...

THIS WAS A BAD FEELING !

I appreciate and understand that there are obstacles, and in a track like Mission, some are impossible to avoid. But I feel like the general rule in track design over the last.. decade (?) has been to eliminate things you can hit and increase run off, not add more stuff to hit.

I guess exclusively driving a formula car made me unaware that this corner was such a big problem. I don't see many open wheel cars cutting 7b on purpose..

I have, once or twice in the rain, blown 7a completely and ended up having to go straight over the 7b curb, exactly where the tires are now. It hurts, and I have the bent trailing arms to prove it, but with the new tire bundle, that would likely be the end of my season. Like you guys have mentioned, so would crashing into any of the numerous cement walls, but.. I'm not terribly excited about yet another opportunity to get into $$$ trouble.

I don't think tires should be used for anything more than safety barriers, if guys are cutting the corner then maybe we should look at putting a BIG BAJESUS SUPER HIGH curb there that will not be so nice on the car that goes across it.
Tires bundles that move into the racetrack are not the best solution and I think tieing the tires down may cause worse issues.

Tire bundles should only be used to protect drivers from impacting a dangerous immovable object. . Tracks all over the world are moving to paved runoff areas as they've proved to be the most effective way of scrubbing off speed before an impact. It seems counter intuitive to me that one would take a seemingly ideal corner with respect to safety and install a barrier that will undoubtably have countless impacts with possible dire consequences. Safety should supersede any perceived competitive advantage that we're trying to discourage.
There are many alternatives, some suggested above that could be deployed to discourage competitors from cutting the corner without adding safety concerns. Larger curbing is one, no one wants to punish the undercarriage of their race car.
Any addition that increases the possibility of an unsafe impact, which this clearly is as evidenced by the video footage, should be avoided and is untenable.

Thanks for listening

I know we're not a pro racing series, but I was working the front straight in Baltimore in 2012.  There is a light rail line that bisects the track, in 2011 they built a chicane to slow the cars down.  In 2012 the promoter consulted the drivers and the consensus was they wanted to try it without the chicane.  After one session on Friday they knew they would have to put the chicane back in.  On Friday afternoon the built a chicane with tire bundles and only one ALMS car hit the tires in the afternoon.
Overnight they put in curbing and the cars started getting two wheels up on the curbing immediately, and before long cars were launching off the second set of curbing into the wall.  All except for the ALMS cars that is, the ALMS stewards put the tire bundles back out for their race and there was only one car in the wall, and that was on the opposite side of the track when a prototype put a Porche into the wall for unknown reasons.

On Sunday the Indycar Stewards put the tire bundles in the chicane and there were no further incidents of cars short cutting the 2nd corner and going into the wall.

This issue came up when I was on the executive, and one of the biggest problems with issuing penalties for short cutting the curbing would be the issue of fairness.  As short handed as we are for workers on most weekends, and as hard as the marshalls would try to catch everyone who short cut the corner, some would get called and some would not.  My argument was that this would lead to an inconsistancy in the penalty being reported.  If two or three cars went through in a row, the trailing cars would obscure the view of the marshalls in T7. 

Tire bundles may not be the perfect solution, but the other deterents have not been effective in keeping cars from short cutting the turn.  Bigger curbs could cause roll overs, nobody wants those either.