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At the last Wakefield meeting we were forced to buy a radio receiver which cost $110, all the official announcements were sent via this radio, from what I can gather it was developed by the Qld race promoters, up until about 3 days before the event I had never heard of it.

At Wakefield it worked really poorly, for me it was more of a hinderance, the transmissions while I was on the track were a waste of time.

What do other people reckon??

Did it receive voice announcements, of the type normally put over the track PA, or timing information?

I haven't had to drive with them personally, but I got the run down at the start of the 300 on the weekend… Queensland raceway is the Australian dist for the radios, and their explanation of the Wakefield situation is that they didn't have enough officials around the circuit to relay info to the tower. From what I saw on the weekend the system they have implemented up there in combination with the radios is just so dumb. There were numerous examples on the weekend where cars where broken down just off the circuit and marshals came out close to the circuit to recover the car, at 1 point one car was being extinguished on the outside of the final turn and most cars ignored any caution given over the radios and were passing into this corner under brakes at full race pace, conventionally this would have called for a safety car… they don't use a safety car, instead if the situation is drastic enough the call "clampdown" over the radio and you are to slow down to around 80km/h and maintain the gap to the car in front, so as to stop anyone gaining an advantage like you would under a conventional safety car. We all hate getting caught out by a safety car but it's a case of you win some you lose some and it comes down to limiting risk and keeping everyone as safe as possible, there were no blue flags to slower cars, it was just a mess and and has by no means made the racing more safe, quite the opposite.

david_syd_au wrote:Did it receive voice announcements, of the type normally put over the track PA, or timing information?

No it broadcasts to drivers while racing, letting them know about incidents on the circuit.

little decks wrote:

david_syd_au wrote:Did it receive voice announcements, of the type normally put over the track PA, or timing information?

No it broadcasts to drivers while racing, letting them know about incidents on the circuit.

Sounds like a nasty can of worms, with equipment failure of the receiver becoming an excuse for doing the wrong thing, ie passing under caution, unless this system is infallible.

Well it works in conjunction with the light signals, all lights solid yellow means there is an incident on the circuit and the light just before incident will flash yellow. Solid red is a "clampdown" which is basically a safety car except no safety car (leader sets the pace and all cars must maintain the gap to the car ahead and not make up time and laps are not counted) then flashing red is essentially a traditional red flag situation, god knows what was wrong with the traditional system of flags/signals….

Look I am a big fan of Wakefield and they run great events (as highlighted by the weekends 300). But I am not a fan of the radios, I think ..as I have said elsewhere...they are compensating for the lack of driver education. Flags work the world over, simple but effective.

The Queensland thing with different flags and rules is rediculous, for the radio thing to work the drivers need to get near perfect reception, they can't make an announcement about a problem and just assume every driver heard it, I reckon it could make things more dangerous, I've been racing for a long time and as long as the flags and marshals do their thing then it works...

Waste of time for mine.

I was happy to give it a go at Wakefield park. An email was sent out before the MRA round which suggested it would be a "trial" and not enforced but likely to be mandatory in future events. It also said that extra headphones could be purchased if needed.

It was a little disappointing after purchasing a unit with extra headphones to be told at the drivers briefing that we cannot swap the radio over in a driver change and we have to purchase another complete radio unit with headphones.

Personally it was of little help for me. I had broken sentences in pit lane (usually enough to work out the code word) and on the circuit was shocking. I had some signal on pit straight and the back straight. Anywhere from turn 1 to the fish hook was non existent. I have to admit I did bluff my way through the whole "raise your hands if you are a co driver" test because of the poor radio signal ;)

I do believe it can be a very useful bit of gear when it is working correctly but it should still be used in conjuction with all of the existing flags/lights. My issue is how hard it was pushed/marketed to us and that the only possible problem would be flat batteries or incorrect use. In reality the infrastructure was not in place for the radios to work properly and at a guess had never even been tested at wakefield????

I certainly felt we had no choice about using it but it was certainly being dríven by the guys from Queensland...not sure that is such a good thing.

I think the main reason it was bought in by Qld was due to the lack of volunteer officials they get to run a race meeting. Rather than have very poor coverage of flag points they try to do it with lights from the control tower. Reasonably easy at QR as you can see the whole track, a bit more difficult at Lakeside as there is a blind spot up around the Karosel.

Apparently at Wakefield on the Saturday the radios were introduced there were only had enough officials to man 2 flag points. If this was the case and the race meeting was under CAMS control the day would have been cancelled on safety grounds. Having the radios there allowed the day to continue as the "flagging" could be done remotely using the raceceivers.

The radios are used to assist with this in conjunction with the three C method of caution, clampdown and cancel. In my opinion it works well for the whole of the meeting, races aren't cut short due to time constraints in getting safety cars out on track, the caution system works well, same as yellow flag, but also with voice instruction of where the incident is, both general location and specific location, e.g. Driver's right turn 4 car spun. You hear that a few corners ahead and you know what to expect. I found that aspect a lot better than arriving on an incident with just a yellow or double yellow and no idea where the vehicle is.

The testing of radios for the next event isn't that bad, you have to test to make sure the other drivers in the up coming event can hear the radio. I didn't find it distracting and it was my first race meeting with any type of in car communication where I was competing.

Overall, I think it is a good system of communicating with the drivers to allow a race meeting to run with less resources. There maybe tracks where the system won't work very well due to the limitations of the receivers and how they are designed, Bathurst, Phillip Island, Wanneroo and Eastern Creel come to mind due to the terrain and broadcast black spots that they would have for the frequencies used. But at tracks like Lakeside QR, Mallala, Winton, Wakefield the system should work well.

You also have to remember that the system is in its infancy and as the operators and drivers are more experienced with its operations then the procedures will improve to make the whole system run and be better utilised.

QR are doing a great job of making motorsport available to more people with less and less resources. How many people on here who race have done any other marshaling than the one day on flags they have to do to get the signature for the CAMS licence??? Or if using an AASA licence have you ever spent the day on the flags?

As people have less time to offer their services through work or whatever reason there are less and less people who are willing to give up a weekend standing out in the sun, wet, cold, hot, wind etc for a few selfish people to run around in their cars having fun.

At least the organisers are trying something to put systems in place so we can still race when there are limited resources to man the track and provide the services required.

How many people on here would be baying for blood if a race meeting was cancelled because there were no volunteers to run it???

I have no affiliation with the raceceivers or QR, but come up against this resistance to new technologies and processes every day in my job and find it frustrating that people won't give something new a chance, or try to look for the benefits in trying to improve how things are done.

Wakefield uses lights and I think usually only have a couple of points manned, they use the lights system. The whole track is visible from the control tower, T10 is a little obscured but can be seen.

Definitely preferable having flag points manned, nothing like eyes on the ground for a quick response. But good point that it requires sufficient volunteers.

One of the arguments for the radio system is that it has been used in Speedway for years. Circuit racing is suited for flags as it enables a section of the track to be singled out, unlike Speedway. Getting info about T2 when you are on T4 is not so timely.

I've now raced twice with the radio system at QR ,it is distracting at times , I think a lot of that comes from the person maning the radio in the tower someone should give him a Valium pre race start to try and calm him right down,apart from that it has merit . As far as the 3 C system goes that was just nuts ,the 300 had some of the most dangerous recoveries and race behavior I've seen in a race,the driving standard was great as far as competitor to competitor goes but nobody slowed down for caution spots .marshals where pulling cars out of sand pits on exit of turns 1,3 and six under what may aswell have been full race conditions,it was crazy, there timing system doesn't work we did 96 laps and finished 3rd outright they only counted 95 and placed us 5th. I've been told that so the battery in them last 5 years they turn them selves off after 40 minutes and only re activate when you break the beam on pit exit so they had to manually lap score cars only pitting once for most of the race. great system for a 300 km race , hopefully they can sort these issues before next year and make it as good an event as the Wakefield and winton 300s

What I didn't like was that we were forced by buy an unproven system, really needed a lot more testing, and you don't really want to hear people being gridded up when you are in the last few laps of your race, probably needs a different channel for each category...