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Q Rally of Great Britain 21st-24th November 1998 |
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Network
Q Rally of Great Britain 21st-24th November 1998 |
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In 1997 the World Rally Championship became increasingly competitive with placings decided by only a few seconds and in many cases cars set equal times on stages. This occurred on the Silverstone Super Special last year when the results showed Juha Kankkunen and Colin McRae setting equal fastest time, in fact the times were recorded to one hundredth of a second and this showed that Kankkunen was fastest by 0.29 seconds.
Because of this close competition the FIA have decided that for 1998 all special stages will be timed to an accuracy of 1/10th second. This change means that new timing equipment will be used on this year's rally, although initially this will only be at the flying finish on special stages.
At the flying finish, times will be recorded by the cars breaking a beam across the road and this will trigger a new type of printing clock. Times will then be recorded on the time card at the stop line in the normal manner although there will of course be an extra box on the time card for the 1/10th second. These changes will have a knock on effect in the results operation with more information needing to be phoned in and extra space needed on results print outs to accommodate the extra columns for 1/10th seconds.
The MSA has now purchased TAG Heuer timing equipment to allow the timing at flying finishes to be carried out to 1/10 second. Ths equipment consists of a printing clock connected to a beam and reflector sited at either side of the road. When a car passes through the beam the clock automatically prints out a time and this is the official finish time for that car on the stage. In addition a second printing clock will be sited at the flying finish to be operated manually. and to act as a back up in case of problems with the beam operated clock. Unlike the old Wasco printing clocks it is not practical to write the car number beside the printed time on the paper roll. Instead the clock will print out a sequence number for each time recorded and the check sheets for the flying finish are to be amended to provide a column for this sequence number to be written down beside the car number and the recorded time. This column will replace the running order that has been printed on the check sheets, this running order column will in fact be deleted from all the check sheets produced for this years event.
The timing equipment will be set up by the clock delivery cars and is then very simple to operate.
As proof of durability of the equipment the organisers of the New Zealand Rally hired he equipment for use on their event. This rally took place in extremely wet conditions and despite this the timing equipment worked with no problems at all.
As the start of the stages there will be no change to the starting procedures except that all cars will be required to be lined up to the same point with the front wheels in line with the Start board.