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The challenge with mech blocks being placed on the inside of the lane is a large area would have to be left for mechanics to access it from the starting gate without crossing the track.
This would then lead to 10 pagers about 42 second lap times and why don’t they use more of the stadium floor.
Just doing some farmer math here, 20 riders going by 20 times is 400 passes a race, conservatively that’s over 3000 times an event.
50,000 times a season.
I’m just glad a meteor didn’t land during the race or we’d be talking about only racing in domed stadiums in case of meteor strikes.
My solution: if a mechanic hits another rider with a pit board the mechanics rider is penalized 10 points for 1st offense. Heck, it may already be a rule.
wait till you find out they have guys that videotape all the sessions and data acquisition and (passive) traction control
it's been raised in the past because it's the intuitive thing to do. progress takes time, we'll get there.
Why not just require the mechanics to use foam dry erase boards. No hard plastic no issues. Simple.
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I’m against radio comm’s, even one-way comm’s. The benefit of the pit-board is they are at one section of the track and the rider has the option to look or not. A one-way radio piece would create an unexpected interruption at an undetermined time - another variable I don’t think a rider really needs.
Additionally, one of the best parts of our sport is we let the racers race. They get to showcase their skills of knowing what’s happening around them, how to set up their own race, how to gauge if another rider is faster or slower in a certain section, how their bike is working from what they see/feel..
I fell on a For Sale sign made of that stuff while I was skateboarding as a kid and caught the edge on my knee and it sliced me clean. Had to get like 8 stitches afterwards.
This would be the only way they should be allowed. Anything else/providing more info would ruining the sport.
I certainly fall into the “never raced a SX main” category, but I will still disagree, just based on the number of motor sports that absolutely rely on electronic communications and have even higher stakes than MX/SX. Yes, many F1 racers have yelled at their technicians to STFU at times, but I don’t know of a single crash that has een been attributed to driver distraction due to yapping in his ear.
And as for focus, look at the guys racing World Rally. Electronic comms are a central component, and the constant stream of talk from the navigator doesn’t seem to draw the driver’s attention from the task at hand.
I’m not suggesting the elimination of pit boards, because even with radios in place, pit boards can give useful visual information, like they do in F1. But I believe the “safety” argument against radios is flat out wrong. I still think the only reason they are not being used today is because the right palms haven’t been greased.
oo i forgot about rally. rally requires more concentration than moto, sorry. those guys are aliens.
semi unrelated, but hilarious:
Rally is a fair bit different and having the co-driver right next to you reading prepared notes is very different to having the a spotter in the stands above telling you random shit while trying to pick a rut for a triple ,
I’d take the advice of the only main event winner in this thread
Or…pit boards work fine, the mechanics just have to be switched on. While the riders are navigating a sx track the least the mechanics can do is make sure they don’t frigging hit someone
Underrated idea right here.
No other sport requires as much concentration and focus as motocross or Supercross, specifically Supercross. You are literally landing in and taking off from ruts in rhythm sections while jumping 60 feet or more. A lapse in concentration at the wrong time could mean severe injury or worse. Rally drivers are in constant communication with their copilot. They also have four wheels on the ground at almost all times. I’m not sure who else you need to hear it from besides DV, but he is correct and he would know better than anybody here.
If the issue is the “spotter saying random things” then that’s a protocol issue, not a hardware issue.
I remember when Ping blabbed about how we need radio comms in MX/SX so bad on his show, and then his Sena sponsorship ran out.
I believe that is why radio comms were banned from SX, I want to say around 1990? I remember Johson and Ward having about a 2x3" box on the back of their helmets for in-helmet communications, I think it was the first of its kind, but was short lived because of the expense (to privateers), and what they felt at the time was an advantage.
Reading the OPs first thought on this, my first thought was "I would give anything to hear what a top professional would say about this for real-world expert input", I am glad DV chimed in, I kind of figured that is what he would say. In a sport where every second is a split-second decision, the last thing anybody needs is a distraction, it would be unsafe. On a funny note, the first thing that came to mind would be Deegan, with Brian driving him nuts around the whole track. LOL
Found an article about this:
ASK THE MXPERTS: "GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM" - Motocross Action Magazine
How do you figure? You also have a metal cage protecting you making injuries much less frequent.
Pit Row
World Rally is an entirely different situation. Those guys got to pre-run many many miles of course a few times, mostly dirt roads, and then they have to go send it. The guy reading the notes is there because the driver does not really know the course well and they need the notes to know what follows the turn they're currently on. The person communicating with them is also in the car with them and doesn't get a bird's eye view.
MX/SX riders get track walks, press day, practice, qualifying, etc. They could ride that track with their eyes closed. They don't need course notes. Safety from race director is the only communication I could be convinced on. BS like team orders, bird's eye view line choice from a 3rd party, point calculations from the team, etc. would change racing so much and I think in a bad way. Like another poster said, let racers race. That is what this sport is and one of the many reasons why I think it's so much better racing than F1. I race cars and I've never lined up for a MX/SX race but do ride recreationally. MX/SX is my favorite racing sport because you're putting guys on bikes and letting them run.
the WRC guys have to blend sensory feedback with verbal feedback*, are constantly on the edge of the friction circle and the consequences of virtually any mistake typically are a totalled car and a roll down a mountain.
*what i mean by that is their eyes and butt are telling them one thing in the instantaneous moment, they're looking ahead to predict how that feedback will change and they're blending the instantaneous with the forward-looking predictive WITH also what the co-driver is telling them the future is going to be. while this is going on, they're modulating throttle, braking with their left foot, and feeding in and taking out steering in 10hz+ microcorrections to manage the relationship between vector and yaw for the best drive and trajectory possible. supercross is no fucking joke, but i would argue there's more that can be handled by the base program and less that requires active micro-management, there are fewer stimuli, fewer variables, and while perhaps a deeper level of input variability, because the body is an infinite gyroscope, there are fewer inputs overall quantitatively that really have to be actively blended. if you combined dirt track with dakar rally PLUS a radio/nagivator, i think you'd about equal WRC.
Could you imagine how much more of a menace Vince would be if he had somebody spotting for him
can you imagine Tony Alessi on the headset to him
There is a drug ring inside of Mx sports!
Did anyone notice if the riders and mechanics were more careful and aware in the pit boards area of the track this past weekend?
Maybe that's the only solution needed?
100% this. It would fundamentally change the sport dramatically, and not for the benefit of competition and entertainment..
Further to this. The notes they are being read from are notes they themselves developed over the previous days AND/OR have read through many times prior.
No comparison to random info coming at you.
I'm not sure on the radio thing. But a quick and easy solution to prevent riders from hitting pit boards and riding right up against the mechanics area "wall" is to simply put tuff blocks along the front of it to make that extra space. I'm kind of surprised they don't already, here's a shitty photoshop example lol
Do we need pitboards? In practice they watch the leaderboard like a hawk. How often is information read that changes the outcome of the race?
“Breathe”
“Keep pushing”
“3 laps”
“Focus”
First, why would anyone be giving riders random information?
Second, the comparison is that other motor sports, featuring higher speeds, more mass and more danger, that also require extreme pilot focus, are able to manage with intentional electronic communications. Why do so many assume that , if introduced to motocross/supercross, the headsets will be filled with random nonsense at the worst possible moments? It’s really not that difficult to develop a practice and protocol that is more helpful than harmful.
Just get rid of pitboards, surely they can think for themselves for 20 minutes. How often do they actually read the message, how often do they give a shit about the message. And would they pay more attention to what is going on around them if they didn’t have a pit board?
Post a reply to: Radios > Pitboards. It's time.