Times when accidents happen ahead.

[Joseph Mason]

I'm curious on how they adjust a competitors time if someone is slowed down by an accident ahead.

IE: car A goes and has no issues. gets a time of 30 minutes.
car B goes and crashes and ends up scattering debris all over the course, as well as landing in the middle of the road.
car C comes along, and is slowed either by debris, or by the car still in the way.

does car C get any sort of adjustment, or do they just get to suck it up and hope they can make up the loss?

I do know they set off with a few minutes between them, but something like this has to have happened at some point.

[janvanvurpa]

It's called "TS" adjustment Some could be fooled into thinking it has to do with Time and Speed...

Not so..

Its called "Tough Shít" adjustment...

Most rally drivers/co-drivers, crews. and even fans have all thriough history been made of something just a little tougher than the average man on the street and orders of magnitude tougher than the fans and participants in smooth surface circuit events... I believe it was an Englishman who call those people "Limp-wristed Nancy-boys" and he, being a whinging Pommie bastid, should know a good bit about Girly-men since those Isles are swarming with 'em...

Note I said "have tradionally been"....

These days with little short sprinty events and little short stages and a Legislated max 8h day and all the marketing push to have mere children driving the cars---so that the much vaunted "Target Demographic" will see children who look just like them, and not grown men, who knows now with the on board TV, and all the telemetry...


Maybe its still just "TS"

Or "Farce Majeur"

I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy, no wat er a Noobie..
Where ya from? You a fan or compete or want to compete?

[Zeakiwi]

Page 33 of the 2015 FIA WRC Sporting Regulations states "2015 FIA World Rally Championship Sporting Regulations"
33/98 Application from: 01/01/2015
Published on: 08/12/2014
39. INTERRUPTION OF A SPECIAL STAGE
When a special stage is interrupted or stopped for any reason, each crew affected will be allocated by the
clerk of the course a time which is judged the fairest. However, no crew which is solely or jointly
responsible for stopping a stage may benefit from this measure.

So it is possible the final results of a World Championship could be decided by arbitrary stage times decided by a Clerk of the Course.

[AL14]

It happened to Hirvonen in Portugal 2014. He was second on the overall ranking, Ogier was first. I don't remember who crashed but he was stuck on the road for the reason you explain. They assign Hirvonen Ogier's timing until that split.

EDIT: they assign Hirvonen Ogier's time from that split to the end of the stage

[Mirek]

Actually it happens from time to time. Some clearly wrong decisions about notional times are relatively rare on the top level but with competitors in sub-classes it's unfortunately very common problem.

For example the usual way to give notional time for second runs of stage in FIA events is to allocate competitors the time from first pass of the stage. However they usually do it without taking into account what happened in the first pass. Therefore we had a lot of cases when competitors were given times 3 minutes worse then their competitors because they had a puncture in the first run. It sounds absurd but it happened several times in WRC3 or JWRC in 2014 alone.

In fact it can never be absolutely fair but in my opinion in such situation when the stage is topped for example by WRC2 competitor and all WRC3 and JWRC competitors are affected it's better to give all the same time.

[AL14]

For example the usual way to give notional time for second runs of stage in FIA events is to allocate competitors the time from first pass of the stage. However they usually do it without taking into account what happened in the first pass. Therefore we had a lot of cases when competitors were given times 3 minutes worse then their competitors because they had a puncture in the first run. It sounds absurd but it happened several times in WRC3 or JWRC in 2014 alone.

This is just stupid.

[Steve Boyd]

So it is possible the final results of a World Championship could be decided by arbitrary stage times decided by a Clerk of the Course.

Not quite right - the notional times on FIA events are decided by the FIA Stewards. The CofC or results team may provisionally allocate a time during the day but it has to be ratified at the end of day Stewards Meeting where it is often changed to something the Stewards prefer. It could still be than an arbitrary time decided by the Stewards could decide the outcome of an event or championship though.

In UK national events when a stage is stopped part way through the field & not re-started the CofC looks at the slowest time set by one of the cars that completed the stage normally and allocates that to everyone that didn't complete the stage (apart from the car that caused the cancellation). If the slowest time is judged to be "anomalous" (e.g. the car had a puncture or other problem that prevented a normal run) then the next slowest time is considered. This process can continue if more anomalous times are found until the 5th slowest time.

If a competitor stops where there has been an accident involving an earlier car and no 'OK' board is showing (this is required by the UK Rally Regulations) and the stage isn't stopped then the CofC has the discretion to award any time he thinks is fair. Generally the performance of the affected crew throughout the day will be looked at and they will be given a similar time to other competitors who have been setting similar times on other stages.

So us limp-wristed whinging Pommy bastids have different rules to the FIA and as a good friend of mine once said just because the foreigners do it like that it doesn't mean we should!