Director Of AMA Timing & Scoring On Wednesday’s Timing Problems

Director Of AMA Timing & Scoring On Wednesday’s Timing Problems

© 2004, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

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Copyright 2004, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

AMA Pro Racing Director of Timing & Scoring Ken Rogers met with members of the media Wednesday evening at Daytona International Speedway to explain some of the timing & scoring problems and discrepancies noticed by teams.

The most noticeable problem occurred in Superstock qualifying. At the end of the session, after all bikes had come off the track, Graves Yamaha’s Jason DiSalvo was listed as having the fastest time. In fact, DiSalvo did his time mid-session and parked his YZF-R1 waiting for someone to eclipse his time, which he thought no one did based on the monitors.

DiSalvo then proceeded to do several interviews, including one with track announcer Richard Chambers, in which he spoke about the importance of getting pole. In the middle of his third or fourth individual interview DiSalvo noticed that Ben Spies was elevated to the top of the qualifying order with a faster time, which greatly upset DiSalvo and his team.

Rogers’ explanation for this situation was lengthy and somewhat complicated. Essentially due to a “synchronization problem,” the timing & scoring computer took it upon itself to move the checkered flag in front of Spies, and automatically disallowed his time.

The computer is programmed to automatically disallow any laps that occur after the checkered flag is thrown.

AMA Timing & Scoring noticed “within 30-40 seconds” that the checkered flag had been moved, according to Rogers, and his staff made the appropriate corrections, which resulted in Spies’ time being posted on the monitors late.

Rogers said Spies’ time was confirmed by checking that he had hit all of the segment timing loops around the track correctly and by replaying and timing Spies’ lap with the new, super-high-speed finish line camera.

“We do record all of the times for all of the laps by all of the riders. All the data was there,” said Rogers, adding that there was no question that Spies had done the fastest time.

As for some riders appearing on the monitors twice, as they did Wednesday, Rogers said this was because some riders took out two different bikes with two different transponders in the same session. The riders only appeared on the screen twice for a short period of time, said Rogers, until his crew manually removed the slower of their two times.

As for riders on the track not appearing on the timing monitors at all, Rogers said this was a matter of logistics. Registration and tech inspection are open after practice has already started, explained Rogers, resulting in some riders who haven’t been entered into the timing & scoring system going out on track and not appearing on timing monitors.



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