2009 Daytona 200 results

[acecycleins]

DMG said that it was a rouge cornerworker- Not MO. As hard as your job may be in race conditions it is absolutely possible that this happened.
I won't work Daytona, but have worked Barber and Rd Atl in the past. My buddies Wookie and Rabbit both work several races a year- including last year in Daytona- which I attended as media. Rabbit wouldn't show for Daytona this year because he said the situation with control was such that he didn't believe that the crew could perform with the same professionalism as they do on other tracks. It was like he knew that something bad or stupid would happen during the race. Guess he was right.

[Kevin_Duke]

Originally Posted by indazone

2009 Daytona 200 results
DMG's first public test was convoluted and confusing
By Kevin Duke, Mar. 07, 2009, Photography by Alfonse Palaima

A quote form the above story reads, …’A concerned corner worker threw a red flag, which stopped the race, even though race control didn’t call for it.’…..

I find that an interesting comment, and I am curious which corner worker stopped the Daytona 200 by throwing a red flag, without authority. I bet the Chief of Flags would be interested to know what corner threw the red flag without permission, and for what crash? Please let us know the source of this travesty! What is your source Kevin? This could change (yet again) the results of the 200. You should have notified the tower immediately, not air your observations in this paper. Oh, wait! I bet you didn’t actually see it, did you? You just made this up from someone else’s blog comments, didn’t you?

Cornerworkers in general are not allowed to touch or hold the red flag or have it near their hands because of the permanent race-altering message it portrays to the racers.

The Daytona 200 used two separate frequencies for flag control, and had generally 3 or 4 flaggers at each station. Using the two separate frequencies ensured we had accurate, discrete and redundant flagging information to ensure flag conditions were announced timely, track conditions could be communicated immediately to the racers, and it also kept channel chatter to a minimum.

I can assure you that both frequencies announced red flag conditions within a second of each other, because as I heard the call on my frequency, my other flagger was already reaching for it.

So, do tell Kevin. Was this just hearsay, quoting from unnamed sources that heard something from another person who thought they knew something?

By the way, you might have guessed I was flagging the Daytona 200, and I was stationed at flag station 9 , at the chicane entrance, so you can bet I know what I am talking about. I seriously doubt that Kevin Duke knows what he is talking about. Pretty easy to cobble a story together from ‘internet blogs’ and ‘anonymous sources’ isn’t it?

Please try and vet your sources more thoroughly next time, and not just cut-and-paste your stories together. That worked in college, but not as a professional writer.

Apology to slandered Daytona 200 cornerworkers NOT accepted!

A trustworthy, non-partisan industry person told me that Fraser and Edmondson were furious that a red flag was thrown without them calling for it. Are you saying this is untrue?

[indazone]

Originally Posted by Kevin_Duke

A trustworthy, non-partisan industry person told me that Fraser and Edmondson were furious that a red flag was thrown without them calling for it. Are you saying this is untrue?

I cannot speak to that comment. I am not privy to that information. But that really changes the entire context of the discussion, doesn’t it?

As far as I know, neither of these gentlemen were on the flag network with me, so I do not know their emotions or desires when the call for a Red Flag went out. But ‘out’ it did come, and out on two discrete frequencies.

However I think what you are implying now is this is a Command-and-Control issue between Race Management and Race Control. Not a ‘rogue cornerworker’ issue. Maybe you made that statement in passing to simplify the issue to your readers, but I take exception to it. I was there. And I am offended.

What I can say is that a ‘Red Flag’ condition was called for simultaneously on two flag networks within an eyeblink of each other. And it was obeyed as far as we can tell within the flaggers that were working that night. We actually do debrief and discuss issues after each race. No aberrant flagging was documented that evening.

When Tommy Aquino and others went down in the chicane in my turn, we immediately threw a waving yellow and a debris flag. We added an ambulance flag when the trucks approached Tommy to protect his body from other racers. And we added the Red flag when it was called for, and not before. I know it was called for on both nets, because both of us reached for it at the same time and we were on two different nets.

No flagger can throw a red flag without permission from the tower, even if a racer is lying on the track and his bike is burning. ‘Flag 101’ teaches us that, even though we care deeply about the poor soul that has crashed and is injured, we also have a duty to the other 39 racers that are approaching our corner and we must advise them to slow down, stop racing, watch for parts, etc so they do not become part of the problem.

Now, if you know of a ‘rogue cornerworker’ that incorrectly stopped the race without permission, or showed racers the red before it was called for, we need to know about that so we can counsel him, remove him from a flag position, or not invite him back.

But if that comment was made as an oversimplification of a more important problem, possibly a problem at a higher level, then I think I would like an apology for the unsubstantiated slander of my cornerworker friends and I. I am taking this personally.

[Kevin_Duke]

It was not my intention to disparage a cornerworker. As someone who has raced and helped organize races, I am fully aware they are the unsung heroes of racing. The issue, it seems to me, as you allow, is one centered around command and control.

What I wrote was indeed a simplification of what happened, based upon a firsthand account of what transpired in race control. Anyone who was at Daytona that night is well aware that there was much confusion during the race, and I filed my story that night based on preliminary reports.

It's strange, though, that even with two radio channels and a trained network of cornerworkers, it's not entirely clear who exactly called for the red flag. Do you know?

[indazone]

Can't help you there. The people that worked the radios from the tower are all on record. We know who is on the air, but you have to know that they also can be at the mercy of the sanctioning body (CCS-WERA/AHMRA/AMA) in rules interpretation and in making many of these judgement calls, so they can possibly become in reality just a relay point. I don't know who made the decision. But I haven't yet found evidence of a flagger making that decision, which was my original issue.

And of course there are many 'nets' making calls to the tower, like crash pickup, EMT, fire, pit in/pit out. Good luck trying to reconstruct those few minutes. I am sure it was bedlam up there when the lights went out in Daytona.

I cannot tell you what transpired in the tower during those few minutes, only what was said on our net. Although the tower depends on our reports to make decisions on the 'workability' of a given situation, those of us on the field are not privy to the off-air comments that may be ongoing in the tower, the rules being reviewed, and the people involved in reaching a decision to stop a race.

I still feel an injustice was handed out to the field workers. I haven't yet seen any evidence that they committed an error.

[Kevin_Duke]

According to an interview with AMA Pro Racing's VP for Marketing and Communications, Ollie Dean, he says: "A red flag was called by the corner worker supervisor when a rider made contact with another rider in the area of the back straight of the circuit near the entrance to the chicane."