Road Racing - Up close

[thewake]

So I finally made to my second event at Pocono working F&C (Flagging and Communication). For any of you who have only know Pocono Raceway as the NASCAR superspeedway, there is an infield section for road courses. The weekend was an SCCA double national weekend. This meant that every class ran one race on Saturday and one on Sunday.

Course Map

I worked FS2 (flag station 2) on Saturday. From this station we could see the cars up until the tunnel turn. There was quite a bit of action as the cars ran off driver's left down the grass and gravel in front of us. We would then have to be yellow until they re-entered the track. The cars tend to bring some of the gravel with them on to the track. This would require the display of the debris flag for a lap or so (and sweeping of gravel after the race). We also had one car dump oil (the car lost a valve cover as a result of contact) across the corner entry after FS1 and before the little straight and pull up to us on the dirver's right. This required drying the oil before the next session. Later we were left a bumper cover liner from a Mazda on one lap, and the bumper cover the next time by.

Sunday I found myself at FS4. From here you could see more of the track, but you can only face one direction at a time, so when working the blue flag, I could see the cars come up the rise to FS2 though FS4, and working the yellow flag from FS4 to FS6. We had one car slow on the straight between FS3 and FS4 and pull in behind our station. I didn't get to see him coming until he was just about on top of us as I was looking at the cars behind us. I found working the blue flag here took some getting used to as the angle of view made it hard to tell how fast the overtaking car was closing. unfortunately we had to black flag one car for a penalty. However we were left a cone from the chicane that was picked up by one of the race cars.

All in all it was fun. I shouldn't wait so long before I go back and flag a race.