In a message dated 3/5/99 6:14:53 PM Eastern Standard Time,
RENTRIKEN/0003006623@MCIMAIL.COM writes:
<< By "not memory" I take it to mean the course should be designed in such a
way
as to be reasoanbly easy to find your way through it.
However...
I also subscribe to the premise that EVERY course is a memory course.
IOW, if you really want to do well, you better memorize that course, meaning
all your approaches, apexes, where to brake, where to get on the gas, shift
points.
And one of the best aids to that memory is learning to look far downstream.
Don't be staring at that cone beside your front fender. By then it is already
hit (or, you hope, missed). By then you should already be looking at the next
turn and thinking about the setup for the one beyond that. Not easy to do, I
admit. But if it was easy, where's the challenge?
And so, even if a course is badly designed in that respect, by the time you
drive it, you should know that this gate that sends you out to oblivion is
really the setup for a hard right.
Memory is often the difference between just finding your way and driving it
on the optimum lines.
--Rocky>>
"...shall be a test of driving skill, not memory." are words chosen by the
writers of the scca rule book, not me. Sure, you have to use memory and
planning and you have to look ahead but by the words of the rules a solo2
course should not be a maddeningly complex maze. That's all I'm talking about.
I've seen quite a few courses that were so complicated I'd finish my last run
of the day still amazed that I navigated it without going the wrong way. Since
you don't get any practice, as at a race on a race track, but you just get
your 3 or 4 shots I'd like to use my limited brain power figuring out how to
go fast (those shift points, apexes, etc.) instead of puzzling over where the
thing goes. Unless the event is one of a series in which I'm trying to do
something in the points I just leave without running if it is one of those
laboratory rat mazes.
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