Standings
The standings after round 4 of the Coupe de Montréal have been updated. They are available on the Coupe de Montréal calendar page or on Speedhive.
Coupe de Montréal # 4
Here are a few points that raised a number of questions among the organizers and officials.
Length of final races
As the rain stopped quite early in the morning, several drivers asked why we didn’t keep the 15 laps scheduled for the finals. The decision was taken before the start of the finals at around 12:30 p.m., at which time Environment Canada was issuing a severe thunderstorm watch for the period from 3 to 5 p.m. The storm was expected to last for a few hours. Given the strong possibility of stoppages, and to give all categories the same race duration, the decision was taken to shorten the finals to 12 laps.
Briggs & Stratton Senior
It’s with both pleasure and surprise that we have 57 drivers registered in the Briggs & Stratton Senior category. With a limit of 36 karts on track, we have no option but to have two groups in qualifying and pre-final. It’s unfortunate to have to eliminate drivers after the pre-finals. It was suggested that we run a “consolation” race for the eliminated drivers. We’ve been faced with this situation in the past, and most of the time not even half of the eliminated drivers showed up for this race. It’s impossible to change the championship scoring system during the season, but it’s obvious that we’ll have to find a solution in the off-season, whether it’s an A and a B final or having a consolation race with points to give the consolation race a value that will strongly encourage drivers to take part. We are aware of the dissatisfaction this creates, and we’ll work on it.
Briggs Cadet & Briggs Junior
After each of the 2023 rounds we have a parent complaining about the qualifying format in these categories (designated place on the false grid). This format was not decided by the series coordinator, but by the Coupe de Montréal organizing committee, whose members have over 150 years of karting experience. This decision was taken after numerous complaints from parents and team members about the totally unacceptable behaviour of certain mechanics at the entrance and on the false grid during the 2020 and 2021 seasons. This approach has completely solved the problems in question.
Live timing (Race-Monitor, Speedhive)
During the event, we had to close access to the live timing apps. This was because the installation of a new timing system for the track’s rental karts created additional passings for some drivers, and the times displayed gave fragmented results (e.g. a lap of 0.52 and one of 0.12 instead of a single lap of 1:04). After each session, we had to manually identify and erase these false passings in order to obtain the real results. The posting of uncorrected results on the apps created a rush among the officials and the timing office, hence the decision to close the live timing. Rest assured, this didn’t change the real times, but it did mean a lot of work for the timekeepers.