ft/Unfortunately, the title says it all. This is what the radar looks like right now, as I sit here in the hotel after getting back.
Weather looked iffy as we headed out to the course, but we decided to try our luck. Here is a powwow at timing as we get set up.
Of course, just as we got about 90% set up, we got the call from the 2.5 mile start that it was raining, and getting very muddy, so we called it off for the morning.
I’m sure that all the racers were very disappointed, but has you can see from this chart of the start order, there are a couple of people that are in particularly difficult positions.
In particular, Ken and Aurélien are two fast guys who didn’t go very fast yesterday, and so both of them were hoping to bump their best speed up beyond the 60 mph required to run in the evenings. In addition, two HPVDT riders (Rossdan and Chris) were hoping for their first runs in Vortex (which is running five riders this week).
At 11 am today, we’ll have our racers’ meeting where we will determine the start order for tonight and tomorrow. Everyone prefers to run in the evening, particularly during the last heat when the odds of low wind are the highest. However, there are only four slots in that heat, and only three heats of four in total, so only 12 riders each evening. The order in which riders can pick their preferred heat is determined by their top speed expressed as a percentage of the relevant world record (Mens’, Womens’, Mens’ Trike, and Junior Mens’ are the categories this year), and the seeding chart looks like this at the moment.
Last night we relaxed the requirement that people have to be above 60 mph in order to get in the evening heat. Today, we’ll have to decide if we do the same thing. If we go strictly by seeding, then the first 12 bikes (down to Komori) will be the ones running tonight, unless some of them elect to run on Thursday AM, when the weather might be better.
The good news in all of this is that the weather might be decent tonight.
It’ll be an interesting racers’ meeting later this morning.
Update: this video about WHPSC 2016 was just posted.
Also, both IUT and HPT Delft/Amsterdam have been posting videos.
Annecy’s latest shows the Dutch truck getting stuck during qualifying on Monday AM, and Annecy being given mixed instructions on whether they could run last might (they weren’t on the start list).
Delft/Amsterdam (Facebook video)
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