Yellow flag for first lap?

[Hammerin Hank]

michael lang wrote:

Here's from a newbie point of view, I remembered the one FATT event I attended and I was sitting on the pit out lane thinking what the hell was I about to do & my instructor came up to me and we started talking about various things. One thing that sticks out in my mind was his attention to being conservative in his approach to on track during warm up. He said that I should not ever be worried about being in front in the beginning of a session. He told me to use the first lap as a familiarization of the "landscape" (as he referred to it). He told me that surveying what was going on with the track helped me get a "check up from the neck up". He also told me not to worry about it because most run sessions are between 20-30 mins long and that was plenty of time to work my way to the front of the pack.

Yep.

I always line up at the tail end and use the first lap for recon. That way you're not spending the first lap with your hand out the window and constantly looking in the mirrors.

I think a slow first lap is an unwritten/understood thing by most seasoned people. Whether you need to make it a written rule or not....I have no idea. Whatever is done, just make sure everyone's on the same page.

[smankow]

one of the problems with a first lap yellow is that people may tend to go too slow and thereby negate the whole issue of the warm up lap.

This is similar to many on the cool down lap.  How many times do you end up at a crawl for 2/3 of a lap because someone saw the checkered flag and almost came to a stop?

I like to take at least one lap to get everything up to temp. but I like to gauge the speeds myself.  I have no problem giving a point by on the out lap as different equipment needs more/less time.

 

Steve