Quote:
Originally Posted by RacingRicki
I find it sad that it is such a manual process in the information age that we live in. In this day with so much technology and a computerized timing system, why would someone need to be at the track entering in all the information from the logs. Perhaps some tracks don't have CompuLink but those that do should be able to provide an export of the qualifying and eliminations files at the very least.
There is a magical way to get instant data. It's called Live Timing. Yes it costs a lot but that's because NHRA is probably getting a cut.
BTW, thanks to Summit for providing the data all these years with relatively no cost to me.
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a. Unless the track does not have CompuLink, we do not manually enter data from logs. The "notes" reports are posted within minutes of the last pair for each round and the numbers in those reports come directly from the timing computer, on a data feed that 1320go and NHRA's Live Timing have started using in the past couple years. We have been using that data feed since the last century. We also automatically capture data from some other timing systems, but that hookup is more difficult to achieve without screwing up the timing system and it's on a track-by-track basis.
b. Live timing is great, but it's not filtered and often doesn't even show what category is running, let alone whether or not a particular run is valid or was disqualified for some reason. That's why we need reporters at the track - to do the most accurate job. That's why we do not post qualifying results until we get the official qualifying sheet, even though we have the raw numbers well before the sheets are distributed.
c. We have the capability to get end-of-day files from CompuLink systems and produce accurate reports from those files. However, unless somebody tells us what happened, we can't tell you much other than the numbers. Those numbers are more accurate than live timing because they come from the edited and validated times, not the raw runs. Bear in mind, no matter what system you use, without human eyeballs
reviewing the reports, there's a strong GIGO effect.