Question for Jeff Foster and Dave Kommel

[Michael Beard]

The only reason I have not heard yet...........and I feel it is THE REAL ANSWER, is DeFrank's car moved. I do not mean forward or rearward roll; I mean when his top bulb came on he went to the chip and it "shook the front tires" enough to let the infra-red beam to get to the receiver cell. I owned a track and watched A LOT of races on the starting line.

Once AGAIN....!!!

1) One updated version of the system includes a provision that locks out the pre-stage and stage bulbs from coming back on once the system thinks the car has left the beams (ie., stage light out), until the computer is reset. This prevents the pre-stage and stage lights from flickering when the rear tire goes passes through the starting line.
2) This red light phenomenon has occured at multiple tracks. One instance included a car that was footbraked: staged at a low rpm, then was brought up on the converter and was there for several seconds. The car was *solidly* staged with absolutely zero posibility of it having backed out of the beams.
3) The above incident, as well as several others that we have seen all show the red light displaying BEFORE the pre-stage and stage lights go out. This is a critical point that everyone continues to completely ignore.
4) If a car did in fact rock back out of the beams, you would see the stage light and pre-stage go out simultaneously due to the stage bulb lockout system (see #1 above) along with the red light being displayed. The only case in which the red light should be displayed BEFORE the stage light going out would be in the case of a deep stage foul in the classes that do not permit it.

YES, it is still possible to have a red-light from rocking out of the beams on systems not utilizing StageLock, and in fact it just happened in Super Comp last weekend at Gainesville. The multiple incidents we have been discussing are demonstrably different situations.