(FEEDBACK) FORMULA D NEW JERSEY, June 17-18 2011

[Bebop]

So you guys hated on ASD's speed, well there you got it. Instead of the fastest one around the track the winner is now the slowest one around it.

IMO that was a piss poor chase run for Conrad and JTP.... no one deserved the win. Should have went to OMT...

In other news the stream was pretty good, multiple camera angles and all that good stuff.

[my 1 88 u]

Originally Posted by Bebop

So you guys hated on ASD's speed, well there you got it. Instead of the fastest one around the track the winner is now the slowest one around it.

IMO that was a piss poor chase run for Conrad and JTP.... no one deserved the win. Should have went to OMT...

In other news the stream was pretty good, multiple camera angles and all that good stuff.

I agree that it should have been OMT but speed should not automatically trump angle, transitions and style.

Congrats Conrad Grunewald. Much deserved.

[Bebop]

Conrads lead line and angle looked just like JTPs just slower

I agree though this was a long time coming for Conrad but no one deserved the W after that set of runs

Good to see the guy with the most entertaining run win. Conrad killed it on his lead run with tons of angle and smoke, while JTP ran tight to Conrad he bobbled a few times and couldn't maintain a consistent distance. JTP left Conrad in his dust on his lead run but in doing so had minimal angle and moderate smoke, Conrad ran a little shallow trying to close the distance during his chase, but it was hard to judge because of the gap. The first run was the best of the two and Conrad won that run, glad to see the judges got it right.

[theSidesweep]

A few questionable calls without a doubt, but I guess that'll happen anywhere. I feel bad for Aasbo though, the guy can never seem to catch a break and he's a fantastic driver. I'm assuming the car/powerplant switch is taking some getting used to considering this is the debut year of the NFS tC.

[my 1 88 u]

When JTP follows he has to hold back so much, but when he leads there's nothing exciting except for him pulling away. I think I would appreciate JTP's style so much more if race lines and pushing for the pass where allowed.

[theSidesweep]

Originally Posted by my 1 88 u

When JTP follows he has to hold back so much, but when he leads there's nothing exciting except for him pulling away. I think I would appreciate JTP's style so much more if race lines and pushing for the pass where allowed.

i'd like it even more if he was driving his RX7

[D1 DRIFTER]

thank god hankook finally got a podium

[Eurodriftr]

A new low for Drifting, it’s hard enough to explain to non drifters how it works, but if your in America you now have to explain how you penalise the faster cars for being fast!! In Europe we encourage the chasing driver to get on as close as they can when chasing, lets face it there is a lot more skill involved in matching and trying to anticipate what the lead car is doing than there is in running the qualifying line. I wasn’t in the drivers briefing but after watching the Drift stream replays it looks to me they told the slower cars, "If the lead car is pulling away from you, don’t try to match them, just run your qualifying line with as much angle as you can and we'll penalise the lead car for pulling away" Can someone please explain to me how” slow with big angle” scores higher than “fast with less angle”?? What would spectators prefer to see, Slow or Fast? I think fast as there is a sense of danger involved, when cars are slow people start to think “Ha I could do that, look how slow they are going”
Formula d is a brilliant series with machinery, drivers and financial backing that other series around the world can only dream off, yet with all that they have going for them they are playing with fire when it comes to their judging system, no other drift series in the world will copy Formula d’s judging system because it’s seriously flawed, 30 points for angle??? How is the human eye supposed to determine what amount of angle someone is carrying?? 30% of your whole score?? how much angle do you need to score a 30?? 30% for style?? if you want to run that kind of system you allocate 10% to angle, 10% to style, 30% to speed and 50% to line. That takes 30% of the score out of the judges hands (speed gun) the 50% is also taken from the judges to a degree, if a difficult technical course is laid out that makes it hard to nail the clipping points without being on the correct line, then the competitor was either on the correct line or not and its plain for everyone to see, the final 20% is subjective, its completely up to the judges personal opinion..... in Formula d 60% of the total score is the judges personal opinion, no judge should be allowed to have that much personal opinion.
FD need to respect the Drivers and all the fans worldwide and realize they are not dealing with enthusiasts that have very little knowledge of the sport, anyone who stays up in the early hours of the morning on the other side of the Planet to watch your excellent Driftstream is not a casual observer but a hardcore fan. He or she may possibly have being in the whole drift scene a lot longer than you have and could possibly Judge an event better than your judges can. These people do not have the details of the drivers briefing judges criteria so out of respect your judges should have a long think before JRod comes to them for their reasons, “In the drivers briefing we told the drivers if they put their wheel on the white line we would….” Factual information people can understand, not what we seem to be getting a lot, I get the impression a lot of the time the judges are caught unprepared and come out with “ah, he was all over him, or he couldn’t stay with him” those answers are fine in a run where the outcome was obvious but very often a much more detailed explanation is needed.

[YOitzJDM]

the judging system is kinda flawed. It's not a true 100 pt scale. Angle / Line / Style are on 300 pt scales (30 pt scale + .1 increments) = ?? ?? I mean, what's the difference between a 25.2 and 25.5 in angle? these numbers are pulled out of a hat. No judge can tell a driver "you got a 1 pt deduction for this, a 2 pt deduction for that, and 2 .1 deductions for other things, therefore, your score is 26.8". Without that distinction, the scores are kinda worthless. I mean, not that D1 is any better (99.5 pts = do not qualify), but at least their deductions can be isolated.

Also, how many scores under 50 are given? There's hardly ever a time when someone scores a 35 or 45... it's either 50 pts, or a 0 (Jim Guthrie seems to be the exception). If that's the case, then maybe the scale needs to be re-adjusted. The difference between qualifying scores of the 18th drive who had to face the 2nd ranked driver in the top 16 vs qualifying 25 and facing the 8th ranked driver in the first round and 9th ranked driver in the 2nd round was less than 9 pts. That means 2 or 3 pts arbitrary points from angle / line / style each way could be the difference between being knocked out in top 16 or having the 'easy bracket' to top 8.

Maybe we need to dumb qualifying down to 30 pts, with ties being broken by your entry speed. If you miss an inside clip by more than a foot (judged by a corner worker), you lose 1 pt. If you miss it by more than 3 ft, you lose 3 pts. If you hit the minimum speeds, 5 pts per zone. If you have a 'minor' or 'major' correction, you lose 1 or 3 pts. That way, everyone can justify their qualifying scores and rankings in the points.

[Bebop]

Originally Posted by LPOneThree

Good to see the guy with the most entertaining run win. Conrad killed it on his lead run with tons of angle and smoke, while JTP ran tight to Conrad he bobbled a few times and couldn't maintain a consistent distance. JTP left Conrad in his dust on his lead run but in doing so had minimal angle and moderate smoke, Conrad ran a little shallow trying to close the distance during his chase, but it was hard to judge because of the gap. The first run was the best of the two and Conrad won that run, glad to see the judges got it right.

Was JTP's lead that boring and Conrad's that breath taking?

Lets all watch the video again. (Conrad's lead @ 0:05 JTP's 4:40)



If you really look at it the two drivers made the same amount of mistakes on their lead runs. But since JTP was so much closer to Conrad his mistakes were much more evident. And its not like the gap JTP makes is in the straight line, Conrad chasing JTP botched his entry ran shallow on the bank and was still with him coming into the transition.

JTP put the gap on Conrad in drift around the up most strategic part of the course. Conrad and JTP were both off the outer clip after the transition as well, but once again JTP was just closer in relation to Conrad....much more easier to see.

I'm gonna say it like this, if the judges are really going to tell the competitors if they are being out done in speed to just sit back and do your own thing why bother having tandem? This is going to make the sport sterile and boring more so then it already is here in the states.

[MonkeySlide]

I had a well thought out response to all this yesterday but most of it escapes me now.

But I remember the main points. Firstly I think emphasis on speed should be reduced and emphasis on line should be increased.

Back in the day everyone (including drivers) complained that there shouldn't be passing in Formula Drift and it should be all about the chaser mirroring the leader's line and that what "real drifting" was.

Now it is all about speed? When did that happen and why?

If that's where things are going then passing should be allowed. D1 was always exciting to me because it was awesome to watch the Japanese drivers push for a pass while completely sideways.

I know what everyone is going to say "they didn't want that because the chasers would straighten out so they could pass"

Well if they straighten out to pass then you dock them...if they can pass while sideways then reward them. Would that really be so bad?

[my 1 88 u]

Originally Posted by MonkeySlide

I had a well thought out response to all this yesterday but most of it escapes me now.

But I remember the main points. Firstly I think emphasis on speed should be reduced and emphasis on line should be increased.

Back in the day everyone (including drivers) complained that there shouldn't be passing in Formula Drift and it should be all about the chaser mirroring the leader's line and that what "real drifting" was.

Now it is all about speed? When did that happen and why?

If that's where things are going then passing should be allowed. D1 was always exciting to me because it was awesome to watch the Japanese drivers push for a pass while completely sideways.

I know what everyone is going to say "they didn't want that because the chasers would straighten out so they could pass"

Well if they straighten out to pass then you dock them...if they can pass while sideways then reward them. Would that really be so bad?

Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding! Nailonthemutha*Censored*head!

It was sold to us that Formula D drivers just weren't ready for passing because quite frankly alot of pro drivers where learning on the job. There was fear that not all drivers where of Rhys and Sam's race pedigree and it would be utter carnage on the track. I say Bull@#$!

-Get rid of ghey outside clips during tandems
-Get rid of those stupid artificial apex's 20 feet away from the natural apex.
-Allow drivers to cut lines and push for passes after the initiating corner
-Forgive tire drops, wall taps/line rubs and minor contacts.

[brunosimonet]

I think that we saw what the fish ball of NJ Wall Speedway does to the newer more powerful cars - Destruction! It's not called Wall for nothing!
The judging and commentary were again completely bias - When Ross chased Forsberg and got so close they were crying foul instead of getting excited for the great moves - it was a great battle, and i think that the commentating and judging is influencing the drivers as they hear it and try to correct based on these statement the commentator makes...not always the right judgment from that guy i would say. I really think that we are going through growing pains in formula D we're getting bigger but not necessarily better...why so many veterans left the series? like Millen, Tanner and why guys like Hubinette or Gittin are not able to be in the top echelon again ? Weird...I think it's tracks that are inconsistent and unadapted for the power the cars have nowadays - inconsistency in the judgment as well. D1GP runs on race tracks but not ovals - they have more room for long runs and high speed drifts. Everyone is on even grounds but look at the carnage this weekend ? I don't think it made for exciting drift racing - it took away from drifting - I still had fun, but I got frustrated with the whole thing - Big smoke and just big bullies running fast in front but no door to door action (not as much as I would have liked it) FD/We have to fix the judging - with computer systems nowadays we should be able to scientifically get a base score on drifting (even in tandem) without human errors - angles, speed, distance to clipping points, distance from each cars etc...and then judge the showman ship (smoke and excitement generated) in order to get better scoring overall.
these are just some ideas...it would be fun! They do it for tennis (3d modeling of the ball trajectory etc etc) why not drifting since it's the only motor sport that is being judged?

I think the folks running FD are not going to change and it will be like D1GP, another series will start up and hopefully they will have a better style or it will be fun again to watch drifting.
One last word - Kazama Rules! Is he drifting anywhere these days?

[Eurodriftr]

The bottom line here is entertainment, the paying fans want to be entertained and when you stop entertaining them they stop coming....series dies! In my opinion FD's judging system is unnecessarily complicated, it does sometimes happen you get a small number of fans boo-ing a decision, (usually a group of a particular drivers friends and family) but when you get widespread dissatisfaction of judges calls you have either a judging system the fans don’t understand or you have bad judges (or ones that don’t explain their decisions very well)
I don’t know if you are aware of the widespread dissatisfaction being vented through the forums this side of the pond, and it’s not only DMac, Eric and Dean Kearney but also JTP. JRod mentioned after the event "Haters will be haters" at the comments being made in the driftstream comment box. Has it not crossed their minds that they may be getting things wrong? If they believe they are right then have the courtesy to explain their decisions so all of us can be educated.
Going back to the entertainment factor, what is more entertaining, two drift cars drifting as fast as they can go, on the very edge, or two cars drifting slowly with loads of angle? if it’s the slow option why not get them to throw in a couple of dounuts while there at it, it sets drifting back years.
In our series we adopted the FD's "the lead car must run the qualifying line" but that's where it ends, we allow overtaking, (And we always have a huge reaction when someone pulls off a clean overtake.) but we have a simple rule, “the chase car can only overtake while on the qualifying line" that means the lead car can only be overtaking if he comes off the qualifying line (i.e. washes out) and another simple rule "If the chase driver is overtaking while on the qualifying line the lead driver cannot impede him" (or words to that effect) this basically means if the lead driver washes out, and the chase driver starts to overtake, if the lead driver tries to get back on line and causes contact he will be deemed at fault. We have the three meter rule, "If in a twin battle there is more than three meters between the lead and chase cars then both will be scored as two individual runs with the chase car being penalized for not being within three meters” “If the chase car is within three meters the chase car can come off line in order to run door to door”.
All our rules encourage close battles, and we have rules that stamp down on tactics that don’t allow close battles, Dmac comes from this mentality, and when he first went to FD was known as a great close battler, but he can no longer drive like that as FD rules discourage it. How many times has he lost battles due to hitting the lead car, how many times was it caused by the lead car slowing, or by the lead car throwing in more angle and scrubbing off speed in the knowledge Dmac would be only inches away? FD turned a blind eye to all this.
On a final point, most drift series use three judges, all three watch the same qualifying run and come up with an individual score, these are inputted into a computer and are averaged or added or whatever. In FD you have one for line, one for angle, and one for style. Anyone who has ever judged knows you can’t see everything, that’s why you have three judges, you’d be amazed how easy it is for one to miss a wheel over the white line or a cone being knocked and these mistakes are usually mentioned out loud by the judges that see it. FD have one judge on each aspect that means if they make a mistake its unlikely to be picked up.
Watch Dean Kearneys second qualifying run (53.something) and compare it to Ryan Kado’s second qualifying run (57.something) What do ye think?

[Eurodriftr]

Brunosimonet, the angle judge could easily be replaced by electronics.
One other point about angle, how do you judge one competitor in a long wheelbase car that can easily carry 45deg drifts all day, but he's being conservative with 40 deg's of angle as he drifts the course "V" another competitor in a short wheelbase car that's maximum achievable angle of drift is 35deg and he's on the very edge of spinning as he drifts at his maximum angle through the course??.

[Bebop]

Originally Posted by brunosimonet

I really think that we are going through growing pains in formula D we're getting bigger but not necessarily better...why so many veterans left the series? like Millen, Tanner and why guys like Hubinette or Gittin are not able to be in the top echelon again ?

Tanner and Rhys have to put rally first... (sponsors are more interested in rally then drifting)

Sam is focusing on winning some off road truck championship

JR started the season off slow but is catching up fast, IMO ASD changed the car a tad bit too much coming off a championship season.

I honestly rather see FD continue with the type of drifting they created and fail then rip off D1 and succeed, not saying I want them to fail but they gotta sleep in the bed they made. But you gotta remember the tickets are still selling, why change anything if you can still pack a venue.

I want to see D1 type tandem like everyone else, I just rather see the originators prosper off it. I have come to terms with FD style competition, I just wish the criteria was regulated consistently from event to event and run to run. But I do think classes would benefit and equalize the field in this type of format.

[theSidesweep]

Originally Posted by Bebop

Tanner and Rhys have to put rally first... (sponsors are more interested in rally then drifting)

Sam is focusing on winning some off road truck championship

JR started the season off slow but is catching up fast, IMO ASD changed the car a tad bit too much coming off a championship season.

I honestly rather see FD continue with the type of drifting they created and fail then rip off D1 and succeed, not saying I want them to fail but they gotta sleep in the bed they made. But you gotta remember the tickets and still selling, why change anything if you can still pack a venue. I want to see D1 type tandem like everyone else, I just rather see the originators prosper off it. I have come to terms with FD style competition, I just wish the criteria was regulated constantly from event to event and run to run. But I do think classes would benefit and equalize the field in this type of format.

^ this. classes would make things so much more interesting, legitimate tandems even more. the judging definitely needs a revamp as well.

in regards to the computer modeling of drifting, nah. they tried the "driftbox" (measures speed and angle of the car) while D1 was in the US, and it was a huge failure. crowd hated it, drivers hated it, ended up getting removed as far as i know. pretty sure it prevented some top tier drivers from even qualifying, i know for a fact it happened to Nomuken. - it's in this article: http://speedhunters.com/archive/2009...1-anaheim.aspx

[Formula D]

I've mentioned this at least 4-5 times on this board. I'll mention it again. It has never been a rule that there is no passing in FD. Passing is allowed, but it must be done under the correct circumstances.

[Justin Banner]

Yeah, the whole "NO PASSING IN FD" thing has been a hard bit of misinformation to get rid of.

[Bebop]

Yeah, its more like "NO COMPETITIVE OR EXCITING PASSING IN FD". With FD filled with walls and outside clippings points the only way I see someone passing is if the lead drivers crashes. Only exception to that would be long beach though, I've seen like 2 or 3 passes where the chaser was not penalized over the passed 2 years.

C) Passing
Passing is not encouraged during tandem battles. Passing is only allowed if the lead car is well off line, or is clearly specified by a judge in the drivers meeting. Passing must be executed in a safe and professional manner. A safe pass is one that is done in such a way that the car being passed does not lose any speed after the pass is complete. Passing must be done while in drift, without interrupting the line of the car being passed and in the proper line. If a pass results in contact, the passing car may be penalized.

Like I said, I've come to terms with it.

[Eurodriftr]

C) Passing
Passing is not encouraged during tandem battles. Passing is only allowed if the lead car is well off line, or is clearly specified by a judge in the drivers meeting. Passing must be executed in a safe and professional manner. A safe pass is one that is done in such a way that the car being passed does not lose any speed after the pass is complete. Passing must be done while in drift, without interrupting the line of the car being passed and in the proper line. If a pass results in contact, the passing car may be penalized.

In my opinion that rule is far from clear, if I was a driver in your series after reading that overtaking rule, I'd stay behind and not risk it.

Look this is not a FD bashing thread from me, nor is it a "our way is better than your way thread" the system we run works well for us and has been adapted to suit the tracks and competitors we have over the last eight years.
We have gone the wrong way from time to time, as the level of competition increases the Judges have to come up with new ways of scoring in order to separate the top boys.
We too went the over complicated way and people were getting frustrated with some of our calls, and we had drivers leaving the briefing not knowing what it was we were looking for.
We now run a much simpler Judging system, the drivers are happier because they now understand exactly what we want, the spectators are happier (well most of the time) as after a tandem run we are able to explain our decisions by quoting our simple rule's when needed.
What we have done to separate the competitors is designing more technical courses, our courses are designed to trap competitor's who are not on the correct line, incorrect line to and from the first clip will make it impossible to make any of the subsequent clips for the rest of the course without a major correction.
On a course like this you can tell by the competitors entry to the first clip if he is going to be able to make the rest.
We also incorporate a speed gun into qualifying, this is used to record the competitors drift speed at a particular part of the course, usually at a wall clip or the approach to a wall clip (fortune the brave)
During practise a target speed is set and during qualifying and .5 of a point is added for every kilometer above the target speed and -5 of a point for every kilometer below.
This system works well for us, but I accept if we were running tracks like you run in the US and with the machinery you have we may now be running a completely different system.

[AE86_Fan]

Originally Posted by Formula D

I've mentioned this at least 4-5 times on this board. I'll mention it again. It has never been a rule that there is no passing in FD. Passing is allowed, but it must be done under the correct circumstances.

so your not going to chime in on anything else... just the no passing. WOW !

[Bebop]

Ehhh give FD a break, they have been busy. 4 events in 3 weeks and 1 event in a different continent, I would be sleeping my self.

[NNog]