2014 TEAMS series ballast rules

dear all – we are considering time based penalties to replace the lap penalties for the underweight teams.

please give your feedback on this thread.

Here is the IDEA:

Teams below the 195kg aggregate weight will need to carry the 10kg ballast and on top of that will incur a certain time penalty for every 15kg aggregate (or 5kg per driver) below the 195kg allowable weight. The time penalty shall be implemented in the form of a stop go penalty (during the first driver stint).

The amount of time in the stop go penalty will need to be determined based on actual data.

In order to determine the penalty time I would like to propose a special test session to determine the time impact of additional 5kg per driver. The test session will be run as follows:

1- we need 3 drivers who can do consistent fast laps
2- the 3 drivers will be of 3 different weight categories: ~50kg; ~65kg; ~75kg
3- each driver will be assigned a 100cc kart each throughout the test session
4- each driver will run 10 flying laps first without ballast; and in the next sortie with (say) 5kg or 10kg ballast.
5- we will note the lap times of each 10 laps, and take the average of the median lap times that are within 0.2secs of each other (we will disregard outlier lap times).
6- we will do the same test for another 10 laps, this time with ballasts.
7- the time differences of the average of the median laps will be attributed to the difference in weights (ballasts)
8- we will plot the time difference per kg for the 3 drivers
9- assuming we fastened 10kg ballasts for each driver and we found that this slows their lap times by an average of (say) 1sec, then we can therefore establish that for every 10kg underweight the team will be penalised 1 sec per lap. SO for a 80 lap race, the time penalty will be 80secs.

I would like to suggest that we do this test soon. Any volunteers (for each category)? Only consistent drivers may apply please.