WPATV Quad Club

Guys, as most of you that attanded the Piketberg Event know, there was a problem with the Senior Quads getting lost,and some riders taking shortcuts.

As riders rep i was approached by several senior quads riders and asked to see if we could get the results changed from a regional status to a club status event.

The bad news is that the results will stand.
I also spoke to Clint Reaper who is our riders rep for offroad and sits on the National panel, and the long and short of it is you have to put in an appeal on the day, it is too late to complain on Monday following the event.
There is 2 week period where you can contest the results IF they changed from the posted and signed results on saturday, however the results did not change....they stayed the same.

Now some people stopped riding because they felt that that the track was unsafe, or that too many people we getting lost, and turning around on the track causing problems.
That is your choice, when this was brought to the attention of the COC these problems were rectified, and it was only a small part of the track where this sort of thing happened. What most people did was they slowed down in those sections, made sure they were going right and raced like crazy in the safer sections, until the problems were sorted out.

The Tweelie riders seemed to have no problems with markings, and they rode the same track as the senior quads.

Now, this brings us to another point, if you go wrong on the track, and you turn around, the procedure is NOT to turn around and race back to where you think you went wrong, the procedure IS to turn around, and ride back SLOWLY OFF the racing line, thereby preventing the possibility of a head on crash.

There were lots of other incidents as well however, apparently a lot of riders were shortcutting over the railway line.....that is not on, follow the markers...period.

also there was a riverbed section, and a lot of riders were blatently missing it, and riding past faster riders....that is cheating, you have to do the technical bits, you MAY NOT ride within 10 metres of the tech bit......

and i can go on....ond on....

at the end of the day, lots of riders had a terrible day.....

BUT we had a committee meeting last night, and things are going to improve.....
we are going to have Petro Cutino/Russel Zeeman and Geoff Kelly ride the track on friday before EVERY race...we will then make sure everything is properly marked, and that the danger boards are up etc.
Geoff is going to ride the race as a roaming COC, and if he sees someone deliberately cheat, he will disqualify them on the spot.
We are introducing 3 points on every track, where riders will have to punch a special metal tag they are given(with differnt shaped punches), thus helping with making sure that fewer people shotcut.
We will introduce a HOTBOX in the pits, and for smaller infridgements the riders will serve their time on the spot.
Ted Haller is busy writing us a program to lapscore, which will improve the lapscoring acuracy, and speed up the results dramatically.

In short we will do what is neccessary to make our races better, and more enjyable.

For the record, Gideon and Anton are setting the wellington track,a and it will be awesome track.

I hope this clarifies most of the questions asked about the Piketberg race, and we can go from strength to strenghth, remember we have had msotly fantastic races at WPATV, so lets put the bad behind us, and look foward to good

cheers

Russel
082 451 0624