Good News, Bad News

[Larry Sullivan]

Originally Posted by RacingRicki

Larry,

How involved is the reporting? Does the local track personnel help with the setup?
I am wondering if instead of paying travel expenses for the live reporters, could you hire racer's spouses or kids to do it. I would be willing to bet that there are enough racers that travel with family at each race in a given division that you could find someone willing to do it at each race or at least several races.

Just a thought.

Short answer - it takes several races for a new reporter to work together with an experienced reporter and become familiar enough with the reporting software and the sometimes recalcitrant interface with the timing system to "solo."

Most of the guys (and occasionally gals) who do this for us have been doing online drag racing reports since the CompuServe and AOL days in the mid-eighties.

The reporting software has evolved to take advantage of the data feed provided by the CompuLink timing system, but it takes experience to know what can go wrong, how to fix it and, if necessary, how to do the job by manually keying in all of the race data from the printed reports produced by the timing system.

It's time-consuming, detail-oriented work that requires full-time attention. It doesn't fit in very well with a typical racing family's daily schedule at the track. Their focus is usually on the race car and their daily routine depends on when that car is scheduled to be on the track. Our focus is on getting the results posted as soon as possible, but not until they have been proofread to make sure they match the official results.