Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
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 Thing I have ran into is Split Yellows or Straight Yellows, go back to last completed lap and do restart line ups from there... Some fans and anouncers are lost in what is going on.

Example 

Split Yellow, leaders have started lap 24, top 5 have gone over the line, yellow comes out. Top five have finished lap 23, rest of field is on lap 22. They finish lap 23 when the green comes back out.

Striaght Yellow, leaders have started lap 24, finished lap 23, top 5 have gone over the line, yellow comes out. Go back to last completed lap, lap 22 and do line up from there. So you loose one complete lap 23 because not all cars have finished lap 23.

Split Yellow is where the leaders are, Straight Yellow is where the last place car is.

Having watched race Monitor, I know the Outlaws do it the Split Yellow way, but the last two laps have to be under green.

Others I have watched and 3/4 the field could have finished lap 23 and they go back to laps 22 and do the line up from there.

A lot of series and tracks use the split yellow system. I know the All Stars use to count the lap is the leader crossed the line. Not sure if they still do that or not. Most travelling series that I have worked for use a 1/2 point. Half the field get across the line, they count the lap. A lot of loccal tracks still use go to the last fully completed lap. So many places do it different anymore, it is hard to keep track. 

I can speak for Selinsgrove, Port Royal, and the World Of Outlaws Sprint Car Series.  All three use the split yellow (or red).  At Selinsgrove and Port Royal, only the leader needs to trip the loop under green flag conditions and the lap is counted.  All other cars go back to the way they were running the last time they crossed the loop under GREEN flag conditions.

Also, if the leader laps a car on any given lap, and the leader crosses the loop under green flag conditions, that car is a lap down no matter when the yellow comes out.  If the yellow comes out immediately after the leader, but before the lapped car in question, the car is still now lapped.

The World Of Outlaws Sprint Car Series require two cars to cross the loop under green flag conditions in order for the lap to count.

All these scenarios are in effect on every lap except the first lap of a feature event.  All cars (with the exception of the cars in the incident), must cross the loop under green for lap 1 to be complete, otherwise, a complete restart will be called. 

Now those of you watching race monitor for Selinsgrove, Port Royal, and WoO Sprints, you will see the lap counter go back one lap just for a split second.  The reason is this; in order to get everyone up to the current lap, just before the green flag is displayed, the previous green flag passings are deleted (not actually deleted, marked as not counting) and everyone then gets to the correct number of laps when they cross the loop to take the green flag.  Passings in the MyLaps software can not actually be deleted, they can only be marked as not counting, but still appear on the screen.

At Selinsgrove and Port Royal, we wait till the very last second to perform that function so Race Monitor literally jumps back a lap for a second or less.  With the WoO, they delete those passings as they roll down the backstretch so race monitor jumps back a lap for a few seconds.

And finally, as this happened this past Saturday at Selinsgrove, when the top 3 in the running order all crash in turn 1 at the same time, any cars that they lapped do get their lap back.  When TJ Stutts and Robbie Stillwaggon took over the first two spots after that crash, they had yet to lap three cars, so those three cars were put to the rear of the field on the lead lap.  As it turned out, 2 of those 3 lapped cars were also involved in the crash, but the remaining "lapped" car did get his lap back.

Hope that helps out some.

Very FEW series or tracks make all the cars cross the line to count the lap.  The majority use split yellows, which is fair if there's a lead change or a pass made at the line IMO.  Two that I can think of off the top of my head that still don't are ASCS and the Sprint Invaders...

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At Lernerville we use "Leader +1" (can be lapped car or 2nd place car). Some tracks/series do go the route of requiring the whole field get across the line to count the first lap, but that is as extreme as I've seen.

I use that same restart lineup method for sprints at Lernerville too, but it doesn't work as well for the double-file restarts we have in other divisions. We typically insert manual passings of each competitor that did not cross the line before the yellow came out.

Say you are running to curfew, so the race is next flag is the finish. Leaders are in turns 1 and 2 starting lap 24. But the crash happens in turn 3  and 4 with cars that had not finished lap 23. Where do you go back to as the finish lap?

The track went back to lap 22. But lap 22 had the second place car as the leader, that was not leading on lap 23.

Lap 22 finish with #5 first then #36 second, lap 23 finish had #36 first then #5 second. So would get the win?

Track went with #5 who got the win.

This is the part I don't understand if you run a split yellow and you freeze the field at lap 23. How do you go back to lap 22 for the finish. So to me it looks like they are running the straight yellow and all cars must cross the line.