AFM and disappearing lap times
In this episode we will see AFM have “technical difficulties” that affect only me, offered as an excuse to prevent my reassignment to a better practice group.
After a top-1o finish at Buttonwillow, I went to the first round at Infineon hopeful that we could put the silly group 1 nonsense behind us and I would get a chance to practice with my peers. When I arrived at tech the first morning, I was assigned to Group 1 again — because they had no times for me at this track. I had to show times at this track. Which I accepted, and set out to do reasonable times in the dry practice we had.
Note: later on the AFM would claim that if you went to a track were you don’t have times, they would assign you to a practice group based on the times you had at another track. Well, everyone but me apparently.
So I went out in Group 1 and tried to do reasonable times. I mean, my fastest laps at Infineon was a 1:50.0 and I’ve always been able to do 1:52s consistently. This should be easy. Well, not so much. It’s really rough when you are surrounded by riders who have no clue where the racing line is. Again, I lapped the entire field several times a session. Again, I was catching people in every corner on the track. And since the riders were completely unpredictable, it proved impossible to get a clean lap.
But hey, I’m doing faster laps than anyone else in Group 1. This should show good enough times to at least get me booted to group 2. Well, not so fast. See, they have grid sheets full of times — just not mine. I went inside to talk to Paddy and Shelly, and both of them confirmed that I had no times in the system. They suggested a transponder problem, which seemed reasonable. So I got my transponder and took it to Barbara for testing as they told me. Barbara tells me they have no ability to test the transponder, and talk to Paddy. Paddy tells me she can only tell me if my times are in the system.
At this point it’s very clear I’m getting the run around. Furthermore, there is no evidence that my transponder is at fault — it worked the previous weekend, and as was later shown, it was working fine today. But I accepted their “gift” of a loaner transponder to see if my lap times would mysteriously reappear.
So, after practice had finished and after (they claimed) it was impossible to fix my practice group the following day, they admit that they had my lap times in their system the entire time. They blamed it on a “networking problem”. Very odd networking problem that delivered most lap times, just not mine. And oh see, it’s too late in the day to reassign my practice group tomorrow. Yes, this totally makes sense. No, I totally believe this line of … well, let’s keep it PG-13 shall we?
Next up: Faster than most in Group 3, must reassign to Group 1 again.