Purdue News
Purdue News
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April 27, 2004 Contested second and third place Grand Prix results reversedWEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Race officials have reversed the positions of the second and third place finishers in Saturday's (4/24) 47th Purdue University Grand Prix after the initial scoring was contested. John Weida, a senior in management from West Lafayette, Ind., and Dan Parras, a sophomore majoring in construction engineering from San Salvador, El Salvador, were in a tight battle for second place in the last portion of the 50-mile, 160-lap kart race. The scoreboard showed Parras finishing second and Weida third. Weida disagreed and told officials after the finish that his lap scorer hadn't counted his pit stop as a completed lap, Grand Prix President Matt Morris said today (Tuesday, 4/27). "Since our scoring system is somewhat based on manual scoring, there is margin for error," Morris said. "In this case, the scorer from Weida's team did make an error and, therefore, Parras did actually end up in third, and Weida placed second. The error came after Weida's pit stop, when the scorer did not input his crossing the start/finish line for two laps." With the current scoring system, a team member manually registers each time the driver on their team completes a lap. When a driver makes a pit stop, they exit the track to the right of the scoring stand and drive behind the scorers into the pit. Then they re-enter the track to the left of the scorers and don't pass in front of the scorers until they complete a second lap, which is when the scorer is supposed to register two laps, not one. "Unfortunately this is the flaw with our scoring system," Morris said. "It places too much weight on the manual scorer, who is a team member. Hopefully, this problem will be solved in the near future as we have purchased a new scoring system that we plan to put into effect next year." Parras said he was not upset to be bumped down to third place. "No, that's what happened, and it's fine with me," he said. Clayton Smith, of Mulberrry, Ind., finished first, becoming the fifth member of his family to win the Grand Prix. "The race-day results are always unofficial," Morris said. "On Sunday, members of the scoring board scrutinize the results by watching videotape, examining data in the computers and reviewing information recorded manually throughout the race. Then the official results are released Monday afternoon." In addition to giving the final word on the winners, the official results also provide statistics on the race. Smith finished the race in 66 minutes and 17 seconds, and drove the fastest individual lap, at 23.2 seconds. He also led the most laps, 84 of the 160 laps. The official results are (from left, starting position, kart number, name, team name, laps completed):
Writer: Reni Winter, (765) 496-3133, rwinter@purdue.edu Sources: Matt Morris, (765) 404-8319, mrmorris@purdue.edu Dan Parras, (765) 532-2851, dparras@purdue.edu Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu Related Web site: Related Release:
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