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2023 Pax / Classing Discussion


FFAttack

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Hello,

After last nights exciting AGM and battle royal (kidding) for Time Attack Director position. One of the main voting points was Old PAX vs New PAX classing. Having only run one event with WSCC and first go with PAX system I’m hoping to better understand what the Old PAX was that Mat wants to go back too? 
 

We are unique in the west being the only Time Attack group running a PAX system so coming from BC Time Attack it’s all new to me. From my brief exposure too it I’m not a huge fan of PAX but willing to work with it or just go Raw time classing. 

As I said in the AGM if we truly want to host a true Western Time Attack championship weekend and get those in BC and AB coming we need to have some sort of classing Cohesion. In BC we ran SCCA Time Trials classes, having been involved with the move from CACC solo classing to SCCA Time Trials. I will be the first to admit the grass is not always greener on the other side with classes. Not everyone will be happy no mater what is done. 
 

Looking forward to 2023 season and what ever classing it brings. I would request that if changes are coming they be done soon to allow us time to prep our cars for new classing. 
 

Jeremy 

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Just to give a quick insight: In previous years we ran a PAX system that was borrowed from the Ontario Time Attack association. The way the PAX multiplicator was applied to each car class resulted in the top positions being always occupied by the cars with the most horsepower - at least at GMP this was the case. If there were six Mod and SGT1 cars, anyone with a lower classed car already knew at the beginning of the event that he/she would not finish better than 7th on that weekend.

Since T/A is supposed to be a sport which highlights driver skills as opposed to horsepower, our T/A director decided last year that the PAX factor system should be modified to give lower classes a chance against the higher classes. That new PAX system worked, in the sense that even people in a T3 car or a GT4 car could get a decent number of points while the powerful cars also were able to score points. But obviously the people with the high-horsepower cars are now not as easily anymore achieving the same positions as before, and some of them have been voicing their displeasure about it. 

This new PAX model was questioned immediately by one member of our club, and our president requested a review of this PAX system. Consequently, Brian spent countless hours going through numerous PAX models and presented the results to a group of members, The consensus at that time was that the new PAX system appears to be fairer than the old one. In the end one thing became obvious: Not everyone will be happy, no matter what will be done... just like the guys in BC found out. 

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6 hours ago, donrolandofurioso said:

Just to give a quick insight: In previous years we ran a PAX system that was borrowed from the Ontario Time Attack association. The way the PAX multiplicator was applied to each car class resulted in the top positions being always occupied by the cars with the most horsepower - at least at GMP this was the case. If there were six Mod and SGT1 cars, anyone with a lower classed car already knew at the beginning of the event that he/she would not finish better than 7th on that weekend.

Since T/A is supposed to be a sport which highlights driver skills as opposed to horsepower, our T/A director decided last year that the PAX factor system should be modified to give lower classes a chance against the higher classes. That new PAX system worked, in the sense that even people in a T3 car or a GT4 car could get a decent number of points while the powerful cars also were able to score points. But obviously the people with the high-horsepower cars are now not as easily anymore achieving the same positions as before, and some of them have been voicing their displeasure about it. 

This new PAX model was questioned immediately by one member of our club, and our president requested a review of this PAX system. Consequently, Brian spent countless hours going through numerous PAX models and presented the results to a group of members, The consensus at that time was that the new PAX system appears to be fairer than the old one. In the end one thing became obvious: Not everyone will be happy, no matter what will be done... just like the guys in BC found out. 

Ah I see, I always approached Time Attack as a combination of Driver and Machine. 
 

Im wondering why have classes if we are all racing for fastest PAX and not fastest in class. Again I’m new to PAX and not totally sold on it. 
 

I guess attendance will tell.  

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On 11/18/2022 at 10:15 AM, FFAttack said:

 I would request that if changes are coming they be done soon to allow us time to prep our cars for new classing. 

 

Jeremy 

Hey Jeremy

 

We agree 100% and quite literally started discussing that point immediately after the meeting was adjourned. 

I hope you don’t mind I will be asking you to jump into our committee discussions as you are familiar with the western classing.

I mentioned to the group that I want to seriously consider moving to the western model especially if we’re going to be hosting a championship event.

Edited by Mat
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24 minutes ago, Mat said:

Hey Jeremy

 

We agree 100% and quite literally started discussing that point immediately after the meeting was adjourned. 

I hope you don’t mind I will be asking you to jump into our committee discussions as you are familiar with the western classing.

I mentioned to the group that I want to seriously consider moving to the western model especially if we’re going to be hosting a championship event.

No problem I can join the committee. Would be happy to help. I’m still regularly in contact with the CACC Time Attack director for BC.

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3 minutes ago, FFAttack said:

No problem I can join the committee. Would be happy to help. I’m still regularly in contact with the CACC Time Attack director for BC.

Can you share the rule book here please?

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2 hours ago, Mat said:

Can you share the rule book here please?

CACC switched over from there own class structure to SCCA Time Trials in 2020. https://timetrials.scca.com/pages/classmycar
 

The reason we went that way was to try and align with some of the larger Time Attack/Time Trial groups in the US. The thought was this would allow people from the US to come up and compete and also allow us to go down to the US and participate in SCCA events without having to re-class or change the setup on our cars. 
 

We did go back and forth a lot between Global Time Attack rules, SCCA and Gridlife. SCCA seemed (at the time) to be less of a “the person with the biggest pocket book wins” then we had 3 Porsche GT3rs’s show up and cleaned house lol They where classed with the rest of us K swap Honda guys (my car is quick but not that quick). 
 

One very big advantage to doing SCCA Time Trials is if you go to the events south of the border we have medical insurance. SCCA provides medical insurance for all competitors. It may not seem like much but I shopped around and medical insurance that covers competition in the US for us Canadians is over $1000 a year. Most (99%) extended health and travel insurance does not cover high risk activities (like Motorsport). 


Just like all classing systems it’s not with out it’s issues but it seemed to provide the large majority of our competitors a class that was competitive. 

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Just poking through that SCCA stuff for the last little bit, I'm very impressed with how well put together it is, and it's quite user friendly too. Thanks Jeremy, for posting that up.

The biggest thing I see as a benefit, is that it seems like we could be on the same page as any other location. It's nice to know that the classing would all be the same, whether we race in Gimli, BC, or even in the U.S. It wouldn't really matter if everyone likes it or not, it would be a uniform set of guidelines to follow, and that would be nice. This would definitely help bring in any newcomers who may already be used to that setup.

Looking at car models and where they fit, for the most part the lists match what I have personally experienced, but as always there are a few that would raise questions for sure. I admit though, I got a bit lost between the Sport and Tuner classes, and I think it would only get more confusing once a bunch of modifications get thrown in too. These two classes cover most of the TA cars we see at GMP. It could also get a bit hard between the top classes of Sport and Tuner, with cars in the Max and Unlimited class.   

I'll be the first to admit, I'm not great with this technical stuff, and I get confused very easily. I just want everyone to have a fair shot and then we can go back to just getting out there and having fun.

 

Dason

Edited by Rare Snake
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It will take some figuring to get used to the SCCA classing system. Is there a PAX system associated with it?

It’s all is somewhat irrelevant to me. I’m into Time Attack for the fun of it, learning and improving my personal best times . . . not to be competitive.

Good thing, ‘cause I’m not competitive, ending up being the lowest rank of the full participants, the only people who rank lower than me didn’t have the full complement of events. 

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I would like to point out Time Attack is NOT about the fastest driver. The North American/United States TIME TRIALS are. There is a difference. Whole point of Time attack is to take a street car or what once was a street car and make it go as fast as you can, modified or not, generally based off a short rule book and tire limit. 

So by the SCCA rules that caters to people with expensive factory cars. The purpose built time attack cars will be bumped to unlimited for little things like aero modifications (not specifically wing size but things like splitter tunnels/diffusers)…meanwhile the ACR and GT3RS will be in the max class below. While this is better than pax it’s still broken up into too many different classes/categories (17 compared to Pax’s 21+) and we will end up in the same boat of people being very nit picky and a participation trophy system. I like the 4 main classes before they’re narrowed down into a huge filter aside from the whole allowing electric and tube chassis cars in that don’t have vins. Good drivers in the lower classes still have great competition in a more affordable environment and people who want to modify their cars in whatever way are bumped up, making it 50/50 car and driver for competition which closer aligns to the original spirit of time attack. 

Biggest thing to point out is there’s no limit on tire size and everyone running a 200tw tire will pick the class based on car mods which we’ve repeatedly seen fail in these systems (225 vs 265 is a big difference in lap time and grip and normally hp depending on the car). The tire tread wear is half the equation and size being the other. The size being the limiting factor and most important part of classing a car for comparison to another. If you look at classing rules Gridlife and Global Time Attack have the tires as the biggest thing they base their classes off of. It’s why global time attack went to a spec tire but I don’t think that’s the right way to go especially to keep things affordable. 

I’ve talked a lot with organizers in Alberta who have started a time attack series with Speed Freaks YEG (on IG) and they’ve based their time attack off Gridlife with 4 main classes and tire limits and had a hugely successful first year at stratotech. 
We have been at castrol for open lapping but not time attack but generally everyone out there talking about it said it’s a fun way to just have a time behind your driving and car. So I won’t speak much more on their behalf. 

This is a step in the right direction either way you go. It’s an attempt to make it better and bring something new to the table. 
People come out to time attack to see the exciting looking cars and production cars breaking track records. It’s not just seeing the best driver in a slow car. We have hpde and open lapping weekends for people who want to do laps. Those people look at the modified time attack cars or crazy expensive cars that come out doing time attack and they can be moved into that environment down the road. 
We’ve got good bones and we’ve got enough people to keep the ball rolling.

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@A_Revs can’t agree more. In the home of Time Attack they have like two classes and that’s just a recent thing. All they are after is PB’s and lap records. 

 

I like the GridLife rules, they have put a lot of work into making them good. Not a big fan of spec tire classes (ClubTR) but rest of it looks good and clearly has been a huge success in the US. 

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The WSCC autocross group faced a very similar dilemma about 20 years ago.   We were using a unique Canadian autocross ruleset and PAX system that was far from perfect and did not align with the SCCA rules.  After much discussion and attempts to improve the situation, the club decided to abandon the Canadian system and adopted SCCA rules.   I believe the WSCC was the first to make this change, and other provinces quickly followed our lead.   Ever since this change was made, classing/PAX has really been a non-issue for the autocross discipline. Once we started running SCCA rules it opened the door for Winnipeg cars to be fully prepped for participation in SCCA events, and several of our club members have gone on to do very well at the national level down there.

With so many car makes/models/years/variants and potential modifications these PAX systems inevitably become quite complicated.   It requires a team of people to maintain car lists, field rule change & class change proposals, and review results from event data to do annual PAX adjustments.   The SCCA is a large organization and is in the best position to handle all of this work.   Good to see that the SCCA Time Attack rules are at least being considered in this discussion!

I was a newbie at Time Attack this year and really enjoyed it.  One suggestion I would throw out there is to consider making each day of the weekend a unique event.  I feel like this format change would improve attendance numbers and minimize the impact of changing weather conditions on results.

 

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I would love to adopt the Gridlife rule set. with fewer classes that are easy to identify visually when looking at cars. its easy to see who is competing against another. its easy too look at a timing sheet and see who is in the lead as everything is off of raw time per class. its overall more exciting to spectate and compete in because during the event the battles are easy to follow vs trying to do pax factors on lap times (of every car). with pax we all run and nobody really seems to know who won tell after the event. its very anti calamitic. 

 

also makes keeping track of lap time records for a class a lot easier when there is only 4-5 classes vs 20?. less is more i guess. less classes makes for bigger fields in them and they then are easier to track and mean more to achieve. with seeing how tight the field has gotten

 

there is a ton of holes in the pip schedule also that bug me even tho i exploit the hell out of them lol. 

to sum it up pax isn't real time attack, its pax. 

 

i would be interested in applying there rule book to our results from this year to see how it would have looked. car numbers per class, spread between ect. 

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It need updating and formatting and would likely need tweaking but I tried bringing in this set if rules in 2019 to change things up from the Pax system and got destroyed over it. But I no longer have to lose sleep over this ;).

 

Tried to use gridlife rules but toned them down into 3 classes that the majority of cars at gmp fall into. 

rulebookV1.1 (1).docx

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53 minutes ago, Ianfromduff said:

It need updating and formatting and would likely need tweaking but I tried bringing in this set if rules in 2019 to change things up from the Pax system and got destroyed over it. But I no longer have to lose sleep over this ;).

 

Tried to use gridlife rules but toned them down into 3 classes that the majority of cars at gmp fall into. 

rulebookV1.1 (1).docx 19.01 kB · 5 downloads

It looks good. 
 

I think the main concern with it is it’s again a unique rule book and class structure. This would then make it difficult to get competitors visiting from elsewhere. 

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54 minutes ago, Mat said:

Let’s see if you get destroyed again,

only thing i would really see being a issue is tire size vs weight. does work but would be a pain. would have to have scales out at the events. this is just what stuck out on a quick glance. 

  

i agree tho. it still being a unique rule set wouldn't help on that end 

 

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There sure is a lot to digest here. Nice to read some great comments/opinions and insight. We’ve lucky to have so many knowledgeable members in our Club.  I’ve had quite the education following up on all the links to the various organizations that were quoted. Speed Freaks? Track Junkies? Track Rats?  Who knew?

I’ll try and assess this from the perspective of the average Time Attacker and not weigh in too heavily with my personal preferences on which system we run.  That’s because I’m 2 seconds off being competitive in my class and have to settle for having fun and just trying to improve. Therefore, any ruleset and classing system works just fine for me.

My understanding is that we are sanctioned by the WCMA and are therefore bound by their regulations and classing system contained in “2022 ASN Canada FIA Time Attack Regulations” published by GDS – ASN Canada.  The WCMA regulations and classing system are very similar to CASC/OTA regulations and classing system and, in fact, provides a link to the OTA car classification database.  A previous version of the WCMA regulations also included the PAX index but is no longer included in the current edition.  Not sure if this was intended to give the regional Clubs some freedom in setting their own PAX index, or whether the omission was an oversight. Are we able to develop Supplementary Regulations that establishes a new classing system, and yet still remain in compliance with the WCMA regulations?  I certainly hope so.

The classing system in the WCMA regulations is cumbersome and requires a lot of calculations just to arrive at your starting class, let alone your PIP schedule, but it can be done. I’m led to believe that we use the OTA classing system because it does the calculations automatically once you select your specific car from their database. Simply a matter of convenience, especially when calculating your PIP schedule.

There are a total of 14 classes in the WCMA regulations ranging from Open MOD to T3 (same class structure as the OTA database). I reviewed the classes in SCCA Time Trials and there are 18 classes in total. The six (6) sport classes and five (5) tuner classes pretty much equate to our existing SGT1 thru T3 classes (10 in total) and would cover most of our participants.  I suppose you could also equate our MOD classes (4) to their MAX (5) and Unlimited (2) classes.

If I understand it correctly, there are seven (7) GridLife classes that Ian whittled down to Enthusiast, Limited, and Unlimited in his ill-fated 2019 proposal. I have a sneaking suspicion that most Time Attackers that were polled didn’t take the time to fully understand the rules or the proposed classing structure. I know that I didn’t have a full appreciation of what Ian offered and voted against it – mostly because I didn’t understand it.

To sum it up, I think most Time Attackers want a system that is fair and encourages competition with others. If we could somehow balance the number of classes with our typical number of entries that would equate to at least 3 entries per class, then that would add competitiveness to each class without the need for a PAX system.  Only trouble, it is difficult to get 30 entries or more for each race day.  Even with 30 entries, you’re still going to end up with some classes with one or less entry. Just like the current system.  And I think that’s the advantage of a PAX system, where your competition is the entire field and not just people in your class. It’s unfortunate, however, that a PAX system, no matter how much it’s tweaked, will never please everyone.

Brian

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I couldn’t care less how WCMA thinks we should class our TA racing at GMP. 

Our WCMA representatives made a bold statement as to who they DIDN’T want as a TA director. 

Let’s figure out what works best for us and make it happen.

I have only ever cared about one thing, racing at GMP. Nothing else matters to me.

 

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The first question we need to ask ourselves: What do want to achieve?

- If the idea is to pacify certain individuals only, then we don't need to change our rules: just changing the PAX factor will achieve that for a lot less money.

- If the idea is to change our rules so that our rules match those of the West, then there is no point bringing up additional rule sets that would be once again unique to us only, keeping the cleft between our rules and those utilized in the West. Assuming we are allowed to switch to SSCA rules, yet still remain sanctioned with WMCA, then we should look at those.

 

Spending a lot of sleepless hours that I will never get back, I looked at the technical rules of SCCA. I thought of various cars competing in TA at GMP and went through what they would be allowed to do to their car, and what mods done to their car right now would pitch them into a non-competitive group. I think it is fair to say that many competitors would have to spend anywhere from "some" to "a lot of" money to get their cars competitive in their class. 

It became clear very early on that the less classes a series has, the less restrictions are in each class. That by default turns into a money game - whoever has the money to buy the top-end model of a particular model line is already advantaged over the person with the lesser model. Add to that a certain amount of freedom to modify that top-model, and the person with the most funds will win his/her class. Some competitors may modify their cars and may be competitive, some may leave their car as it is and be possibly less competitive, and some competitors may opt to buy a different car. What I do hope, though, is that nobody fades away from TA just because their car has become legislated into the inability to win.

 

Looking at the SCCA rules, I also could not find what I would consider the last chapter of the TA season - who is ultimately the champion? We obviously figured out who is the winner of each class per event, but now what? Will there be as many champions as there are classes? If not, how do we select the winner of the championship among all those classes? Do we need a PAX system (gasp!!!) for that?

 

And since somebody brought up an answer to a question that never was asked: I, too, would love to see Saturday and Sunday run as two separate events! I believe that this would entice more people to come out, especially if the weather is worse on one day than on the other. If for example the Saturday is cold with wet drizzles, there is realistically no reason to go on the racetrack if my goal is to post the fastest time; one could just pay and show up on sunny Sunday. However, if each day is valued equally, with the same number of points given on that Saturday as on Sunday, then people who are serious about the championship will have to come out on both days. Currently we are counting the best 4 out of 5 events. To allow for people to live their life without structuring it around the race calendar, we could count 8 out of 10 events, which ultimately affords each racer even more flexibility regarding attendance.

.

Edited by donrolandofurioso
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2 hours ago, Weebly said:

My understanding is that we are sanctioned by the WCMA and are therefore bound by their regulations and classing system contained in “2022 ASN Canada FIA Time Attack Regulations” published by GDS – ASN Canada.  The WCMA regulations and classing system are very similar to CASC/OTA regulations and classing system and, in fact, provides a link to the OTA car classification database.

There are a total of 14 classes in the WCMA regulations ranging from Open MOD to T3 (same class structure as the OTA database). I reviewed the classes in SCCA Time Trials and there are 18 classes in total. The six (6) sport classes and five (5) tuner classes pretty much equate to our existing SGT1 thru T3 classes (10 in total) and would cover most of our participants.  I suppose you could also equate our MOD classes (4) to their MAX (5) and Unlimited (2) classes.

If I understand it correctly, there are seven (7) GridLife classes. 
 

Brian

The whole ASN thing was brought up by a CACC Stewart when we where going from the legacy CACC Time Attack (solo1) rules to SCCA Time Trial rules. The irony is the CACC legacy rules did not follow ASN as well so it was ultimately a sword he died on. I suspect the WCMA will not care what classing structure we use as long as we follow the GCR’s and run safe events.
 

Based off the math above and number of classes per Gridlife is 1/2 the number of classes what we currently have. I’m not sure if less classes is the goal or not?
 

SCCA TT does have a lot of classes and is by no means are they perfect, nothing will be. 

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i will introduce what i think would be a awesome time attack format. Gridlife rules but we only use 4 of there classes.(this should keep the classes big enough to be competitive with enough options to find a good home for everyone’s car)

Street - StreetGT - StreetMod - Unlimited 

(the club tr class minus the spec tire would be another good one to use but might creat to much overlap in classes. To many classes with to few cars possibly? I really like the class tho) 

 

this would result in 4 Ta class champions at the end of the year and class records that may or may not be held by the overall winner. 
 

Touching on the rain event subject that has come up. In past we already split rain days off on there own then grouped it back in by taking a competitors higher of the 2 race days pax score from the weekend score. It worked fine in the past I thought. Personally the weather is part of the battle. We all show up to the same track on the same weekend. 
 

as for the biggest pocket book buying an advantage. We already have that. Nothing in pax limits the amount of money you can spend on a modification. My 2 way kw coilovers gave the same pip schedule as the cheapest coilovers you can buy would. I have very slowly modified my car and gone through 4 sets of coilovers. I’m not going to lie. Getting my car into a Motorsport grade coilover was a bought advantage that had no classing penalty with pax. In the gridlife rule book it would have bumped me up from street into streetMod. 

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With all due respect, Tyler, you misunderstood my post.

I was not talking about rain events - we have very few dedicated rain events. I am talking about the one day of a weekend that is clearly slower than the other one - not by 10 seconds per lap, but by 3 because the track is damp, and the tires never get warm.

Furthermore, I fully agree with you that under the current ruling you will get the same amount of PIP, regardless of whether you have a cheap set of coil-overs or you splurged for a true racing suspension. However, under certain rules the person who runs the high-end race set-up gets the same handicap points as the one running a 20-year-old stock suspension. Therefore, if that person wants to remain competitive, he/she has to spend the money for a coil-over set-up. So there definitely is a difference!

 

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What is the ask?

Are we looking to adhere to the general ideals of what we wanted our TA to be; to remain open and inclusive to all and generate a competitive environment amongst all Entrants? To create a inviting option to classed racing; a stepping stone; with the current investment placed on/in your vehicle of choice.

Or, are we interested in creating or implementing a rule set that you'd have to adhere to, ultimately creating silos, for the the purposes of following western/southern direction?

I think we have this in our race classes.

Remember if you are set up for SCCA, you have a home somewhere in OTA that WSCC has been using.

As someone who has been the face of our schools for many years, trying to grow the entrant list, I have noticed another aspect you may not see! When the disciplines are discussed at our schools, the students are far more interested in running what they already have and being included in equally with everyone else, than focus building a hot rod to a rule set, that ultimately makes people go cross-eyed and become disinterested. Once they find out that what they have is not going to be competitive, or the ability to be, you've lost them, and likely permanently.

Some of the above also applies to our current TA roster. Some are excited to change to something familiar, or following structure from where they'd like to compete. Others will be lost in the endless money game, changing setups to an ever-evolving, never satisfying rule set. (AKA...road racing).

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