There’s been lots of discussion over the past several months re. reducing the frequency of serious incidents w/o reducing the fun and excitement.
There seems to be three schools of thought on the cause of incidents.
-It’s a spec class, shit happens.
-The primary cause of serious incidents is driver skills. Solution is training.
-The primary cause of serious incidents is bad decisions due to red mist. Solution is deterrence.
The first school of thought leads us to the unpalatable choice of “love it or leave it.” Sure “shit does indeed happen”, but leaving the problem at that is the same as declaring the current serious incident rate as acceptable. How close are we to averaging the destruction of one car per event?
The driver skills school of thought leads us to all sorts of useful discussions. But it doesn’t do us any good to say “the problem is skills”, and then not attempt to help others improve those skills. Newbies aren’t going to learn everything we might want them to know in a couple hours of Comp School classroom. When was the last time a SpecE30 guy helped out in Comp School? Also, we have no SpecE30 mentoring program. I created the “Incidents and Rules, Lessons Learned” subforum to see if some useful threads might get generated but the subforum has not exactly been a wellspring of original content. So for those of you that think the problem is primarily one of skills, I challenge you to find a way to help.
The third school of thought is that the primary cause of serious incidents is drivers making an ill-advised decision in the heat of battle. We’ve all been there. On several occasions I’ve hurt someone else’s car because I did something stupid. I will always feel badly about those incidents.
There is no right answer. All 3 of the above are occurring.
We’re not talking about a little scratched sheetmetal here. Note the definition of damage below. We’re only talking about serious incidents.
On the one hand we don’t want to turn our series into risk averse historic racing. But on the other hand each report we hear of prospective racers shying away from SpecE30 because of their perception of frequent carnage, should be a significant embarrassment to us.
A couple useful excerpts from the NASA CCR.
[i]27.4.2 Damage
Damage from an incident is limited to the following definition: Any sheet metal, fiberglass, or other body material, deformity significant enough to cause the NASA Officials to enforce the “50/50 rule,” thus requiring repairs. Damage to suspension or other mechanical components are not included in this definition. Damage to plastic or vinyl bumper covers, trim pieces, splitters, marker lights; and marks from tire rubs, are not considered damage for the purposes of this section.
27.11 Issuing Penalties
The IRB may choose to issue any penalty for any infraction. However, it is highly recommended that they follow closely with what is published in the rulebook. Any deviation from what is published without due proof of mitigating circumstance may be grounds for appeal. The following is a list of suggested penalties for the listed infraction:
- Contact bumper to bumper with no deviation and no damage: No penalty
- Any sheet metal contact with no damage and no deviation: No penalty
- Any contact causing deviation, with no damage, but loss of a position: Reposition
- Any contact resulting in “damage” as defined by these guidelines: One (1) race suspension
- Any contact resulting in a “punt” as defined by these guidelines: Disqualification
- Any contact resulting in damage and punt: Disqualification and one (1) race suspension
- Passing under a standing yellow or double yellow: Reposition to last place (minimum)
- Passing under waving yellow and / or over-driving any yellow: Disqualification (minimum)
These are general guidelines for standard penalties. They may be additive or multiplicative depending on the situation and the person’s past record. The IRB may invoke more severe penalties for repeated violations. Any deviation from these guidelines should be justified in the report to the Race Director.[/i]
Recall after the incident at VIR a couple months ago, Jim Pantas resolved, at our request, to bring more consequences to bear to help reduce incidents. Robert, Fred and I have been talking to Jim about this for the past several months. At the RA Racers Meeting last weekend all the SpecE30 types talked about it and reached some general agreement on what we’re going to try. As usual, the devil is in the details so we will have to massage this a bit as the months go by in order to get what we want…fewer serious incidents. By all means chime in and lets work together to make this solution just tough enough that it prevents the worst of our incidents, yet doesn’t really change anything else.
Cliffnotes. There’s no new rules. It boils down to the idea that if there is a serious incident caused by one SpecE30 doing something stupid and causing significant damage to another SpecE30, the series directors will ask Jim to apply the NASA CCR penalty to the driver.
The details.
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When a SpecE30 director feels that one SpecE30 has received 27.4.2 damage by another he will collect and review video evidence, review incidents reports, and discuss with participants. If the SpecE30 director feels BOTH that there is 27.4.2 damage AND ALSO a SpecE30 driver behaved irresponsibly, he will recommend to Jim Pantas that 27.11 be applied to the driver. If there is no 27.4.2 damage OR no judgment of “irresponsible” then the normal incident report process will apply.
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If possible a ruling will be reached that same weekend.
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Deciding upon degree of blame associated with an incident and upon the penalty, if any, is the NASA-SE Director’s role. The driver is free to defend their actions to Jim Pantas, and there is also a NASA mechanism to appeal higher.
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Out-of-Region drivers. We would pass on our recommendation to the NASA director for their home region. Our penalties are not binding out-of-region. Out of region visitors are a good thing. We would lose them if we tell them that at their next SE event they only get 1 race. Lets hope they serve their penalty in their home region.
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If one of the two SE SpecE30 co-directors is involved in the incident, that director excuses himself from the decision re. making a recommendation to the NASA-SE Director.
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Contact with out-of-class cars. This is really about in-class damage, but the NASA CCR does apply to all classes. If there is 27.4.2 damage in an incident between you and an out-of-class car, the normal procedure of an incident report and discussion with Jim is unchanged. If you take heat from the other driver, his class director, or Jim, as long as we feel your case is righteous, Fred and I will happily stand by your side and help you argue your case. Alternately, if you’re angry about out-of-class contact and want consequences on the other driver, convince Fred or I and we’ll help you with that too.
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Amiable incidents. Occasionally 27.4.2 damage occurs but neither driver feels aggrieved. The fact that the driver with the damage is uncomplaining will not be taken into account. That is to say, if I damage (NASA definition) your car and you forgive me, I still might get a suspension. Chances are though, if you forgive me it’s because the incident was more “bad luck” then irresponsible.
Definitions.
a) Irresponsible. This is by nature subjective. We must do the best we can to create a reasonable standard and try not to vary it. We don’t want to deter hard racing, we just want to discourage the worst of the stupidity. Split second decisions can be wrong, yet not irresponsible. There can be bad luck, there can be surprises from other drivers, there can be moves that “almost” worked. The objective is to isolate only those incidents that would make most of us agree “that was really dumb”.
Examples:
1) If you go off the racing surface, regain control of the car, but then re-enter a crowded track vs. waiting for a safe opening, that’s irresponsible.
2) Failing to go both feet in such that your out of control car moves in an unpredictable manner is irresponsible.
3) Intentionally squeezing someone off of the racing surface, no matter how little overlap exists, is irresponsible.
b) Suspension. Jim and the co-directors discussed a couple different options. The tentative solution is that a suspended driver would sit out one race during the next SE Region race weekend they attend. So you sign up for a weekend but sit out either Saturday or Sunday.
