When does the passer have the right to the line?

#1

The answer is not what I thought it was. How could I possibly have been racing all this time and not understood this?

I thought that the passer got the right to the line after completing the pass. But the correct answer seems to be that you get the right to the line once passee’s front wheel has fallen back to passer’s driver.

Scenario. You are slowly pulling up to Joe on a straight. You then have overlap, but no right to be there. Then you get your front wheel up to Joe and you earn “racing room”. Then front bumpers are even. 1sec later your front bumper is out in front by 12" and YOU NOW HAVE THE RIGHT TO THE LINE. IT IS JOE THAT HAS ONLY “THE RIGHT TO RACING ROOM”.

25.4.3 Right to the Line
The driver in front has the right to choose any line, as long as they are not considered to be blocking. The driver attempting to make a pass shall have the right to the line when their front wheel is next to the driver of the other vehicle.

This is paragraph is probably goofed. I’ll try to get us clarification. 25.4.3 seems to be at odds with Appendix A, Example 8 below. In order to synch with CCR Appendix A, example 8, the paragraph above would need to read something along the lines of…

25.4.3 Right to the Line <Scott’s version>
The driver in front has the right to choose any line, as long as they are not considered to be blocking. The driver attempting to make a pass shall have the right to the line when the passee’s front wheel has fallen back to the passer’s door.

In a scenario where passer is trying to take a corner away from someone else, this means that the passer gets to choose any line he wants thru the turn as soon as he gets his bumper 12" in front or so. I’m saying 12" because if your bumper has moved 12" in front of mine, then my front wheel has fallen back to your door. This means that passee is pretty much required to give the turn up if passer gets a little bit ahead.

Appendix A has a number of diagrams of specific incidents. Example 8 shows this scenario. I couldn’t copy the diagram into a post so I made the example an attachment. Note the text explicitly states that the trigger for B owning the line is that A’s (passee) front wheel is no longer at B’s (passer) door.

[attachment=2006]Figure8.jpg[/attachment]

#2

I think the one key line that is not given enough power is this:

“as long as they are not considered to be blocking”

IF the driver gets in front and moves over pretty obviously, then it could be considered a blocking move… Not to mention, if the lead car moves over and is not ahead of the passed car enough to avoid contact, it would still be considered a blocking move. If the other car was not there, would the overtaking car have needed to make that move? No, then it’s considered a move in reaction to that car being there… That’s just my opinion. I have had it happen to me, and I have also done what could have been considered blocking as well.

To counter your example, this is the scenario that happened in our Chumpcar a few years ago: I was going in to a fairly fast corner, and had overtaken a certain Movie themed E30 that runs in our region exiting turn 3 of the chicane at PIR. But on entering turn 4, I braked in my normal position on the track, and my normal turn in, but the E30 dived bombed the inside, and got my right rear corner and sent me in to the grass… It was unnecessary contact, and I protested the action - but Chumpcar did nothing. I had clearly defined my line as passer, and had not needed to move over at all to maintain my line through the corner, but the passed car tried to retake the position on the inside and knowing how an E30 goes through that corner, they would normally have not taken the inside line unless they were attempting a pass or pit maneuver.

#3

[quote=“djjerme” post=75298]I think the one key line that is not given enough power is this:

“as long as they are not considered to be blocking”

IF the driver gets in front and moves over pretty obviously, then it could be considered a blocking move… Not to mention, if the lead car moves over and is not ahead of the passed car enough to avoid contact, it would still be considered a blocking move. If the other car was not there, would the overtaking car have needed to make that move? No, then it’s considered a move in reaction to that car being there… That’s just my opinion. I have had it happen to me, and I have also done what could have been considered blocking as well.

To counter your example, this is the scenario that happened in our Chumpcar a few years ago: I was going in to a fairly fast corner, and had overtaken a certain Movie themed E30 that runs in our region exiting turn 3 of the chicane at PIR. But on entering turn 4, I braked in my normal position on the track, and my normal turn in, but the E30 dived bombed the inside, and got my right rear corner and sent me in to the grass… It was unnecessary contact, and I protested the action - but Chumpcar did nothing. I had clearly defined my line as passer, and had not needed to move over at all to maintain my line through the corner, but the passed car tried to retake the position on the inside and knowing how an E30 goes through that corner, they would normally have not taken the inside line unless they were attempting a pass or pit maneuver.[/quote]

The definition of blocking is here. http://spece30.com/forum/62-incidents-and-rules-lessons-learned/74605-what-is-blocking It’s defined in terms of how many moves you make, not how obvious the move is.

In the NASA world your example makes it the other guy’s fault. Once you got your bumper ahead of the other guy, you had the right to the line and all he had was the right to whatever “racing room” you chose to give him. Caveat. Precisely when the passer gets the right to the line is still under a bit of debate, but at latest, it seems to be once the passee’s wheel drops back to the passer’s door. That is to say passer is slightly ahead.

#4

Jerry Kunzman, NASA honcho and the author of the CCR, patiently stuck out a protracted email exchange with me yesterday. I, of course, assumed he’d just agree with me and say that 25.4.3 would be modified to agree with example 8. That is to say, 25.4.3 would say that when the passer got ahead, passer owned the line. It would define “getting ahead” perhaps as passee’s wheel having fallen back to passer’s door.

But no, Jerry Kunzman didn’t agree with me. This happens a lot actually but somehow I always find it surprising.

Jerry said words to the affect that once passer has the “right to racing room” that both drivers need to share the track. Neither driver “owns the line”. Further that the intent of example 8 was not to show how the “right to the line” had transferred from passee to passer prior to pass completion, but was instead meant to show how passer can screw up a situation by failing to “safely complete the pass” in a “shared track” scenario. The next version of the CCR is supposed to get a couple word changes to make this issue more clear.

Squeezing is a different subject but since it was also mentioned in this thread, Jerry also emphasized that nothing in the CCR gives one driver the right to squeeze out another.

So what does this mean for us? In large classes we spend a lot of time along side each other, and there’s an awful lot of passing, sometimes quick at turn-entry, sometimes long and slow on a straight. The shear number of passes, and the protracted opportunity for bad ideas in a long slow pass, make it important that passing rules are perfectly understood by all participants. The common wisdom had been that the passee “owned the line” until the pass was completed. There are numerous incidents over the last several years where the passee made life hard for the passer while they were over-lapped, and then used the “passee owns the line, I only had to give passer 3/4 width” idea to defend themselves against accusations of ass-hattery. Scott Barton put together a collection of videos at SpecE30.com that shows just how badly this can end up. Hopefully it’s pretty clear now that once the passer earns racing room the line does not exclusively belong to the passee. Therefore the passee is obligated to play nice.

Before anyone is tempted to show us that they’ve failed to read the CCR by saying " but the 3/4 rule means passee owns the line" they should look at Appendix A again.

26.0, Appendix A. The main purpose of the “¾ car width” rule is not to allow one driver to “squeeze” the other driver. The main purpose and intent is to alert the mind of the driver that is contemplating a pass that he/she may be “forced” to go two (2) wheels off-course to avoid a collision. Basically, this means that the overtaking driver must be certain that he/she can attempt the pass with room to spare, and must be prepared to take evasive action if necessary.

The 3/4 rule is something for the passer to be thinking about when he’s scheming his pass. It’s not a rule that allows the passee to play rough.