SEASON 9 RACE 9 INTERLAGOS INCIDENT REPORT

[Peter Marshall]

finally, no incident to reports

Sorry for those who were involved in incidents, I think this is a very important topic that all make maximum effort to avoid them

I'll be working on emulating your success

 

[Valter Ostman]

The ultimate car for league competitions would be equipped with built-in punishment. If you bump another car with the front of your own you would lose 30% of engine power. What wonderfully clean races we would get.(semi joke)

 

[Nicolai Nicholson]

This is to remind everybody what the incident thread is about. This is not aimed at any particular driver or a consequence of a spesific post. The reason is twofolded:
1.I feel very few incidents (see below definition) reach a conclusion/solution, they are more of an explaination, which also is an ingredient, but not a finished job.
2. I am afraid others will get me wrong when i analyse my own incident with Peter, (Marko) and Anthony.

So here is what goes in regards to the incident thread as I understand it:

We want a minimum of incidents (and great racing). Our tool to always improve is this incident thread. However, we need to have the right focus which is:

-Why did it happen
-Was it preventable, and if yes, how can we avoid it in the future

In other words, a guideline for comparable situations in future races should be the result of an incident report.

The bigger consequences an incident has, the more important it is to prevent in the future. Consequence is measured in total fun and joy deprived from the race. At PrestoGP an incident should/must be addressed and concluded if the consequence is no less than: loss of position and/or damage to another driver.

To further elaborate: There is a balance between close racing and safety. Obviously! The safest would be to ban all overtaking etc., but it would not be much fun. Therefore we are always looking for the right balance. The balance is determind by consequences, the larger the consequences the more the balance tips away from close racing and towards safety, and vise versa.

Does this make sense? I am very afraid of sounding arrogant, unfriendly, condesending etc., but at the same time I feel it is very much in PrestoGP's favor to address the issue. As an example: At Watkins Glen we had an incident that removed 2-3 drivers totally from the race, iow huge consequences (which we exchanged with a restart). The incident report describes very well what happened, but is vague in terms of if it can be prevented in future races. The report also gave impression that consequences was not a factor when determinding action.

 

[Peter Marshall]

I am not so good at analysis of incidents myself Nico. I generally assume that if I am involved an incident then I contributed to it and probably need to adjust my actions in the future. I try to be more predictable....which has become less like racing imo. The car behind me should be very nervous about not hitting me if I was to consider a battle to be proper racing, but I don't do this anymore due to our aliens expected immediate attack/ passes....my practice start(s) 'turn arounds' ...at many events not just this one...as examples....we all aspire to d[r]ive this way I guess.

I would prefer the car behind to be nerovus but when it is me [the car ahead] I am nervous; go figure...

Generally speaking I think I should start every race from the rear of the grid and not get in the way of the competitive drivers. I have a lot to learn but that would require me to be as experienced as the average PrestoGP driver in terms of playing hours/ track time. Not possible for me I am afraid. I think most accidents are my fault for not living up to the expectations of the other driver. So it seems....

E.G. I was too slow in the corner which is why you tapped my car? You expected me to battle with Marko all the to the apex instead of slowing? Anthony expected me to go right or stay right?

What will I do different in the next race to ensure i get to write 'no incidents to report'? Start further back on the grid I think. That provides me with a good balance between competiveness and safety which I enjoy.

 

[Nicolai Nicholson]

Peter, we have raced together since the start of PrestoGP, there have been about 90 races in almost 5 years without incident, at least from my side (as far as I can remember, i can be mistaken). When I was so unfortunate to tap your rear and send your car into a spin at lap 37 I felt immediatly terrible, drove off the track and wait for you to pass me. Some seconds later a car smashes into me while I am off track waiting for Peter. I limp back to the pits for repairs and I guess I have lost 20-30 seconds and dropped about 5 places. After the race has finished I tell you how sorry I am without you recognising it. I tell you again, and then you just say; I feel more sorry for the others involved. Again in the forum I say I am sorry, and again you don't recognise it, not even with a lazy like. Where does all this spite come from? Nobody have spent more time trying to make you have an incident free race. Needless to say if the situation had been reversed you would have received a very different treatment.

I find it pointless to waist more times on incidents, you have already made it clear what you think about it and will rather solve it your own way by starting from behind. And I do not think many others agree or think the same way as me in regards to incidents either, so I recognise the failiure of the whole thing. It was too ambishious.

I do not know what the future brings, I tell myself that I have spent so much time on this, and I feel we are so close to PrestoGP running by "itself", but all the time I find myself spending hours discussing in the forum, trying to nudge things in the right direction, I realising we are never going to get there.

I have been working the whole weekend (in addition to weekdays), today I came home around 5pm, looked in the forum, felt upset again, wrote this, and now it is 6:35pm. The same happens all the time, I waist too much of the precious spare time not having fun with discussing in the forum. I hate it, it is not good for my life.

EDIT: To better explain, I have interfered many times in the incident thread throughout the season. Chirlie, Alfonso, Bob Luneski (all these three have quitted, possibly partly due to my interference), David, Tim, and now with myself and Peter. Everytime it is the same from my side, I want the investigation to aim at finding a conclusion, a guideline on how to act in comparable situations in the future. In stead I feel that not many understands or agree with me, usually we dont get to the core of the issue, and as it feels that my interference/guidance makes me unpopulare, it is unpleasent and time consuming work that I dislike. Peter's attitude is for me a manifistation of the ungreatful nature of trying to lead the incident thread and regulation in general as best as I can.

 

[Valter Ostman]

In my humble opinion. Sometimes someone responds incorrectly to a sudden situation, despite his good intentions. Racing's damn risky in itself. You have so little time to consider your actions when there suddenly appears a situation.

I'm very nervous when I'm close behind someone because it's not always possible to prevent contact. Not in simracing and not in the dangerous real life racing. We can only do our best and hope for success. I could make a list here of those I'm not afraid to being followed by. It would end up in a very long list. But that wouldn't be nice. I will just mention one of them, he is Norwegian by the way. So then you know who I think of.

The situation you're discussing arose largely because of misunderstanding and that it's a very fast (almost)blind curve. Its very hard to give a recipe for avoiding that kind of incident.

 

[Peter Marshall]

Peter, we have raced together since the start of PrestoGP, there have been about 90 races in almost 5 years without incident, at least from my side (as far as I can remember, i can be mistaken). When I was so unfortunate to tap your rear and send your car into a spin at lap 37 I felt immediatly terrible, drove off the track and wait for you to pass me. Some seconds later a car smashes into me while I am off track waiting for Peter. I limp back to the pits for repairs and I guess I have lost 20-30 seconds and dropped about 5 places. After the race has finished I tell you how sorry I am without you recognising it. I tell you again, and then you just say; I feel more sorry for the others involved. Again in the forum I say I am sorry, and again you don't recognise it, not even with a lazy like. Where does all this spite come from? Nobody have spent more time trying to make you have an incident free race. Needless to say if the situation had been reversed you would have received a very different treatment.

I did not mean for you to suffer any feeling of indeference from me. i apologize Nico. All my fault. It was never intended and I thought I did not need to reassure you that there were no hard feelings from me; there are none. And I am sorry that others, Anthony Jim and you, got caught up in my mess; that is the type of person I am.

 

[David Turnbull]

hopefully this doesnt offend you nico but i think your being far too ambitious with how youd like the league to self regulate, it cant and will never happen, everything needs a governing body, in real life in f1 they have charlie whiting, stewards and the fia to make all the important calls, presto needs this too, wether its you yourself who makes the call or someone who is appointed race director or steward over an event it makes no diffrence, the league has to be governed by someone, its obvious you take no joy from being the one who makes the calls but its a dirty job and someone has to do it.

regards the incident between you all, i have to say marko dived from a distance back and expected peter to leave room, peter took his normal racing line as he shouldnt have expected marko to dive from so far back, peter is blameless here i feel, it was unfortunate that with peter slowing to avoid a bigger contact with marko that nico was caught out and could do nothing to avoid, the next part is again very bad luck, although peters position on the track couldve been a bit more predictable i.e more to left or more to right leaving a clear gap for anyone coming through (a minor thing there was still alot of space), when anthony hits peter and sends him into nico whos offtrack and waiting i think its the last in a series of really bad luck incidents that really the only thing that could be learned from the whole thing is from marko, his dive up the inside started off the series of events, but obviously marko didnt mean for it to happen just that next time he should either be alot closer to the car in front when passing or at least have wheels level going into the braking zone, another thing that could be noted is by anthony, if you notice when anthony rejoins after recovering from accidentally hitting peter he so very nearly takes out the race leader, sean, it was a matter of inches that seans race wasnt ended there and then, obviously anthony didnt mean it and was only recovering position on track but that is why we have a track map showing where each driver is, if anyones not using it i suggest they do.

dont mean to upset anyone with this just thought id weigh in to try make nicos life a bit easier

p.s can i throw in a suggestion here?

what about if we all are appointed a partner to help with incident reports, our own personal steward, after each race if we have an incident, we firsty post in the incident thread the timestamp of the incident and a partner/steward is then appointed to look into the incident and give his personal opinions, when the partner/steward has made a decision it gets posted and the incident is then resolved by independant review. whatever conclusion the partner/steward reaches we abide by and apologise and redefine our actions as necessary.

none of us are very good at analysing our own incidents (well most of us arent) which tends to end up with us feeling at odds with each other as to how an incident happened and mostly not moving on from them, i know myself i usually end up taking the defensive stance and it gets me nowhere and ends with arguements i need to apologise for, i'll be truthful right now in that its usually sean who digs me out of the holes i create for myself, i tend to post first and then ask his opinion where as most of my arguements couldve been avoided if id used his advice before basing my posts on my own take on the situation, using my situation with sean as an example i think if we take out the need to analyse our own incidents then we may find we get along alot better with incident reports in the future.

p.s 2

sorry for mentioning your name so often sean but your my hero

p.s 3

im going for the longest post ever now.........

 

[Valter Ostman]

And I do not think many others agree or think the same way as me in regards to incidents either, so I recognise the failure of the whole thing. It was too ambitious.

You are wrong when you say that it's a failure. I think most people here feel that you have succeeded tremendously well to educate us into safe drivers. Your passion for racing has given us so many amazing racing experiences. Why dwell on accidents caused by unpredictable factors. We have a whole grid full of drivers who strive to do our best, both in terms of competition and safety. Our races are generally relatively clean and very entertaining. And we all know that the perfect race is impossible to achieve, racing is so unpredictable. Even the F1 pros fail to do incident free races.

Yet we must keep trying to get better at analyzing and trying to work out how to avoid incidents. It is an eternal quest that we can never manage the full. But that does not mean we should give up. To fail is with in the nature of things. Still we can always strive to minimize incidents that destroy races for us. The most difficult work in this area is done by every individual in the race situation, when we weigh the risk against benefit. This balance has to be like an conditioned reflex in all drivers, and I think you've guided us towards achieving a basic safety instinct that we can continue to build on.

 

[Marko Vuori]

I think Peter's, mine, Nicolai's, and others crash was a classic example of a train of small mistakes that none by itself had caused an accident, but all together created a big incident involving many cars. Since my overtaking maneuver started the chain reaction, I´m also partly responsible.

I attach here a video of our battle with Peter that preceded the incident on lap 37. This is to put my overtaking maneuvre in the context. After my unlucky pit stop on lap 19, I had dropped behind Peter, and catched him on lap 23. After overtaking some slower cars, we set the table for a fierce duel from lap 28 onwards. For the next 10 laps I would pressure Peter heavily, having in average more than one good overtaking opportunity per lap. At the same time I of course could learn about our strength and weknesses in different parts of the track.

I would not put my maneuvre on lap 37 in the category of eyes-closed-&-hope-for-the-best-diving. I had followed Peter for 15 laps by then, and I knew that I had advantage in brakings and slow sections of the track, whereas he had advantage on straight sections. I had also done the same move at T4 at least 5 times in preceding laps, and I knew that Peter was either a) maintaining his speed and close the door, or b) take slower speed and leave room on the inside. My braking for that corner on lap 37 was also two phased: 1) I initiated with hard braking and look if Peter does "a)" or "b)", 2) when I saw he does "b)" I eased braking and initiated the final move for the overtaking. At 160 meters before corner, I show that I will try overtaking by taking the inside line. Braking for this corner is done about 70 meters before corner. At the turn-in point of the corner, non of the parts of my car had overlap with Peter's car. By the apex of the corner, I am already past Peter by a length of half a car. My driving line leaves enough room on the outside to make the corner safely two cars side by side.

In one hand, this incident there are at least four things, which had prevented the incident if they had not happened. On the other hand, none of them alone had caused any damage to anyone involved. These are:

1) My overtaking maneuvre
2) Small touch between me and Peter, and Peter's small reduction in speed due to this
3) Nicolai's close distance to the overtaking battle
4) The speed difference of Peter's and Nicolai's cars seem to me quite small compared to the effect of the impact on Peter's car (is there lag involved once again?)

Taking any of these events out from the chain of events would have ment that non of the cars involved would have suffered any damage. However, on two of these things drivers could have had big influence on. I could have left my overtaking maneuvre undone in that situation and Nicolai could have left a little more space between us and him when he saw that I initiated an overtaking.

My move is far from being doomed to fail right from the start, but it is though very much on the limit. At any point I don´t seem to lose control of the situation, which is typical for dive-ins. As I said had there just been me and Peter in that corner, no damage would have been suffered, and no spin would have occurred.

Nicolai brakes to that corner a bit earlier than usually, which proves that he was aware and tried to avoid the danger in front. It's unlucky that Peter and I touched when I am already past Peter almost completely. This made Peter reduce speed just a little which was enough to cause Nicolai to crash with Peter. The speed difference between Nicolai and Peter is really small causing no damage, but for some reason (lag issues, going back to throttle at the same time) its effect on Peter's car is quite big sending it spinning. Had Nicolai been just 10 meters further behind of us, he had never hit Peter, and none of the cars involved had suffered any damage nor spun.

Conclusion: It's difficult to give some code of conduct for the future to prevent similar incidents. Perhaps, the best are that surprise attacks might not be the best idea and always leave a little bit extra space in front of you when a battle in front of you gets hot. Like Nicolai said earlier, we could prevent all the incidents, but it would not be good racing anymore. I think no driver in this incident went over the line in competiviness-safety meter. Incident was caused by several drivers going close to the limit at really small time intervall, which combined caused the risks to materialise in a full blown multicar crash.

ps. Sorry for the long post. I know it's not nice to read long ones. I try to say things really shortly in the coming posts.

 

[Nicolai Nicholson]

I agree with about everything Marko sais, except one point where I think he is mistaken:

4) The speed difference of Peter's and Nicolai's cars seem to me quite small compared to the effect of the impact on Peter's car (is there lag involved once again?)

Taking any of these events out from the chain of events would have ment that non of the cars involved would have suffered any damage.

I think both contact and consequences were light. I'm quite sure neither of us received any damage.

I think it is crucial to see this as two seperate incidents. The first part Marko have described very well and the second part is Peter's controlled track re-entry (yes, the first part put him in the position of having to reenter the track, but that is something all of us should master).

Regardless of the investigation of the contact between Peter and I, due to the consequences which was in my eyes small (no damage, lose 5-10 sec and 1-2 places, 2/3rds into the race, plenty more to fight for ) I think it is "unproblematic". That does not mean I do not want to learn from it and keep the close racing alive even longer next time.

I also think that Peter and Marko's first incident is unproblematic, I think they only lost some time, 5+ sec and no positions. Bearly reportable.

Fighting for position involves risk. The longer the battle continues, the greater the chance of an incident. The way I see it both parties are in on it, they willingly go for the fun of the battle, and both have the option to pull the plug; the faster driver behind can "give up" and return to a safer distance and await a mistake or pits. The slower car ahead can decide that I do not want this guy on my tail for the rest of the race, I'll make it easy for him to pass me.

In my view I think Marko did a perfect race. It can be discussed if I should have kept a bigger distance and if Peter should or could avoid lifting, but I do not think Marko's pass in any ways was wrong. Maybe if it was lap 1 or 2 with lots of traffic it could be argued, but not 2/3rds into the race after trying to pass for 10-15 laps. And it was executed perfectly; a nice, tight and controlled corner.

What is important to discuss is the second part, Peter's track re-entry. That is what resulted in the much larger consequences. In my view there are several ways it could have been avoided:

-You could have made a narrow/tight entry, keeping your car to the very left/inside edge of the track at all times.
-You could have entred as you did and stayed on the outside.
-You could have stayed on the grass until you reached an area you felt more confident reentring.

EDIT: Having said all this, nothing would have happened if I had kept a greater distance, so I gladly take the blame for everything, this is merely a technical analysis

EDIT 2: I feel I should be the last to bring up the issue of the track re-entry as I was the one who put Peter in the situation. Am I the only one who thinks the track re-entry was very poorly executed and thus should comment in a friendly and constructive way? At the moment Peter seems confused about what he should have done:

Anthony expected me to go right or stay right?

 

[Valerio Vinassa]

+1 Valter

post 29

 

[Jim Hawley]

What will I do different in the next race to ensure i get to write 'no incidents to report'? Start further back on the grid I think

No Peter...that's not the way forward, that wont ensure anything

What I would like to see is you putting in a bit of hot lap pratice and sticking up the sharp end of the grid like we all know you can

Then when the lights go out, just gun it and race hard it's the best way

I prefered the old Peter....the one that pressured me around Silverstone for 40 odd laps...never more than 6ft from my gearbox......was I nervous? ....nope...not even a bit

EDIT: The Peter that set a new PB round Hock yesterday, 2.. 10ths quicker than mine that's the Peter I remember


Jim



que será... será

 

[Nicolai Nicholson]

hopefully this doesnt offend you nico but i think your being far too ambitious with how youd like the league to self regulate, it cant and will never happen, everything needs a governing body, in real life in f1 they have charlie whiting, stewards and the fia to make all the important calls,

You are not even close to offending me David The real F1 is about a lot of money, so they cannot leave it to the gentleman's principle. I think we are more comparable to 15-20 mates who likes to meet every second week for (playing) a football match. And that should be possible without a ref I think.

I don't expect an incident free league, but I was dreaming that everybody were able to look at the situations objectively and make the effort to find out if anything was preventable. The contact between you and tim at the start of Watkins had such a big sync issue involved that it is hard to say it can be prevented. That Tim didn't succeed in keeping the car off the track in the after match seemed preventable to me and a few others, but a fruitful discussion never happened

 

[Sean Greenlaw]

I think quite simple way to look at it is everyone has to race with the view that any incident that happens to them during race, even if from a big mistake from some other driver, is that above all, it was not intentional and nobody goes out to cause another driver harm by choice. We try to race close etc so sometimes accidents will happen, hopefully we as drivers can show improvement through seasons/sim career in both the amount of incidents envolved in and also the way which we resolve incidents.

On the incidents i think maybe simpler way to approach it if both people who were in incident can come to agreement to what happens in easier way like Nico says, then most of time theres no need for anyone else to comment on the individual incident. When people use videos to show incidents that happened then it gives us all a chance to see them and are easier to resolve than just comments. For example if we reached a era of posts with sos for bump t1 and a np for every incident that happened, without a video uploaded we dont really have a chance to learn anything from the incident unless we were part of it. So with a video from each or 1 person in each incident probably would help resolve them quicker and also then lets everyone in league learn from every incident.
With the lap 1 incident from restart for a example what i took from the videos was like Nico the 2nd part looked at the time preventable even if this wasnt the case as Tim said, we can learn from this that if ever happened again and were driver who found themself off track in Tims situation we have to try and not rejoin until in control of car or traffic has passed and coasting no throttle until ontrack or traffic passed as i think if Tim perhaps didnt accel he may have been able to control car so basicaly what i learnt its to be carefull on re-entry and try and get in control on car if possible to minimise any possible further incidents. With a couple re-entry near incidents this race also its important we all when in the situation off track 1st this in our minds should be safe return always and not as fast as i can, im not saying anyone did or didnt do this anyway because sometimes whatever we think or do at the time, after the race with hindsight we may always see a possible better decision that could have been made instead, but this just how we should approach in future situations to, so we all should now be pretty clear in mind what we must try and do in these situations now from these examples to.

On self regulation of the league i think we do ok but for somethings with us having to use the forums and wait on replys etc sometimes some decisions take longer to resolve when if had a Race Director Or someone nameless who could make decsions if needed. We perhaps need a email list again incase of situations where everyone votes on something is need or even just poll in threads.