Adding this as I doubt everyone saw it last Tuesday.
Too all drivers
It is true, there is very little driving here that is over aggressive or intentional. We have drivers fresh in from their first appearances online all the way to league champions running races here in the RD clubs. Any one of them can make a mistake or have a bad day and make several
. Even though unintentional, when a mistake causes another driver to go off track or lose a place because of it, dome will feel hurt, taken advantage of and it can ruin their experience.
Mistakes cannot be undone. The public servers are the only place where drivers freely get away with them. All the reputable sites that I have looked at and participated in events at have some form of run for drivers to follow when they have disadvantaged another driver, either a drive through the pit or as most, to simply wait and let the other driver regain his place. If you have had someone wait for you get the message that they made a mistake, that they are sorry and you go on feeling a bit better. If you had to stop, we have all had to stop, right. If you have had to stop and wait for another driver after an incident you know that this act has taken the sharp edge off of the competition and made you realize that we are in this for fun.
League races are serious, teams and individuals are working hard to place as high as they can and the rules for the operation allow the fighting to go to a different level. Club racing is for fun. Everyone should walk away after an event having had fun, having had the best chance t o show what they can do as a driver, race engineer.. The RaceDepartment rules, the ones we all read and promised to obey are to provide for an event that brings about a good chance for a fair race.
There are drivers running in our club events that are making mistakes at the expense of someone else. I follow the action during a race, I watch replays and see the innocent taps but with cars left behind. It is not my job as an organizer to call drivers out for the poor judgment they make. That call is to be made by the driver that has had his race taken away. When a driver has been infringed upon and does nothing, he is allowing the person that made the mistake to think that it is "OK" and acceptable behavior. When he gets no apology afterwards, when he does not get a satisfactory explanation for the event in a Personal Message[PM] after a cool down period then it is a problem and an incident report is in line. Happily
I can say that we have very few incident reports and only a few real inquiries to me about how to deal with an on track problem. All incident reports are confidential, only the submitter and staff know of them, until maybe a penalty is given the offender.
There is only one "harsh" penalty and that is for disobeying the Golden Rule. Always give back a spot taken by putting a driver off his line or off the track! That's it. The Golden rule is really the only rule. Being stupid, just making an error in braking, track position or making an aggressive pass are all OK as long as the Golden Rule is followed. The penalty of most any other offence is a warning the first time and if behavior is not changed will be increased at the next offence. Repeat offences get increased suspension times. But remember that breaking the Golden Rule will get your racing licence suspended the very first time.
When the Golden Rule is followed, it forgives the incident that created it. The exception would be repeated bad driving actions by that driver.
You may feel it is OK to be tapped and sent off track allowing that it is all just for fun anyhow. When it happens to another driver the feeling might be different. Please do not allow bad driving [breaking the Golden Rule] to continue. Have that PM and let the driver know that it hurt and report the incident if he thinks it was ok and staff[all of us] will look at it and decide.
