Safety car start in Div 2?

Hi guys, it is time to decide if we should do a safety car start in division 2 at Silverstone. If we decide to do so, it will work as follows:

-The leading car will control the pace and it is his responsibillity to keep a pace that is sensible for the rest of the field.
-Every car needs to keep a gap at no less than 1 second to the car ahead of him. This means that when you approach the s/f straight you should not be in the slip stram of the car ahead.
-The race starts when passing the s/f line after lap 1
-The practice session will end 10 minutes earlier in order to practice such a start, or a normal start if this is the decition.

Please note that this vote is for division 2 and is only for the Silverstone race. We want all the div 2 guys to give their vote. The result will only be a tool for us to make the decition, this means that the result of the vote does not need to be what we'll do in the race.

Remember, it is in everyonce interest that we are able to carry out a safe race start.

The following are members of division 2 and thus can vote (a nice group of 20 commited gentlemen):

Anthony Moufarrege
Bob Laube
Coen Mulder
Cor van der Burg
Eliezer Bartik
Jakob de Boer
Joe Isaac
Kimmo Kokkonen
Kurt Kjellin
Mattia Gottardi
Maxim Pautov
Nicolas Rouge
Richard Emery
Robin Östlund
Stefan Van Schoonhoven
Stuart Hendry
Tom Watts
Valerio Vinassa
Wayne Reed
Werner van Aswegen
 
[FONT=&quot]Here is the steward report of the incident that made last start a little meyhem. Please note that there was no clear wrong doing that lead to this, but rather an unconsious move. In other words, not the easiest incident to avoid from happening in the future.

This is taken from the complete stewards report that is to be distributed later today. I included it here because it is relevant to the poll question.

Incident # 1[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Werner van Aswegen Vs Wayne Reed (also involving Richard Emery, Kimmo Kokkonen and Joe Isaac)

TS: 140

[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Stewards' Comment and Opinion:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Wayne gets a very good start off the line and quickly passes 3 cars before he decide to make his next move on Werner’s right side (inside). There seem to be enough space to go ahead with the move. At this time Werner starts drifting to the right. Wayne on his side seems to “bounce off” the white line (edge of the track) and end up being half a meter shy of the track boundary as the contact happens.

[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]This initial incident leads to a chain of events that could not have been avoided. Therefore all interest lies with this initial contact.

What caused this incident was Werner’s lack of awareness of his surroundings combined with his rightwards drifting. Being aware of all the cars around you at the start of the race can be challenging, so often you need to anticipate instead. In this case Werner should think that there is a chance that somebody can be passing on either side of the car (happens often at the start of races) and act accordingly until he can confirm that this is not the case.

In most cases this means you need to keep your car in a straight line for the whole straight unless you have to move to avoid hitting the car in front. But also in this situation you need to asses if it is safe to make a move or if you need to lift off the throttle and stay behind.

In this specific situation Werner should have been aware of the fact that from the start and until 8 seconds there was plenty of room for a car on his inside. Therefore he should continue to leave space on his inside until after turn 1 or when he is certain that nobody are there.

Wayne, even though not directly responsible for the incident, could also possibly have prevented the accident. As he goes for the move he should consider that the guy ahead might not be aware that he’s coming on the inside and that there is a small danger associated with making the pass. To minimize the chance of something happening he should focus on maximizing his buffer to Werner, or in other words, lick the white line to his right. If he had done this the accident would probably not have happened.

In reality no big mistakes were made by any of the drivers. Certainly there were no ill intentions or aggressive driving on Werner’s behalf. Looking at the replay I get the feeling that the different white lines that move along the track surface and the narrowing width of the track as the pit exit joins the rest of the track has contributed to Werner’s unconscious drifting.

Bottom line however is that if race starts are to be reasonably safe in the future, all racers need to be 100% focused on carrying out a safe start. One drivers mind being set differently or not fully focused can be enough to create mayhem.

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Conclusion:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Racing incident[/FONT]
 
With regards to the vote:

I don't mind if we have a "safety car" start but would prefer a normal start. If it wasn't for the incident above at the last race I think everyone would have made it through T1 safely. The first few corners of Silverstone have enough room and decent run off areas so I'm in favour of the normal start.

Under usual circumstances T1 can be taken flat out which means that from a standing start this there is no braking for T1. It would be nice if we could have a gentleman's agreement that everyone holds their line through T1. It's a better solution I think than the 1 second gaps which will be difficult to manage as well as taking away too much of the racing.

I think with a normal start in mind it might be worth doing more than one practise start just so that everyone can settle in nicely.

Something that may be worth mentioning is for drivers to practise standing starts on their own in order to master this. It's not something you can really do with a bunch of other guys on the track as getting it wrong (wheelspin) can have disasterous effects.

Oh great... This was supposed to be a vote and I've gone and written a book...
 
After much consideration it is decided that we'll do a safety car start. I am aware that it is against the wish of the majority of the people and thus not the most populare decition.

I am however far from certain that the start would be incident free otherwise.

As said earlier, the pole position decides the pace (you do not need to go as slow as 100 all the time) which should be sensible and there must be 1 second between each car when you complete the first lap and the race starts. That means no slip streaming towards the s/f line.

at 7:50 pm we'll have a normal practice start
at 7:52 pm we'll do a second practice start
at 7:54 pm we'll do a safety car practice start
at 7:57 pm we'll do a safety car practice start

at 8pm qualify starts
 
Well clearly the Safety Cat Start gave some issues though!
Like people that join in the last moment , and dont know there is a safety car start !!!
And i saw it was hard for cars in the back to keep a 1 sec gap.
but at least most cars got safe around T1 and Lap 1 , so thats also a positive thing
i do think we will need another safetycar start in instanbul .
 
We might go for a normal start at Istanbul, but we are obiously not finished with our work in making Division 2 safer.
People joining late and not checking to find out what kind of start it is... that is not good enough! There was a post in the forum and there were plenty of people to ask on the server.

I will strongly advice everybody to report their incidents to the Race Director. Causing an accident and failing to report it in this race will lead to exclusion.:eek:

One thing, how did the two normal practice starts go?
 
One thing, how did the two normal practice starts go?

I think that first one was quite ok but I didnt check the replay. I was on the 2nd grid so it was very easy start for me as Jacob was on the first grid.

So then the second one was totally disaster, checked replay straight away and it looks so bad that I decided to leave the race this time. I thought we choose the normal start (poll result) but you guys change your mind later, thats good but did not help me as I was already gone.

2nd start was full of accidents but I dont wanna blame anybody but me crashed with Coen althougt I tried to be as much carefully as I could. For some reason Richard Emery was front of me in the 2nd start and because I didnt know his speed so I taked my start so so carefully. I was driving on the race line (leftside) and I really didnt see Coen in any situation but I believe that he saw my car's nose but not lift up but hit my car (practice start incident). So Coen how did you saw that situation in the T1? Was there anything that you might could done to forbid that accident, thanks?
 
I think that first one was quite ok but I didnt check the replay. I was on the 2nd grid so it was very easy start for me as Jacob was on the first grid.

So then the second one was totally disaster, checked replay straight away and it looks so bad that I decided to leave the race this time. I thought we choose the normal start (poll result) but you guys change your mind later, thats good but did not help me as I was already gone.

2nd start was full of accidents but I dont wanna blame anybody but me crashed with Coen althougt I tried to be as much carefully as I could. For some reason Richard Emery was front of me in the 2nd start and because I didnt know his speed so I taked my start so so carefully. I was driving on the race line (leftside) and I really didnt see Coen in any situation but I believe that he saw my car's nose but not lift up but hit my car (practice start incident). So Coen how did you saw that situation in the T1? Was there anything that you might could done to forbid that accident, thanks?

You thought it was normal start and left the server before the safety car start? What a small disaster! And for the record, my mind never changed, it was always set on safety car start but everybody seem to just skim through my posts without reading the details.

That make you the third person that didn't know what kind of start that was taking place. 19 people on a server, 16 people know what will happen, 3 does not. How is it possible that the information does not get shared in the chat???
 
A quote from the first post :)

It was very usefull for me and the rest of the staff to see what people thought and how they assesed the problem at the start of the race.

Now I don't feel stupid at all :tongue:

The first standing start wen't well. The second one was a bit of a mess. Partly my fault that. I wanted to say something in chat but forgot to press C (for chat) and ended up switching my car off. I couldnt get it started before the green light so when the lights went green I was stationary the guy behind me hit me. Stupid mistake.
 
So Coen how did you saw that situation in the T1? Was there anything that you might could done to forbid that accident said:
Well Kimmo, i didnt understand why u steered in when i was beside u. We were racing for first corner and besise each other, i continued my raceline but saw takeing the corner, i was to late to brake, but i wasnt my turn to brake. If u had taking the corner like normal, u didnt had to crash..

So seriously, dont know what the fuzz about, dont be to eager... and check your corners when steering in..

Coen
 

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