I have been thinking and thinking about how to make crashes less forgiving. And somehow this idea hasn't come up until today.

There should be a (host) option to disable repairing. Meaning that if you crash hard and get suspension damage, your race is over. This would be fairly easy to implement too.

Ideas?

Could be done via insim which reports what occurs at pitstops. One thing that is interesting about iRacing is that in the Rookie series, you can only get one tow/repair. After that if you can't drive the car your race is over.

i like this..

+1 from me..

Until we wait for a better solution *patch*

Me too
1+

Overmanagement ... Is that a word? Now it is.

We'll probably discuss this idea again, when Scawen is done with a more realistic damage model.
However, if running short race (10-15 minutes): Damage repair + hopping to pits in a damaged car should be enough of a penalty do deny podium slots.
For longer races, we are talking about leagues or similar events. Running with people you can trust, why not agree on a non repair rule? No need to enforce / check if you trust each other and know cheating would ruin everybody's fun.

Maybe devs can add packet to decide: will car be repaired or not. It would be very for legaues, you can specify how much times someone can fix his car.

+1.