Round 2 race report - from cP POV

Great report zafar! enjoyed it loads

Maybe I missed it. But where was it ever said that the SC could be passed to make up a lap?

I tried to make it clear that we tried to ask about that before hand and were told not to. Now, show me where it says it's ok to pass the safety car... maybe I missunderstood.

In either case, the report makes us out to look like fools because we didn't pass the SC. Are we fools because the rules are not made clear?
For cryin out loud, we tried to do the right thing during the race.

Your report makes it sound like from the horn honking I'm supposed to know that means pass the SC? For all I know your just a horn happy fool! Indeed, I was thinking first.

I think the report is well written and the added quotes and all are cool but it is ignorantly biased on some of the reporting.

I just wanna make it clear, new ruling will mean the SC will pick up the lead car. However in the confusion of the race i was vulnerable to what people said etc and i am to blame for the confusion. I apologise to all the drivers that it effected and again, i fully take the blame

Quote from MARSH2a :

Maybe I missed it. But where was it ever said that the SC could be passed to make up a lap?

...

Thank you for your comments.

I highly doubt that you guys stayed behind the SC because you wanted to, so in that regard you aren't "fools".

I was actually going to start a thread about SC and regarding the incident where all three leaders piled up in a nasty way. I would personally like to know, and I don't think any league using SC tells us this, that when exactly does the SC rule come in effect - but the question itself isn't really relevant right now.

To me the hard braking looked foolish - the point I'm trying to make here, is that it's in the nature of my reports to be biased toward an opinion - sometimes it's more clear than other times, but it's there.

I would like to be objective (and I can be) and cover multiple battles with multiple teams, but that would be too time consuming, so instead of only limiting it to our own team and the teams we get involved with, I decided to also add a biased twist on top of it - this should in effect be 50% of the report, and I can see it's working

The report is from a cP point of view so it would only be natural to write in a more or less similar way that we felt during the race.

There really isn't much to it, and in most cases even if it's written directly - for instance the stunts John Holme pulled of. I simple had to get back at him, because we all know it was bad. But it's surely not meant in a harmful way, and we have no further grudges against Holme.

Arrogant? Perhaps, but thats merely a side effect of writing in this way - but granted, SO Long was extreme in many cases and I would bet my aggressive hat on that not too many future reports will be like this.

Quote from Clownpaint :

I actually told Zafar that earlier, I think it's a biased report.

And I corrected it... a bit

Edit: thumbs replaced with full res pics

I have serious reservations about the need for ‘safety’ cars at all but since that’s what the league organizers want, I’ll live with it. In my opinion (which is shared by many of the clerks of the courses whose events I’ve raced at) safety cars are a tool for the event organizers to keep spectators amused while some sort of situation (crash, debris or whatever) is cleaned up on the track by the workers. This leaves the corner workers susceptible to injury by the cars still circulating on the track and in even more in danger from those cars coming out of the pits and trying to catch up to the pack (which is why the pits are often closed during a safety car period). Ideally, a red flag is shown instead and the race is stopped. This gives the track workers a much safer environment to perform their tasks.

There are some limitations within LFS and the difficulty that the race officials have in communicating with the drivers is certainly one of them. Corner workers (marshals) are able to communicate a LOT of information to the drivers in a real race through the use of their flags (not only in the color i.e. yellow but in the way that they use them) and even through the use of hand signals. During safety car periods the passenger in the safety car will indicate to the cars behind when to pass so that ultimately the safety car will pick up the leader of the race for the restart.

So, Marsh, in real life you don’t pass a safety car until you are waved by. Since we have no way to do this within the game, it is up to the individual drivers to make their way past the safety car to enable the safety car to pick up the leader. Since the fine details of how these situations are to be dealt with ISN’T covered in the league rules, we have to interpret it as we go. I understand that you were interpreting the rules in your way and decided not to pass the safety car. Unfortunately, as a consequence of that decision, we both lost a lap. You could argue that I also made a decision not to pass you during that period and so I am similarly at fault costing myself that lap. My decision was based upon the fact that in real life, you are OFTEN required to pass a safety car but you NEVER pass another competitor (unless they have a mechanical difficulty).

I apologize for my ‘tone’ in the race report and I understand that you were only doing what you thought was best. It was, however, a very frustrating situation. In real life the situation would have been remedied by the various forms of communication that are available. The only form of communication available to me during the race was the horn (because we aren’t allowed to use text). I honestly don’t see what I could have done differently.

Quote from 87TIIV8 :

I have serious reservations about the need for ‘safety’ cars at all but since that’s what the league organizers want, I’ll live with it. In my opinion (which is shared by many of the clerks of the courses whose events I’ve raced at) safety cars are a tool for the event organizers to keep spectators amused while some sort of situation (crash, debris or whatever) is cleaned up on the track by the workers. This leaves the corner workers susceptible to injury by the cars still circulating on the track and in even more in danger from those cars coming out of the pits and trying to catch up to the pack (which is why the pits are often closed during a safety car period). Ideally, a red flag is shown instead and the race is stopped. This gives the track workers a much safer environment to perform their tasks.

There are some limitations within LFS and the difficulty that the race officials have in communicating with the drivers is certainly one of them. Corner workers (marshals) are able to communicate a LOT of information to the drivers in a real race through the use of their flags (not only in the color i.e. yellow but in the way that they use them) and even through the use of hand signals. During safety car periods the passenger in the safety car will indicate to the cars behind when to pass so that ultimately the safety car will pick up the leader of the race for the restart.

So, Marsh, in real life you don’t pass a safety car until you are waved by. Since we have no way to do this within the game, it is up to the individual drivers to make their way past the safety car to enable the safety car to pick up the leader. Since the fine details of how these situations are to be dealt with ISN’T covered in the league rules, we have to interpret it as we go. I understand that you were interpreting the rules in your way and decided not to pass the safety car. Unfortunately, as a consequence of that decision, we both lost a lap. You could argue that I also made a decision not to pass you during that period and so I am similarly at fault costing myself that lap. My decision was based upon the fact that in real life, you are OFTEN required to pass a safety car but you NEVER pass another competitor (unless they have a mechanical difficulty).

I apologize for my ‘tone’ in the race report and I understand that you were only doing what you thought was best. It was, however, a very frustrating situation. In real life the situation would have been remedied by the various forms of communication that are available. The only form of communication available to me during the race was the horn (because we aren’t allowed to use text). I honestly don’t see what I could have done differently.

I understand your teams position. Believe me, had we known, our team would have absolutely wanted those laps back (2 seperate instances). The fact of the matter is that the LOTF team had fairly extensive discussions of when SC would be called, lining up behind SC procedure, restarts, etc.

In our several daylong public discussion of this, no organizer, competitor, or bystander made any mention of the SC picking up the Leader, letting others pass. We were explicitly told no passing once the SC message was displayed. There was nothing in the written rules to make us think anything else.

Quite frankly, I am quite disappointed/angered by the situation. Watching the replay, it was not until the final SC when one of the Marshalls texted past a lapped car.

Why then was no-one there to tell my team to pass, on the Multiple occasions we were in line to pass? Forget the write-up, this is what angered us. Not only did this cost our team multiple laps/ possible positions; it put us in a situation after our first driver change where he was mired down with faster and slower cars his entire run, never able to get any resemblance of a rythme. Indirectly it contributed to our DNF.

I am all for the SC, as it really is the only resemblence to create an actual endurance event vs the 4-hr hotlap competition, just as long as the rules are cleanly re-written and applied equally to all.

As i said. i apologise to anyone who was unfairly effected. I am currently re-writing the rules and trying my best to get rid of any loop holes whilst doing coursework before deadlines. Next round the rules will be solid. but i need help from marshalls beause it seems i'm the only marshall doing anything. it's hard to watch a race whilst checking rules etc so thats my little excuse over. but i should be aware of all the rules anyway so my fault and i apologise to ALL teams.

Edit: BTW it's my birthday today

lol. you beat me to it. Happy Bday Man!

Good luck with the rewrite/school combo.

No hard feelings about round 2. Looking forward to the rest o the season

Ah, coursework deadlines, they suck don't they? I hope you get it all sorted in time and remember, school comes before this

(Happy birthday BTW)

thanks guys. Well for coursework it looks like i'm on an A for PE and A for graphics. got a C in Geography somehow? thats ment to be my strongest subject. i think i was hard done by. anyways it's all complete now apart from Graphics which needs a few touches to make it an A* then i gotta write a match report for the school basketball team. Then i gotta revise for subjects but i'll use that time to write up the rules also.

PS thanks for the happy B-days t'has been a good'n