I believe in courtesy first and foremost. When I race online, I always let the faster/more skilled drivers around me. I even set macros on my shifter that say "Pass on my LEFT" / "Pass on my RIGHT" / "Sorry - MY FAULT" etc. and I am ALWAYS extremely cautious @ T1. I am quite competitive for the most part, but I have lost many a race (and will lose many more in the future) for the sake of good sportsmanship. If I wreck into someone bad and it is my fault, I slow down until they overtake me again.

However, it is inevitable that my race will often be ruined by those less courteous. As much as I hate to say this, I almost expect to get knocked around a bit in the public servers. I was playing in the Demo servers recently (trying to get some of my squadmates interested in LFS) and was shocked to see how bad it was in there. A couple of them really liked the Demo and expressed interest in buying S2. I was happy for their decision, but at the same time, I really wanted to get the heck out of those Demo servers. I was really getting upset at players that intentionally rammed for position / rammed me off the track as I took the proper line / etc. Some would purposely drive the other way trying to ruin it for everyone. At least it's not so bad in the S2 public servers.