Safety Council Controls the Chaos

Safety Council Controls the Chaos

Auto Racing without Stewards and a Sporting Code is combat chaos and always reverts to the "Law of the Jungle" and "Survival of the Meanest". 

The racing car is simply "gear" used in a sport. But, the racing car can also be used as a weapon in combat.

The first order of business in any racing series is to create a clear Sporting Code. Essentially a set of rules describing acceptable and unacceptable behavior on track. But, like all rules and regulations, without enforcement of them, they are without the intended effect. So many racing series simply call for "clean" racing. But "clean" has vastly different meanings to different racers. The Sporting Code needs to be VERY detailed as to acceptable vs unacceptable. 

The most common method of "enforcement" is the Official Protest. For many reasons, this is seldom used and avoided by most racers. Culturally it is often seen as "whining" and a sign of weakness by the protester. Racers tend to have an almost ancient form of self defense, by falling back to the "tit for tat" or "I will give what I get" behavior. This can lead to some serious on track violence. 

In iRacing, there is a "system" of feedback in the form of a "safety rating".  The more collisions and off tracks, the lower the safety rating or SR. This works to some degree, but is often circumvented by drivers using two or more iRacing accounts. It is also not a very highly valued statistic by many aggressive drivers. Finally, it tends to penalize drivers competing in mid pack or further back in traffic. 

Controlling on track behavior to the satisfaction of the participants--to avoid bullying, excess exuberance and aggression in order to meet the goals of the race organizers, you have to do more than just identifying off tracks and incidents. Just telling drivers that "I noticed and recorded your mistake, and we warn you not to make any more mistakes" is suboptimal at controlling behavior. It tends to make the conscientious drivers more cautious, and therefore less competitive and more susceptible to bullying and being taken advantage of.

You must have relatively impartial but knowledgeable observers/ who carefully observe the behavior of all the drivers. These observers must be experienced racing drivers and they must observe and analyze the CAUSE of collisions.  Sanctioning the cause of a collision and not just identifying the collision itself is key. The observer needs to point out mistakes and poor judgement, but more importantly all of the circumstances leading up to the collision. The observer must recognize the often subtle ways of drivers who practice the art of bullying and excess aggression. Many times these aggressive drivers deny improper behavior and just call it “competition” despite it violating the Sporting Code.

The Safety Council is a three man panel chosen by the League Organizer. Majority opinion of the council is binding. A conflict if any between the Safety Council members will be mediated or arbitrated by the League Organizer.

One of the most important behaviors to observe and call out is excess aggression that a bully or overly exuberant driver always exhibits. This aggression and excess exuberance is contagious. Once it is observed by the participants that this behavior is tolerated, it quickly becomes the "norm" and most (but not all) other participants will mirror the unacceptable behavior and chaos ensues. The racing becomes "wild".  This can occur in just the first few corners of a race especially if this high risk exuberance occurs among cars in the first few starting rows. 

The other situation that calls for careful observation is when a “faster” but normally rule abiding driver who qualified poorly or falls behind because of an incident. As this driver attempts to pass “slower” cars there is a tremendous temptation to drive more aggressively and with inappropriate risk. 

The worst possible "warning" is one that is issued to the "victim" of the bully or overly aggressive driver rather than the bully or excessively aggressive driver. Often the true cause of the incident occurred before the incident itself. Focusing on the incidents rather than the cause will do nothing but create ill will. 

It is also worth mentioning, that calling out improper behavior requires diplomacy. Racers are human with high levels of motivation and pride of accomplishment. They do not take kindly to harsh criticism. They will seldom see their behavior as bullying or seriously bad or evil--to them their behavior is just "normal" racing. The first warning should be firm but soft. Only repeated failures to abide by the Sporting Code or open defiance justifies a harsh sanction. Otherwise, many participants that the organizer values will respond simply by ending their association.

The one “sanction” that does not require a prior warning is the illegal dive bomb. Intentional or unintentional. This violation has been covered so often and so clearly, any gain must be surrendered—voluntarily giving back the position is preferable but if that does not occur, the gain will be removed by an adjustment in finishing points.