A word about the 3rd-strike/3-hour-timeout policy (Page 2 of 4)

I saw a collision that was really not the fault of one guy:

Coming down a straight at G man, i was behing the TaTas Camaro.  we were both passing the Lada, who moved over to the right to give us room around him.  The Camaro passe cleanly, and as I was passing under braking, the Lada veered to the right, into the grass, and T boned the Camaro, who had made the right turn.  obviously, the Lada driver had a mechanicl failure (I think his brakes were on fire, or just gone), but it looked like, from my view, that the Lada cut the corner at speed to ram the Camaro.  The most Ironic part of this whole thing was that the corner workers reported the Camaro had T boned the Lada.

The Camaro guys had to go and apologize to the Lada team and help them fix their car.  the Camaro had a broken rear axle, BTW.  After I was done driving and I heard about this gross misunderstanding of the facts, I went over to tell Jay and I think Phil was there too.

Of course, they were suspicious of my story, but I kept it up.  They then made the Lada team go to help the Camaro team, but they (lada) didn't bring a spare chevy rear axle.

I just saw no way of avoiding this as the Lada was being courteous, and had a brake failure an instant later.  The only way the camaro could have seen it coming was to be looking out his right window exiting a turn.

I've decided to enact a new rule for my guest  (and possibly ALL) drivers. If they are black flagged, their stint is over. If they are blacked flagged on the subsequent stint, they are done. I realize shit happens, but I've been parked twice now for this three hour rule as a result of guest drivers. Even when I let them stay in the car under strict instructions to be cautious and go slow/clean NO MATTER WHAT for fear of the three hour penalty, they went back out and got themselves flagged again. That sort of thing not only ruins your chances of a respectable finish, but it takes a lot of the fun out of the thing for the whole team. Sure, we go around during that timeout and visit/assist other teams, but we're there to race, like everyone else.

Hee hee, not quite.  But yeah, in your hypothetical, the noobs screwed up and that messed up the day for the team.  But I'm not clear on why the race organizers should bend their rules because of it.  It was the team's decision to allow those noobs out, and the consequences aren't the end of the world, just the end of a day of racing.  Simple way to keep things in check.

Maybe have the experienced guys go out first next time.

Luckily I'm not talking about my team.  Our guest drivers have been Lemons noobs, but they are experienced otherwise.  We won't allow anyone to drive our car who doesn't have at least some HPDE experience.  One guest received a BF for going 4-off due to overcooking it into a braking zone to which he fully owned up to in the penalty box.  We told him to "just tell the truth and don't argue" if he were to get brought in.  I guess some of this comes down to taking responsibility for your actions to help the judges make it more 'fair' for everyone.  if I were to f-up and hit someone and it was 100% my fault I'll man-up, say so, and take my lumps from the judges.  if it wasn't my fault I'd expect the other guy to do the same.  Obviously sometimes there really is no real clear-cut driver at fault, so at that point the judges shoul decide to let both back out, or penalize both the same.

I understand Speedycop's mantra, but I'd have a hard time telling my guest driver he was done if he got an erroneous BF.  If he effed up twice and deserved it sure, but again I have a hard time with any rule that can't be bent depending on circumstance.

Keep in mind that the corner workers and our guys in the tower have a pretty good idea of which teams are causing problems. We get messages like "the driver in Car X is being an idiot- we're keeping an eye on him" all the time (we also get messages like "Car Y got away with a dozen borderline offenses similar to the one we're now busting him for, so throw the book at him" as well). When there's an incident such as the (oft-cited) "Car Z spun out in front of me, I had nowhere to go except into the dirt," they'll let us know when the driver of Car Z really did bear singlehanded responsibility for the incident. We don't get information about where pass-under-yellow offenses happen, but we do hear about fault in incidents where fault is obvious.

And, sure, some teams just get plain screwed by bad calls, just as all of us have been screwed by unjust speeding tickets. We could have a fat rulebook and a tedious appeal process, but it still comes down to some guy's completely subjective decision. We've just decided to streamline the process.

What about the opposite--teams local to the tracks that are tight with corner workers? I know CMP flaggers sometimes avoided flagging one winning team, and I watched them pass two and four off with impunity at some locations...
I guess that falls under both "We've all been screwed" and People's Curse, but in that case, the curse didn't stop the win as it should have.

Fortunately, they treat the 24 Hour races as three 8 hour races for that purpose.

You're supposed to go off if it dies, and that should be a mechanical, not a driver penalty.

Once again: since the 3-strikes/no-slack policy went into place, we've had zero cars get upside-down. Prior to that, we'd be high-fiving each other after running just one race with no rollovers. Remember the Thunderhill and MSR events with multiple rollover victims? I'd rather have semi-innocent teams miss some seat time than watch someone get hurt.

That said, I may lobby for a policy under which 3-strikers are allowed onto the track for the last couple of minutes on Sunday, so they can be part of the traditional track-exit celebration. We'll see what Jay says.

Xeno's Penalty eh?

that said, what's the difference between 3 strikes you're out, and 4 strikes you're out?

I don't know what that means.  Can you please explain further?