contacts and racing incidents: how to judge them?

I'm opening here a topic to take some decisions on how to modify our rules and way of judging incidents to have cleaner races, and possibly a more fair way of penalizing drivers.

The reason why I want to do it here, is to have an open and constructive discussion on a very slippery topic.

During the years here in RSR we tried many different strategies, but unfortunately all of them had downsides. Rules might work for a while, until people fear them, but what we've seen is that after a while people tend to forget.

I really think we all know what should be a correct way of behaving on track, and rules can't do too much if people don't change their mindset.

I really think that any approach we will take is absolutely useless if some people will not change their way of driving.



Saying that, I think we have (a lot of)room for improvements, on our side, if we will get a better way to judge incidents.
Let's face it, incidents are part of racing, and everyone does mistakes or is sometimes thrown out by someone else's.

Maybe having a better strategy on how to judge incidents can help.
What I'm asking here is having your ideas.
Incidents are always different from each other, and sometimes, apart from the driver errors, there might be even software errors (lag or faulty netcode).

What I'm looking for is a procedure that can eventually be automated to judge incidents.
Maybe it will not be 100% correct in all cases, but at least, IMHO, it will be better than having us judging based on personal impressions or not judging at all.


I think that, apart from few incidents, in which it's pretty clear who's fault is it, in the most of the cases this is not true. There might always be different way of judging them having a very wide gray area in which it's very difficult to take decisions.

My idea is to create a clear procedure so that drivers can determine by themselves what is the penalty for the incident they have been involved.

Maybe we can create a skeleton of this procedure, test it for some races and eventually improve it during time.

I will keep this list updated with your suggestions. This is like a brainstorming for everyone!
These rules are not valid until we will publish a new rules set.

general rules:
GR1: in the red zone, penalties should be higher
GR2: in case of chicane, if a driver didn't leave space enough should be penalized.
GR3: people chatting should be penalized
GR4: if driver A hit driver B in the back should be penalized
GR5: incidents in blue flag should be penalized
GR6: drivers not respecting basic rules should be penalized (waving to defend position, ...)
GR7: speed limits are now handled by nk, so are not checked. But people trying to get advantage out of it can be penalized (for example entering in the pitlane at full speed without trying to get to 80 Km/h)
GR8: drivers should not try hazardous maneuvers, but drive safely. Drivers that put in danger other drivers (for example going around with a heavily damaged car) should be penalized
...

let's start to categorize the kind of incidents. This might be helpful to analyze all cases and assign the correct penalty in all cases.
Incidents between 2 drivers only

Incidents between 2 drivers that involve other drivers as a consequence

...

maybe we can base our penalties on what we can find on the logs.
so we can determine if the contact was a real one or not (so logged by both drivers) or due to a lag.
we can determine if the incident was side by side or back to front.

we can have different penalties based on the fact that the other driver can continue the race or not (or in any case if his car is heavily damaged after the concact)

I don't see why penalties should be higher for accidents in the red zone, I'm sure being taken out on the last corner's a lot more irritating than the first. I think it's hard to create general rules, as it depends on the situation. You can't really blame people for taking up the racing line if giving room to another car would have resulted in them running off the circuit (in some cases). That's not to say we shouldn't try to give each other room, it's just with the chicane scenario the contact's normally punishment enough for both cars.

As for collisions from behind, I think closing speed needs to be taken into consideration, & if there was room to take avoiding action (or not). Drivers chatting should penalised, as well as speeding on the way into the pits (as the speed limiter doesn't always do its job when your accelerating away from the box/pit), and blue flag incidents should be punished whether the car's being lapped or unlapping itself. Weaving I'm not sure about, I know they've tried to clarify the rule again this season in F1, but its never worked in the past & still seems to be a grey area.

I would probably agree with GR2, GR5, GR7 (and GR4).

But GR4 is a bit difficult to handle.., of course noone wants to hit someone in the back, mainly just (inexperienced) drivers make mistakes when racing behind someone I think. Trying to drive beside the ideal line more often with someone in front of you when approaching a corner could solve problems with a different braking-lenght of cars.. .

GR3 (chatting) is personally not that much a problem for me -but too much chatting over longer time should be penalized of course-, just avoid looking at the chat-box at those cases, don't force yourself to
have a look at the box during race, (I know it's difficult sometimes but) it's not needed to do that .

On servers I noticed too that some drivers enter the pit with full speed.., this should be prohibited (this can get even very dangerous in special cases too when some much slower driver is in front there in the box). Regarding me I always entered the pit at the normal speed around 80-90, mostly below 80.. (just in the last Osella race I remember being one time a little bit faster in my unplanned third stop.. ).

-general note: too much rules are not necessary, if most dirvers will act (more) wisely then everything is ok as it is (I hope).