Peter et al,
Oh boy, looks like you've launched another Great Off-Season Debate Topic on
this list. The chatter may continue until next March. I guess I'll wade
into the pool a little bit, since you & I have had personal discussions on
this topic in the past.
A couple observations: as an event chairman myself, I always give a lecture
on vintage attitude at the driver's meeting. But I realize that this is
"preaching to the choir". 90% of the drivers don't need the sermon, they
already know & believe. Another 5% don't hear the message no matter how
passionate the speech. The other 5% aren't even AT the drivers meeting.
But still, I always do the lecture & will continue to do so, even if they're
tired of hearing it.
Almost invariably, on the occasions as event chairman when I've had to
single out a driver & talk to him/her about an overly-aggressive action or a
near-miss, the response is nearly always "what?? who, me???" Probably 50%
of the time, said driver repeats his marginal behavior later in the weekend
(and gets a second, sterner warning). I'm not talking about contact
incidents here, I'm talking about close calls or inattentive driving &
talking to drivers to try to PREVENT escalation to a contact incident. Our
drivers come from so many different racing backgrounds (SCCA Production,
SCCA Improved Touring, various semi-pro series, purely vintage, even dirt
track racing, or no prior experience) that they certainly have varying views
of acceptable behavior, and it can be hard to re-educate them.
I think it's pretty easy to recognize an "incident" -- one or more cars are
damaged. But that's too late, isn't it? It's much harder to precisely
define "overly aggressive driving that MAY lead to an incident" in a way
that everyone can comprehend & agree. But as an event chairman and,
personally, as participant, I keep trying to come up with specifics and
examples, to try to prevent incidents -- even though I recognize some people
will not listen.
A few years ago, a fellow competitor at Lime Rock confronted me after a
session & accused me of overly aggressive driving, because I passed him
under braking going into the uphill. His definition of "acceptable pass"
was that it needed to be completed BEFORE the START of the braking zone. I
disagreed, but it's a good example of how different people have different
interpretations of "aggressive driving". I wasn't able to convince him of
my viewpoint. However, I do plead guilty to other occasional lapses of
judgement resulting in close calls -- I'm not perfect, either. A Lotus 7
driver saved my ass this summer, for which I'm eternally grateful.
Some folks argue that we all make mistakes, and I agree ... sort of. I have
never driven a perfect lap anywhere. But in vintage, the "mistakes" should
be little ones. I miss apexes, lock a wheel, get a little sideways, turn in
too early fairly often. In my view, it takes a BIG mistake to cause
four-wheels-off, a REALLY BIG mistake to cause a spin, and a HUGE mistake to
cause contact. I've done all three, but not very often. Fr'instance, I
feel that two spins in one weekend means something is wrong & it's time for
the driver to sit down (voluntarily) & think about it. Two spins in one
session is black-flag time, in my view. Yes, we all make mistakes, but VERY
FEW should be so huge that they cause contact.
"Just one a them racin' deals" -- I rarely buy it. That's NASCAR talk &
shouldn't apply to vintage. Nobody likes to have to take disciplinary
action, but IMHO most non-mechanical incidents have at least one driver at
fault who should be disciplined (and I think SVRA's points system is too
liberal).
Final thought: what I might call "situational" driving. I see too many
aggressive moves in practice sessions. Practice should be pretty damn tame!
Too many drivers treat it as just another race session, and are looking
for a hard dice. I expect different behavior in Friday morning practice,
than I do if going for the lead during the last lap of the feature race on
Sunday. That is NOT to say that contact is EVER acceptable -- it isn't.
But I have slightly different standards of "aggressive" for different
situations. Practice, warm-ups, mixed groups, and lapping slower cars should
elicit extremely courteous driving behavior. "Qualifying" sessions and
enduros should be pretty courteous, too. But one should be aware that the
last-lap battle for the lead in the feature race is going to be somewhat
more aggressive, while remaining within the bounds of vintage acceptability.
BTW, I was not at Blue/Grey or IRP so my comments are general in nature &
NOT directed at those specific incidents, drivers, or sanctioning bodies.
Mark Palmer
MGA #185
VSCCA, SVRA, VARAC, VSCDA
>From: "Peter L. Krause" <pkrause@attglobal.net>
>Reply-To: "Peter L. Krause" <pkrause@attglobal.net>
>To: <vintage-race-digest@autox.team.net>
>Subject: Left coast/right coast carnage, incident rate questions and
>musing on the "vintage" philosphy... (long)
>Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 08:00:09 -0400
>
>Obviously, all the vintage racing listers were waiting for our Monday or
>Tuesday headlines about the weekends past activities when some of us were
>"thrown for a loop" by the stories of the unfortunate incidents at LRP,
>which took a shine off our collective reverie... Thankfully for the list,
>the reporting was complete and the outcome reassuring...
>
>In relating the only significant incident at SVRA's Summit Point event, I
>referred to Mark Gobble's accident as being precipitated by an incident
>between the leader of the race and a lapped car engaged in a battle with
>Mark.
>I received a private mail from a left coaster which asked the question:
>
>..... what is this stuff you guys are doing on the right coast..... vintage
>racing or bumper cars?
>
>I responded:
>
>While I was alarmed by reading all of the message headers from the last
>digest about the events at IRP, I actually thought the weekend with SVRA at
>Summit was pretty good for a 140-150 car turnout, safety wise. Most
>"smaller"
>events here (between 90-140 cars) have at least one single car or light
>multi car incident. I remember a couple of years ago, it was an average of
>three or four (IRP's experience notwithstanding) At the "larger events"
>(220-420 cars) it was not uncommon four or five years ago to have 4-5%
>involved in mostly single car incidents, usually mechanical failure of some
>kind, but still more than optimum. Now, the figure looks to be around 2-3%,
>so we're improving.
>
>The problem is that most "for-profit" organizations (SVRA/HSR) have
>scrapped
>the 13/13 rule for a "points" system that doesn't park someone for the
>weekend or the next event until they pass a threshold that is too high, in
>my opinion. Oh well... most of the incidents are instigated by the more
>experienced people, not the novices... They're just not "getting the
>message" from the organizing body that that behavior is NOT acceptable. The
>Morgan driver has been racing in vintage for more than a dozen years and
>has
>had no history of contact or over aggressive driving.
>
>What are folks thoughts about this? I'm not sure it is a "left coast/right
>coast" phenomena. I DO think the "right coasters" tend to be more
>aggressive, more competitive, more advanced with car development (even in
>VSCCA!) and leave less of a margin than the average of the "left coasters"
>(myself, unfortunately, included occasionally), but that observation is
>based purely my opinion, not supported by any data. I know folks who would
>characterize their experience at the Monterey Historics as "bumper cars,"
>regardless of the punitive outcome, but I would certainly not refer to the
>recent events at IRP or Summit Point as anything that signifies an
>unhealthy
>trend.
>
>Watching Mark Gobble's Sprite jump up and over the gravel trap on the
>outside of the quickest corner at Summit and impact the tire wall hard with
>such sudden deceleration and feeling the agonizing helplessness and waiting
>until we saw movement in the cockpit was sobering to me. Knowing that I was
>to share the front row of the Feature Race later that afternoon with the
>instigator (I found out later...) of this incident didn't make me feel very
>good and caused me to reevaluate some of my own "questionable" moves
>previously made during the weekend trying to get up on that front row...
>
>I think most folks, including the HSR/SVRA and Monterey organizers, do the
>best they can to instill the "Safe, Fair and Fun" into the fabric of any
>weekend. The question is what can be done to instill the proper philosophy
>better and more "cottoned to" than it may be currently. I've seen Larry
>Dent's posts about the Steward that admonishes in the drivers meetings to
>"take care of each other out there..." but that doesn't always work. Much
>of
>the "Vintage Racing Etiquette" article I wrote for Grassroots Motorsports
>magazine in September/October 1998 (
>http://www.bmwccaclubracing.com/Primer/primer.htm and formerly at
>www.historiconline) seems dated... is it?
>
>Have at it...
>
>-Peter Krause
>
>SVRA #1832
>HSR #46
>VDCA #5
>VSCCA #930
>SCCA # 139029
>
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