Free laps for mishaps

I have a hypothetical/philosophical for the GRM crowd. Let's say you're running an endurance race, something on the order of 20 hours. Early in the race, one of your team's drivers gets hit, and the car takes some damage (let's even say it's definitely the other guy's fault). Your guy has to pit in and get it repaired.

After you bang out the dents, unpretzel the suspension and get the back on the track, one of the race organizers comes over and tells you he'll be rectifying the unfortunate series of events by increasing your lap count. He's adding enough laps to your count--call it an even 10--to make up for a good portion of the time you had to spend in the pits fixing your car.

How do you feel?

How would you feel if you were one of the other racers on the track?

Is this fair?

No, it's not fair. There are any number of possible advantages you might have gotten from "free" laps -- plenty of opportunities to screw up that have been passed over, and less wear-and-tear on the rest of your car (motor, transmission, etc).

You win a race by being fastest -- not by being second fastest and collecting extra credit.

Normally there is only one thing that happens when somebody else prangs your car, and that thing is that it sucks.

You can't really just undo that sort of thing, and part of the skill (and luck) involved in getting through a race successfully is avoiding wingnuts and dingbats.

Or that's my impression. I'm just a spectator so far where wheel to wheel is concerned.

I thought this was going to be about the time I had to take 10 laps because I accidentally kicked a kid in his nuts.

If this hypothetical pertains to a racing series I can enter: Chump/Lemons/etc. then my response is - you're racing for fun, you're not going to get a pro-ride out of it, enjoy the race and as long as the car can run, what are you doing sitting in the pits moping about?

If this hypothetical pertains to a pro-racing series al-la ALMS/LeMans/etc. then my response is - stuff happens, might not like it, but that's where driver skill, attention, and care must be taken. I disagree with Codrus when it comes to endurance racing:

codrus wrote: You win a race by being fastest -- not by being second fastest and collecting extra credit.

In endurance racing, to finish first, first you must finish. Many times the 'fastest' car does not win enduros, the most consistent car that stays on the track longest does...

The only "fair" thing that I can se being done is to impose a penilty on the person/team that caused the damage. Set them out for 2x the amount of time you were fixing your car. If you can not return after trying to fix the car set the driver that was in the other car down for the rest of the race. This is really the only thing that can be done that is fair. You can not undo what was done to your car but you can make it so the other compeditors will think about (and take seriously) what they are doing on the track.

I can guess which series this is. I think it is a well-intentioned gesture that can bring nothing but backlash on the organizer.

1. 10 laps? You'll never get that 20-25 minutes of your life back either way.
2. Are you winning or within striking distance of a podium? If not, the 10 laps are irrelevant. If so, the 10 laps are going to piss off everyone else.

"That's racing" is a phrase I've grown to hate, but getting punted is a very real possibility in any wheel to wheel competition. It's part of spectacle.

An alternative way to handle it would be for the punted team to receive a token discount on a future entry.

If it is the series I'm thinking about, I personally witnessed a lot of kind actions toward teams that were in line to withdraw early. (While I was also standing in line to turn in my transponder.)

dean is right - if youre not penalized for being a douche, and being a douche can help advance you in the race, then everyone will be a douche. Make it suck to be a douche, and less people will smell like a summers eve.

ransom wrote: Normally there is only one thing that happens when somebody else prangs your car, and that thing is that it sucks.

QFT.

You can't really expect to be refunded or compensated for your down-time with pity laps (besides, if you win on pity laps, EVERYONE will be pissed).

You can't really penalize the offending team/teams with big penalties, because they may just have one screw loose. That's what happened to our team at our last race, some nutjob in a car he'd never driven before overdrove a corner, spun and rolled backwards across track in front of us. We were all real mad about it and wanted vengeance. The important thing was everybody was okay. We spent 6 hours pounding the car back straight and got back on track to experience an unrelated mechanical failure, so we'd have been out anyway. The offending car went on to run a very good race, their team was well put together except the one idiot we hit.

If their team had been penalized "twice the time" we were in the pits repairing our car, they'd have had half a race. That's not fair.

I'd have appreciated it if some of the teams had seen fit to make a spot for our drivers as most of us didn't get seat time at all, but we didn't expect them to.

Your mascara's running. Cheer up and get to wrenching.

4cylndrfury wrote: dean is right - if youre not penalized for being a douche, and being a douche can help advance you in the race, then everyone will be a douche. Make it suck to be a douche, and less people will smell like a summers eve.

That's the deal right there. It's why LeMons will bring a sucky driver in and make them sit it out for a while, maybe go get Jay a hot dog or something. There's a couple drivers around the Southeast (not in LeMons, no names, I don't race against them etc) who have been known to be less than clean in their driving, have been accused of causing major shunts etc yet keep their licenses.

EDIT: I took a minute to mull it over about the added laps thing and no, I can't say I agree with it. Here's why: to level the playing field it would be probably necessary to hand out extra laps to anyone who was off trak for an extended time, no matter what the reason. Otherwise, the promoter is playing favorites.

4cyl drury wrote: dean is right - if you're not penalized for being a douche, and being a douche can help advance you in the race, then everyone will be a douche. Make it suck to be a douche, and less people will smell like a summers eve.

This is exactly my point. The extent of the penalty can be debated but the purpose is to keep people in line. There has to be something that will cut through the red mist and get a driver back in line. Otherwise it turns in to a mess and no one has fun. Virtually every form of racing has some sort of penalty for avoidable contact. Indy car even has one for blocking. Nascar has one for speeding on pit lane.

If you are worried about being fair to the rest of a team I say tough. The members should pick another team or if you find your self with some one that is a problem get rid of them or make your own team. The bottom line is it is your responsibility to police your team. Having spent many years as a DTR racing 4,6,12,and 24 hour races in SCCA and EMRA I had to take all the punishment from the stuarts and relay it from the officials to the team and or the individual members. This system also works because if you as an individual screw up and make a bad choice your actions not only affect you but every member of your team. There is nothing like pier pressure to keep people in line. Most people will not care if they get sat down but if it means that every driver in there team looses track time or in some cases don't get any at all they may think twice.

Ohya. This is why it is called a team. If one person screws up you all pay the price. Conversely if your team wins you all win. You can not have it both ways.

On several occations I have been on both sides of this argument. I have been the idiot and been run off the track by idiots. THATS RACING. If you don't like it don't participate. I will say that if I/my team is the idiot I will do everything possible to get the other team back on track. I have sent mechanics and crew members over to help work on there car or to run and get parts for them. What ever it takes to get them back on track. We got punted once and as we got the car back to the pits we were greated by the entire team that ran us off the track and they proceeded to take a car that I thought was junk and get it back on track.

The bottom line is you can not take back what happens out on track. You can try and prevent things from happening but once something happens it is how you make it rite that is most important.

The funny thing is that several of the people I met by "accident" have turned out to be good friends.

Uh oh, I think BeaterWorld is back.

The event that prompted this question was a recent ChumpCar race. Some people have allegiances and biases, so I wanted to ask the question generally first. The Tubby Butterman Racing car was hit. Their response to the incident really bothered me. If it were a basketball game, it would be like giving a team more baskets because one of their players got injured. That's just dishonest competition, and is less fair than leaving it alone.

John Condren said: After two seperate video reviews, ChumpCar has decided to reward Tubby Butterman Racing with the amount of laps they would have averaged out to while in the pits after a unanimous decision that the Break Dusters 525 intentionally wrecked the Butterman car. Tubby is now leading, My Little Pony is 2nd, and BSD Racing runs 3rd.

After people protested, Condren issued this statement:

John Condren said: Regarding Team TBR at the Chumpionship, I stand by my decision and the call. Racing, like life, isn't always fair. We've all been there before. At least, those of us that have been pushing a race car around a track for more than a few years. And when that unfairness bites us in the ass, what USUALLY happens is that we get pissed-off, grow cynical, become angry and unforgiving, and we start to let all of that eat away at the sport we love. You can argue about this with me if you want; however, I've been around long enough to have seen it happen more times than I can tell you. I've seen some really great people (some really talented drivers and crew chiefs) walk away from racing, turning their backs on good friends, hating everything and everyone associated with the sport. You can argue my position but you can't argue the facts. So, when the opportunity comes along to right a wrong, or to correct an injustice, and/or to inject fairness into an unfair moment, I have and will continue to seize that opportunity. Personal character flaw? Perhaps, but I'm sorry if you feel that way. The incident involving Team TBR at Iowa was both unfortunate and unfair. It happened within the first few minutes of 25.5 long hours of racing. My decision to re-instate the majority (not all) of Team TBR's lost laps -- incurred while making repairs -- was, in my opinion and the shared opinion of my Regional Directors with whom I discussed the matter (after reviewing the video footage of the collision), the FAIR thing to do. Some teams came to me and asked, “What was the precedent for making such a call.” How many precedents would you like me to start naming? First, if you will please recall, the founding of ChumpCar -- the very basis of the ChumpCar World Series -- is sports car racing as it was back in the 1960's and 1970's... when racing was just for fun and all about the good times; when fairness was not only practiced openly, it was required as the mark of a racing driver. Perhaps that's where I draw my "character flaw" from, because I personally saw, was a part of, received from, and gave to such fairness at every race event I went to. Serious stuff, too... like a driver I used to know who pulled off the course to allow another car to win after the two tangled earlier in the weekend; or, a team pulling the engine and gearbox from their car to give to another team who blew their engine, so the other team could finish the race… just because they were higher in the National Championship points standing. Even within ChumpCar’s events this year, I can name 20+ cars that we’ve given lost laps back to because their transponder broke, or fell of the car, or was improperly mounted and not sending a proper signal. Most of these issues were not the responsibility of ChumpCar. Was it “fair” for ChumpCar to respond that way? Did each of these teams benefit from being treated fairly? Or, was it “fair” for ChumpCar to give a team a dozen lost laps when they arrived late and missed the start of a race because they were still going through tech? Oh, and why were they late, you ask? Their pick-up truck blew a transmission 8 hours from home, and they worked all night in a highway rest stop, rebuilding the transmission, so they could drive an additional 9 hours to make the race. Was it “fair” for ChumpCar to reinstate lost laps to a team that was black flagged in error, within the last 30 minutes of a race… when they were running in 4th place? As I said, life and racing are both unfair. That doesn’t mean that ChumpCar has to be. That the recipient of this corrective action just happened to be one of the fastest, best performing teams in Chumpdom, doesn’t mean squat to me. I’d of reacted and responded the same, no matter who the team was or what the situation was, given the circumstances of the incident. And, if you really want to know, I also approved the issuance of a few unfairly lost laps to another car running in the top 10 today. Yep, right here in Iowa. It doesn’t matter who the team was that got them, or what the reason was… I did it because it was fair and it was the right thing to do. And, I’ll do it again. The bottom-line is this: • We’re racing for a trophy and some beer money • Life’s too damn short to participate in ANYTHING that's unfair • We’re supposed to be here for fun, friends and enjoyment • We’re all “… just another Chump!” John Condren Series Administrator

Hmm...

I doubt Butterman would have become disenchanted and walked away from Chump as a result of this incident, had hard luck laps NOT been issued. That car is pretty consistently on the podium, well prepared and well driven.

That's a E36M3ty way to do business, intentionally wrecking someone because they're fast. Ban the offending team from entering as a group for 5 years, individual drivers for a year, or some such.

There's no way to make it up to Butterman that doesn't involve pissing someone else off. Sucks, but I don't think I'd have issued laps. Some days you've got to take the good with the bad.

At the end of the day, as Condren says, its amateur racing. Have a beer and build it better for the next time.

In reply to JohnInKansas:

The E36 M3ty way of doing business is granting a team extra points for a pretty standard mistake. The right way, as is done in every other racing series as well as every other sport out there, period, is to penalize the offender, not hand out points to the offended. As organizers they could've maybe given 'em a discount on the next race, or come over and handed 'em some beers and words of encouragement. But to artificially move the team up two spots (to first!) is ridiculous.

The Chump officials like to think of its series as "more legitimate racing" than LeMons, but this makes me think they're quite the opposite.

Chump has done this before, and I think it's crap, but it's their series and they get to run is as they see fit. If I drove in Chump I might register my disagreement but I wouldn't bother going beyond that. If it bothered me enough I would switch to a different series.

I drive in Lemons and they haven't ever added laps for an incident. They gave "bonus laps" (instead of BS laps) for an extra crappy car once and it won overall so they have never done that again.

Giving laps to somebody puts everybody else back, making it unfair. Taking laps away from the offender OTOH, that only hurts his team.

I knew this was pointed at Chump, and I can't count on one hand the number of threads on various forums I've seen lodging protest over the decision. IIRC, this happened in August or September of last year?

For the record, I think it was a bad call. I think the track was paved with good intentions that day, and I'm more than a little surprised at the outpouring of whining over it.

If TBR hadn't won this would be a non-event. If they were INTENTIONALLY hit in an amateur crapcan race, the offending team should have been pulled off track and parked for the rest of the season.

Fairness to the rest of the team be damned...I've played team capitain at a couple of crapcan races, and I wouldn't put anyone in the car that I don't trust.

It's all for fun. Finishing the race is a win as far as I'm concerned. I would feel awful and do everything in my power to fix it if I accidentally put someone else out.

I think Condren's intentions were good, but it was a bad call. If you're the Ref someone is always going to be pissed at you. I can say that in my Chump experience, they organizers were professional and erred on the side of fairness. Clearly, it's possible to be too nice.

dean1484 wrote: The only "fair" thing that I can se being done is to impose a penilty on the person/team that caused the damage. Set them out for 2x the amount of time you were fixing your car. If you can not return after trying to fix the car set the driver that was in the other car down for the rest of the race. This is really the only thing that can be done that is fair. You can not undo what was done to your car but you can make it so the other compeditors will think about (and take seriously) what they are doing on the track.

+1