Has SCCA road racing gotten too rough? And, if so, who or what are to blame?

Tom1200 said:

I wanted to comment on this separate post:

As for racing with SCCA or road racing in general I wouldn't hesitate to do either.

There is plenty of safe wreck free racing out there. They key is you need to go to the events near you and check out the various classes and see which one fits.

While I like the fact the contact at vintage racing is a giant no no, as are 4 wheel offs, my main reason for vintage racing was I like old cars and accessibility. 

The incidents we've seen in the videos are not typical of most peoples racing experiences but sadly we've had to many of them of late.

I'd go further and say, if you want to get a feel, go flag a few events. Flagging I found that some classes, spec Miata was a big time one, we would almost duck and cover first lap out of fear of a crash big enough to throw a car into a flag station. The open wheel guys, locally at least, seemed to have the better, "here for fun" vibe rather than the "if I don't prove myself, I won't get scouted for a career driving, so I gotta grass pass or go 4 wide on first lap!" Vibe.

In reply to Apexcarver :

I do this thing were I walk up to our chief steward and go "psst I hear Roger Penske isn't here this weekend"

As for the open wheel cars; having driven Formula Vee, Formula Ford as well as F500 I can say you pretty much know that a crash will be really bad.

In reply to Tom1200 :

Without having had first-hand experience with wheel to wheel racing, I'll gladly defer to your experiences in how aggressive the drivers are. Personally, I think one of the problems is that the Spec Miatas make the drivers far too comfortable with risk taking since they don't reach insane speeds, aren't open wheel, and they have a closed cockpit with strong cages. There's a lot of bumping and banging which makes the races really entertaining to watch but eventually leads to wrecks like this one. And don't misunderstand that, the safety of the cars is absolutely a good thing, that's not saying that the cars need to be more dangerous.

This wreck is almost certainly going to force the SCCA to take a look at what happened and make some changes. However, without having experience with the SCCA's rules and how they can influence drivers, I'm not really sure how you could effectively make the drivers settle down. Relatively cheap cars that are known to be able to take a beating and a lot of drivers is just a recipe for rough driving. I'm not particularly familiar with Sports Renault and Spec RX-7, so I don't know how the SCCA dealt with those classes and whether what they did with them would work again with Spec Miata. There'll be something though, we just get to wait and see if it works.

In reply to LegacyGTGuy :

You are spot on about the cars being rugid and the lower speeds perhaps giving one a false sense of security.

I'm make this comment "set the tone early".  A friend of mine a Spec Miata race that was part of a big pro weekend; the officials made it very clear that if everyone wasn't well behaved they were done. There was a 70 car field and lo and behold everyone was well behaved.

If when SCCA does this there will be howls of discontent and threats by some to leave etc but you can rest assured that the vast majority of drivers will welcome it. 

SCCA is set up whereby if something is wrong a competitor protests. For the most part this works well but where it falls down is no one wants to be the bad guy. There is an infamous protest from the Laguna Seca RunOffs. I won't go into to much detail but suffice to say it cuased a whole lot of animosity........ A lot of it had to do with the timing of it but even if it had been better timed it would still have cuased a lot of animosity.

The solution is simple and there is a blueprint from other racing clubs. When I raced motorcycles if you had multiple offs (regardless of whether you crashed) you could expect to get black flagged. Vintage racing does the same. Any contact also results in a black flag.

Spec Miata had a great race at the 2021 RunOffs so its possible to have a great event without bouncing off each other.

Just saw this latest vid posted.

In reply to racerfink :

Simply not enough time to fully react.

That's a terrifying as one would expect it to be.

APEowner said:

That's a terrifying as one would expect it to be.

That was awful.  I felt for the driver seeing the shaking.  That is 100% shell shock. 

Thoughts from the pink car video:

1.  That's a 100 mph hit.  Ouch!  Thank goodness for stout cages.

2.  Both cars struck on the passenger side.  Outcome would likely have been much, much worse otherwise.  Even a stout cage would have suffered major failure.

3.  I can see the flag stand for that corner but can't tell if there's a yellow waving.  I'm not a flagger but my opinion is that the yellow should have been shown >vigorously< as soon as the black car left the pavement, given the bunched field and the high speed of that turn.

In reply to DWNSHFT :

I think somewhere in all the various discussion it was noted a flag was out.

Having just watched these highlights, aggressive driving is certainly a problem in all of racing right now.  Westphal got 'Corvetted' by a couple of LMP2 cars having an argument.  The quality of racing really seems to have gone downhill the last few years.

racerfink said:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/vihufUqTcTc?rel=0

 

Having just watched these highlights, aggressive driving is certainly a problem in all of racing right now.  Westphal got 'Corvetted' by a couple of LMP2 cars having an argument.  The quality of racing really seems to have gone downhill the last few years.

Both of those LMP2 drivers should be fined. Even better would be making them pay to put the Lamborghini back on track. 

OMG. Catching up on this thread and seen/heard about the spec piñata crash for the first time.  Please tell me all involved are ok with no serious medical issues.

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:

OMG. Catching up on this thread and seen/heard about the spec piñata crash for the first time.  Please tell me all involved are ok with no serious medical issues.

The kid in the black car was seriously hurt but I saw that he was discharged from the hospital yesterday. Looks to be on the road to recovery.  I heard the guy in the pink car had a vertebral compression fracture.

I've seen all the videos on this crash including both in-car videos and it's really hard to assign blame to anyone. Sometimes bad stuff happens on the track. There but for the grace of God go I... great reminder to take safety equipment seriously. 

In reply to ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) :

Damn that sucks, but it could have been worse.  Thx

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

Or you could just not. The kid got hurt pretty bad, if you can't recognize that it's poor taste to even try to assign blame to him in a wreck like this, then someone failed you when they taught you manners. Stuff happens, just leave it at that.

NASCAR seems to make it a point to be the case study in bad examples. I tune in for the road courses and some of the big races and it's remains completely acceptable to crash someone at will. This Noah guy is apparently an upcoming star... I'm sure someone in the amateur leagues look up to him, perhaps the Stewart plays this video and says if anyone wants to behave like this then GTBO.

In reply to LegacyGTGuy :

It does happen, but it doesn't have to happen.  Your criticism of my opinion is also in poor taste but that didn't give you even a tiny bit of pause.  I did clearly say reasonable chance and we will never know, but you didn't account for that at all.  You are the reason I laugh at this forum anytime someone wants to have free and open discussion.  You just want people to agree with you and if they don't you get offended.  Be offended.  Rock on!

LegacyGTGuy said:

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

Or you could just not. The kid got hurt pretty bad, if you can't recognize that it's poor taste to even try to assign blame to him in a wreck like this, then someone failed you when they taught you manners. Stuff happens, just leave it at that.

I see no blame being assigned.  Maybe he should have lifted, or not lifted, or whatever happened.  No malice or other intent is implied.  Maybe if his setup was a little better or a little worse he would have not been in that place at that time.  Multiply what-if by 73 other competitors.  

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

You're seriously doubling down on this? Someone just had the worst day of their life and you're trying to Monday morning quarterback his driving. This is amateur racing, not Formula 1, stuff happens and that's just part of it. The discussion is about whether the racing has gotten too aggressive, not a critique of individual drivers. There's a time and place for dissecting big wrecks like this, but this is not the time nor is it in good taste to say that the person who got hurt should have done something else so they wouldn't have gotten into the wreck.

And you're already completely wrong about what he was doing. The driver who got hurt commented on the video and said that he got out of the throttle as soon as he knew he lost it. 

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Eh, when you're trying to say that he would have saved it by lifting that's pretty much blaming him for losing it. Comes across as poor taste to me.

In reply to LegacyGTGuy :

As a technical mind, it is natural to analyze a thing that happened to try to deduce the sequence of events.

As a driver, I know all too well that you don't have time to run through every possible scenario of what-if when you are in the heat of the moment - it is 100% instinct.  Analysis is always an after the fact situation.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

"l went into the corner a little too fast, realized it, called upon my legendary skill and years of experience, panicked, locked up the brakes and slid into the bloody bank—sorry!”

-Graham Hill to Carroll Smith after crashing a GT40 at Le Mans.

While on the subject of situations occuring on the first lap of a race.