Copied from the portable drivers hand book.
50/50 at best.
"racing room" whoops, not a race.
Best Answer Todd Green , 08-05-2015 10:30 AM
Sorry to post a little late, just catching up on this thread. Chris you know I respect you, but when you say side to side contact, I have a hard time understanding that point of view. Sure ultimately it was side to side, but look at this still frame from the vid:
Steve has significant steering input, the door is already closing and you can clearly see Joe's car is still completely behind Steve's car (though moving fast to the left). Now the monkey in the wrench is the speed differential in cars. This is just bad juju every time. Anyway, in my book side-to-side means that you have overlap before the leading car has turned in (or minimally the trailing car has presented itself to let you know the dive bomb is coming.) Clearly that is not the case here. The trailing car had to have seen that Steve wasn't leaving room for whatever reason. Perhaps the trailing car didn't have time to react, but IMO on a test day he should never have taken the chance in the first place and backed off long before it got to that point. I don't know Steve beyond his posts here, but I'd wager that if he knew that Joe was going to stuff it in there, he'd have left room. Very few people are going to intentionally risk injury and damage to prove a point on a testing day. So the question becomes is it reasonable for Steve to have kept watching his mirrors after he'd already turned in? I'd say no. Sure there are circumstances with out of class cars and massive closing rates where you'd better be ready to leave the door open, but for in class if I've checked my mirrors before turning in and there is no car to the inside of me I'm turning down and looking where I'm going. If you can run a corner while looking in your mirror and not lose time (or drive off track), you're much better at this than I am.
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Copied from the portable drivers hand book.
50/50 at best.
"racing room" whoops, not a race.
As one of the ace drivers of a Road Atlanta-winning ChumpCar team, obviously my opinion matters the most here.
Steve was a bit off-line on a test day where he presumably isn't 100% up to his potential speed.
The overtaking car is faster and seems to have had the much better opportunity to avoid an incident.
It is a test day.
The swing variable for me is whether Steve KNEW he was increasing the chances of an incident by re-tightening his line left in the second before contact. Did you see him coming and were making him responsible for avoiding the contact, and do you have crappy mirrors where you can't see well? If so, I'm calling it 40% on Steve.
If you didn't KNOW you were making contact more risky and you have good mirrors, then at worst you were off-line and situationally less aware than you would be with more time there, and I call it more like 15% on Steve.
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I am littering the forums with double posts, sorry. Something weird going on browser-wise. Am I crazy, I thought we could delete our own posts?
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James, I'm sorry if that is your impression, it is not what's in my mind. I hope you can look again and see that most of my objections are to factual misstatements or insinuations of things that are not true. Above all else I respect someone's opinion when they can support it without exaggeration, twisting of facts, or ignoring clear evidence. Again and again people here have done those things, and never once after I challenge them on the facts do they come back with a factual rebuttal to support their original statement.I am not going into who is or not to blame... really no point, i think every view has been aired.
But the title of this post should be "This guy that hit me is an idiot" and anyone who sees otherwise is wrong and i don't need your opinions.
I haven't posted on here in ages and I'm not going to add my 0.02c but Steve, dude, YOUR HELMET. It doesn't remotely fit you. If you get in a head-on wreck you're going to seriously get hurt wearing your helmet like that. It looks like your head is not inside the helmet at all and it's resting around your ears. Get that sorted before you get hurt man!
OK, F it I will add my 0.02c That was 100% on the passing car. If someone is going to let you by on the inside of no-name (T4) they get WAY, WAY offline to make the pass happen and 90% of the time you're getting pointed by. There's no questioning it, it's obvious. When Steve tracked out from T3 he tracked out fully to the left and almost touched the kerbs. He then turned left for T4 a tiny bit late making his line not completely tight against the kerbing. But from initial turn-in his trajectory was always right back on the racing line. In no way was that opening the door. Without a clear point-by there's no way in holy hell I'm making that pass ESPECIALLY on a test day. If someone pulled that move on me I'd be spitting fire.
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But answer me this, if you think about how you automatically divide your attention, once you have already turned into a corner seeing the trailing car squarely behind you, is it not reasonable to expect that the odds of him still making a move inside decreases and therefor more of your attention to shift forward? Again, we're talking test day, not a race where every hint of an opening is likely to provoke a move.
Granted, it is very easy for me to say this not being in your shoes, but as a one-man-one-car-gang that was on a budget of both time and money, I did EVERYTHING I could to avoid contact, especially if it wasn't late-ish in the race for a position that actually mattered. Countless times, I dove out of the way of divebombing Mazda Teen Tween Queen Dream Scream ChaIllenge drivers that were trying to score an F1 contract by "winning" the rainy Saturday morning practice session. "Living to fight another day" lost me some "important" races, but I *think* it also saved me from DNFs, retubs/totals, and the inevitable hard feelings that come from such things.
To your point - If I KNOW I am the fastest car heading into the corner because I just passed 2 oil-starved VolksPorsche 944 and 2 bent-valve E30 BMW backmarkers, then I certainly DO shift my focus forward and expect them to not "re-pass" PIT maneuver me. But when I am in a "traffic jam" or suspect a possibility of being overtaken, I try not to leave the door open - and IF I drift wide I try to STAY wide to the next apex or until/unless I check the mirrors and see that I am clear to "re-tighten". GRANTED, this is all preachy armchair QB-ing of your situation, and I have not been a perfect parishioner to my own above-stated religion.
Having said that, I think the SCCA passing rules are vaguely meaningless and the NASA rules are nutty for requiring only 3/4 of a car width as sufficient "racing room". Everyone should drive like we are in 1950s open wheel cars with leather helmets and trees for runoff area. It would solve EVERYTHING and the fastest guy would still win.
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What would have been the downside if the overtaking driver backed out of it until a higher percentage passing opportunity appeared? What would be lost?
Sorry to post a little late, just catching up on this thread. Chris you know I respect you, but when you say side to side contact, I have a hard time understanding that point of view. Sure ultimately it was side to side, but look at this still frame from the vid:
Steve has significant steering input, the door is already closing and you can clearly see Joe's car is still completely behind Steve's car (though moving fast to the left). Now the monkey in the wrench is the speed differential in cars. This is just bad juju every time. Anyway, in my book side-to-side means that you have overlap before the leading car has turned in (or minimally the trailing car has presented itself to let you know the dive bomb is coming.) Clearly that is not the case here. The trailing car had to have seen that Steve wasn't leaving room for whatever reason. Perhaps the trailing car didn't have time to react, but IMO on a test day he should never have taken the chance in the first place and backed off long before it got to that point. I don't know Steve beyond his posts here, but I'd wager that if he knew that Joe was going to stuff it in there, he'd have left room. Very few people are going to intentionally risk injury and damage to prove a point on a testing day. So the question becomes is it reasonable for Steve to have kept watching his mirrors after he'd already turned in? I'd say no. Sure there are circumstances with out of class cars and massive closing rates where you'd better be ready to leave the door open, but for in class if I've checked my mirrors before turning in and there is no car to the inside of me I'm turning down and looking where I'm going. If you can run a corner while looking in your mirror and not lose time (or drive off track), you're much better at this than I am.
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Very important fact for understanding your assessment!I should also explain I give only 3 percentages. 0% 50% 100%
Sorry to post a little late, just catching up on this thread. Chris you know I respect you, but when you say side to side contact, I have a hard time understanding that point of view. Sure ultimately it was side to side, but look at this still frame from the vid:
Steve has significant steering input, the door is already closing and you can clearly see Joe's car is still completely behind Steve's car (though moving fast to the left). Now the monkey in the wrench is the speed differential in cars. This is just bad juju every time. Anyway, in my book side-to-side means that you have overlap before the leading car has turned in (or minimally the trailing car has presented itself to let you know the dive bomb is coming.) Clearly that is not the case here. The trailing car had to have seen that Steve wasn't leaving room for whatever reason. Perhaps the trailing car didn't have time to react, but IMO on a test day he should never have taken the chance in the first place and backed off long before it got to that point. I don't know Steve beyond his posts here, but I'd wager that if he knew that Joe was going to stuff it in there, he'd have left room. Very few people are going to intentionally risk injury and damage to prove a point on a testing day. So the question becomes is it reasonable for Steve to have kept watching his mirrors after he'd already turned in? I'd say no. Sure there are circumstances with out of class cars and massive closing rates where you'd better be ready to leave the door open, but for in class if I've checked my mirrors before turning in and there is no car to the inside of me I'm turning down and looking where I'm going. If you can run a corner while looking in your mirror and not lose time (or drive off track), you're much better at this than I am.
I'd go further and argue that at a test day, I should be able to remove every mirror from the car, and never get in a single collision.
Very important fact for understanding your assessment!
So you're saying if it is not 100% one persons fault then you score it 50/50?
Curious, why such a coarse rating scale?
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