The guy in the BMW protested me and I appealed it and lost probably cause the other guy is a lawyer and I'm just a 19 year old punk kid What they told me was that it is the passer's job to make sure they have a safe pass and the fact that I had to drop a wheel means it was an unsafe pass. I told them when I initially made the pass I wasn't planning on going off track I was forced off track.... They didn't see it that way.
Joey,
this is exactly how the rule has been explained to me, and how i would explain it to anyone who i was on track with in SCCA.
you made the pass, you forced the issue............its on you.
my best advice for this, and many things in life, is to be Ok with losing a battle or 2, just make sure that you win the war.
the fact that you are new to the club, young, AND fast, is likely why you got protested; plus guys dont like having thier stuff damged for no reason.
my input from racing this track in formula fords(never in a SM) is that you gave up a lot by not attempting to get into the draft from the BMW on the exit of 9. i think you might have been able to make the pass into turn 1 using his draft, and avoided this altogether. i would have tested that first.
FYI there are fist sized rocks everywhere in the dirt at willow. when we go into the dirt in the formula car it gets really ugly; so a trip through the dirt at willow is not like other tracks and can do a lot of damage to your car. I saw a FF guy go off right in the spot that the bmw did. in the pits he had a shoe box that he filled up with large rocks that went into his cooling ducts. his radiator was no longer a virgin.........
hope to meet you guys at the track sometime out in cali.
Josh
hindsight is 20/20.