As I said earlier the track officials are to be commended for staying out there and doing a tough job. I know, I do it for RC Combat and Pylon racing where your are flying planes very close around you at 150mph. One mistake and someone gets impaled. I also was a race marshal at top level RC car racing back in Chicago. Less at stake but tactics, lines and the difference between experienced and newby racers might have been even more obvious as you could see more of the track in your field of vision.
As I’ve also stated Many times there will be bumping in racing just due to inertia, someone braking in front of you hard or just plain hitting some dirt kicked up on the track that causes you to lose grip you thought you had. It is when someone is driving way past their ability or too aggressively that they need some reigning in. Yes it is a Very tough call to make. It requires you to watch the follower, not the leader, and in many cases you can’t tell what happened. You have to watch trends. It is even more difficult when we have some many different levels and classes racing together.
I was not out this weekend because I was ill Friday and only felt so so on Saturday so didn’t practice / tune and felt I might be iffy on Sunday and was more likely to cause an issue than have a good race. Being a pilot I take full mental and physical preparedness very seriously. I took myself out because I wasn’t fully ready to race.
What is distressing is the attitude of many to try to win on the first or last lap, much less the first turn. As others have stated a good driver will spend some time learning how to pass someone and not crawl up their rear as soon as they can. They have got plenty of laps to do that. And if you do leave some space to observe and learn a good line and the newby brakes too hard then you have the space and lane to run right past them. Too many drivers here haven’t learned lines and patience in passing. I know the latter and strategy but don’t have the experience and skill in this form of racing to put it all together yet.
Having an X isn’t the solution because a smart driver spots and knows the slower drivers before the race begins. Perhaps you need to split classes and licenses to have A, B and even C mains. That would allow success to grow and would keep the best drivers from losing out due to inexperience or overly aggressive driving.
What I find amazing though is that watching the Mini Max or Intl RMax videos you see great driving. Pushing hard but nothing unreasonable.
I wish we could get some of that sense and balance into all of the classes. I know this is hard to do, but we have some smart and dedicated people in this group. A first turn pileup should not be that bad!