Was last weekend as bad as I here it was as far as carnage??? I wasn't at Lime Rock and I haven’t talked to my brother other than a voicemail where I found out that my car hates him as well... I thank all of you and him for leaving him out of the carnage, I inspected the car and did not see any new dents or altercations, other than some brand new tires!!! (I bet he takes them for his car though
)
Anyway what I have heard from others was that this race day had lots of accidents and it seems to me that many people (including myself) might be worried going on this season that they may become part of an accident.
I was always taught that 10% of the cars will not drive home at the end of the day, either due to mechanical failure or crash damage. There are a lot of things that can effect this # but I have always found that number to be somewhat true. For multiple reasons I would suspect that larger run groups (such as IT) will make up a higher percentage than the smaller race groups. Lets keep our groupe at or below the 10% (thats no more than 4 cars between ITS/IT
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I am interested in what the accidents were and what caused them when reflecting on a weekend. I remember my first season where half the field did not finish, due to people crashing into each other… we ran the first half the season with a full course yellow within 1 lap. I also remember a race 2 years ago (I think that was the only shortened ITB race in the Northeast in the last 4-5 years) where there were single car accidents in every turn on the track. The field was huge and everyone had that “accident” fear running through their heads on grid. The point about that day is everyone took themselves out, and did not take anyone else out with them.
I would like to know a couple things… what/who were the accidents from this past weekend and why did they happen. Were the cars un-drivable, did they have more than $1,000 crash damage, was it a single car accident or multicar accident, etc.?
I have seen some bashing occur here on the forums, and I hope that this information is posted to help educate our fellow racers and the bashing is not intended to point blame at an incident. Please when pointing out that someone made such and such a mistake also point out what you feel they could have done to prevent such and such a mistake. On the flip side, take what people say as an educational experience
. We all need to work together if we want to race together.
On another note, looking forward and hummm… thinking of how we can prevent a repeat of last weekend (If it was as bad as everyone says it was), here are some of my feelings:
We all need to work together in a healthy competition to continue having fun. I think as a group we should all work together to achieve the best IT group. Having the best IT group means that we might have the largest field (we all want more competition right?), we all should be safe (for our selves and our cars), we all should be having fun (that is a must, and if you are not having fun don’t come your not welcome, this is regional racing, not a career), we all should trust each other (car legality and driving ability), we all should have respect for each other (on and off the track), we all should understand the goals that one another has, and we all should do the above to ensure we get our full race in without any “full course yellows” or “black flag alls”.
I think that as a group (we will be together for a long long time) we can give the rest of SCCA the “best and safest show.” We are one of the only fields in the northeast that has the capability to have a multitude of different drivers and car make/models win. I feel that we have some of the best drivers as well (although the other IT classes also have great drivers as well). It is our responsibility as a group to set a standard that each driver needs to meet. It is also our responsibility as a group to help each driver in our group meat OUR goals. IT is a place where we can learn to drive well and we can have fun. Because we all (every IT and SM class) have made IT and SM into the most popular classes only means that we have to work together harder to keep harmony. I hope that as this season grows, tensions don’t grow as well. I don’t want to have any of my races cut short, and I hate full course yellows.
We know that we are going to have 40+ cars fields all year and we know that IT and SM can not take over the entire day of racing (we have enduro’s for that
)… What (given what has been given to us) can we all do to make things run smoother??? Look at things this way; we are given a race group (say #8) and we are given a max number of cars (40 or so). We need to expect that, and we as competitors need to make that work, as that is part of the goal, full fields means more money for SCCA and more competition for us!!!
Good luck to all, I hope to see you at Pocono…
Raymond Blethen
PS: Thanks again for leaving my bro out of the carnage!!! This week will be a long week, and if anyone has any ideas on why a car wont rev past 4,500 RPM without breaking up (sputtering) please send me an e-mail
[email protected] , I am sick of this car!!!
