Originally posted by zracer22:
The rules are quite clear. If you see yellow, SLOW DOWN and DON'T PASS.
Well, in practice, the DON'T PASS part is required, while the SLOW DOWN part can sometimes be waived. I mean, there's slowing down, and there's SLOWING DOWN. Sunday during one of the regional races at Road Atlanta, we had a full course caution (double yellow), with the safety car out, at one point due to a serious, car-on-fire-on-the-track incident.
A group of four cars was just in front of the overall leader when the double yellows came out. The caution situation took several laps to resolve, and those four cars (actually, the first of the four) was not even (apparently) attempting to close the gap to the pack, which was the best part of a two-point-five mile track.
I guess it was a problem for the emergency workers, having to dodge and direct two separate packs on the track, or maybe it just aggravated someone in the tower, I don't know. But Race Control had the corners signal to those four (I think it was four) drivers to close up on the pack (I was on comm, so I heard the 'command' directly with my own ears). To regain that amount of space meant that those four guys hauled ass when they weren't in the vicinity of the incident. It only took a lap or two for them to close up on the pack once they caught on to all of the hand waving from the corner stations.
They'd already been completely around the course for two or three laps under full-course caution, behind the safety car, so they knew exactly where the incident was, they didn't race, nobody tried to pass, and it was all good.
The moral of the story is, as stated before, there's slowing down and being cautious, and there's SLOWING DOWN and potentially being a problem. It all depends on the context.
BTW, the difference between theory and practice? In theory there isn't a difference, in practice, there is.
In that same incident, we had a pass under way at our corner as the flags came out. It was so close that with a Mark 1 Mod 0 eyeball, you couldn't tell who was in front at the time the flags came out, especially if you were involved in hoisting the flags and listening on the comm and grabbing flags, and communicating with your partner on the corner.
Apparently, the fellow making the pass got worried that he'd passed under the yellow (we couldn't tell, and didn't call him in). The next corner saw him letting the other car back past him, thinking there might have been a pass under yellow. Instead of immediately jumping his feces, the other turn told Control they'd like to confer with my corner when the time was right.
Things were pretty squirrely for several minutes on the net, then Control let me and the next turn talk directly. He told me what he'd seen, my partner and I compared notes between us and with the other corner's description, told him what we'd seen, and we all agreed that it'd been a righteous action.
We agreed that we didn't feel an infraction had occurred and safety wasn't compromised, Control listened to the whole exchange, noone said another word about it, the Chief Steward didn't query us, and AFAIK the driver wasn't sure we'd even noticed.
So, I guess the point of this (long) missive is that it all depends on context. Working corners has given me a whole new view of the flags as they affect me when driving. Safety is the most important thing, and a bit of caution and discretion go a long way in that regard. But you can't get so wrapped up in a fixed interpretation of ambigous rules that nothing positive happens, and the rules can only be ambiguous, unless they're updated hourly and run to many volumes.
Net-net, everyone has to exercise good sense and reasonable judgement for this stuff to work out at all. And people that consistently don't exercise good sense and reasonable judgement must be educated or expelled.
I'll give every driver one rule of thumb, though. If the yellow flag is waving, something serious is about to appear in your windshield, or one of us "white suits" is out there assiting one of your colleagues. Waving yellow is a more immediate threat in most circumstances than even red, because waving yellow means it's RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!
And if you hit me, I'll spit on your dog. After I get out of the hospital. And if it's worse than that, I'll h'aint you. ;-)
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Doug "Lefty" Franklin
NutDriver Racing
