Hey, don't forget about your DE experience, slot racing as a kid and of course your BMX experience.........

 

Dave, you were a slot racer? Me too! I placed 4th in the Pro Nationals in Cincinati in 1980. Of course, that was before they had electricity.

 

The hardest thing to do is to look inward. IMHO, most accidents are not a single driver's fault, but a chain of things that lead to the accident. I have seen people that have claimed to have been "cut off" or "punted", yet the other driver was up to their door handle making a pass. The probably could have avoided contact by being more track aware.

Is closing the door on the car behind really worth potential contact? Is it really necessary to make that pass now? We as amatures should put our cars first and winning/places a very distant second. In general we should not expect the person in front to necessaarily behave in a perfect manner. This is what in my opinion separates pro racing.

 

Hey, now, Sisco Kid...pipe down.

I never did BMX...

 

Bill, I'm not sure what prompted this, but if it's from my mentioning my kart racing experience, it's a pretty ignorant comment. If not then nevermind, but it certainly comes curiously right after my mention of karting.

FWIW, my experience includes, in order: autocross, karting (NOT rentals), commercial racing school (David Empringham was my instructor), DE, instructing DE, SCCA school, and SCCA club racing. For sure nothing prepared me for racing more than karting and it was much more intense than car racing. There is a very good reason most F1 drivers have experience in karts and many continue to race them, including none other than Michael Schumacher. Senna himself had nothing but praise for karting. When I was karting I was told you learn more in a year of karting than 5 years of car racing. I thought it was an exaggeration until I started racing cars and then I knew it was true.

Again, if this wasn't directed towards me, nevermind. If it was, you may want to have a better understanding of what you are commenting on.

 

Geo, not directed at you. Having fun with another post.

Don't get too serious on me.

For what it's worth, I competed in SKUSA for 7 years. Nothing compares to racing Karts.

 

Hey, no sweat. The timing just looked fishy, but I also knew that threads on a forum can get confusing regarding where something was intended.

I'm all for that. I have enough serious stuff going on in my life at the moment. Getting serious about something that isn't just is incredibly counter-productive for me.

Way cool!!

Oh! Hey Bill, I just realized that we met at TWS a couple of years ago. I've got to get out there again.

 

Right on. Pro racing should be the same IMHO. There are rules but they don't seem to enforce them too much, as breaking them makes it more exciting for the fans, and getting media and TV coverage is job 1 for pro racing.

 

Well in pro racing the importance of winning or taking the postion is higher than that in club racing. In club racing it is all for fun and there is NO FUN in fixing bent car.

In pro-racing is it is not about FUN, but it is about winning. Could be a race or season points, but there IS more importance than at the club level. Bending cars in pro racing is not a good way to be successful, but at the same time I feel that you need to be willing to risk a bent car ever now and then to run at the front. Now I did not say you need to wad up a car, but since the object is to win or finish high up you need to take some added risks. Racing at any level involves calculated risk. Drivers always need to determine how much risk are they willing to take to achieve a fast lap or make or defend a pass. IHMO no racer (pro or not) should look at intentional contact as acceptable.

 

Some people here seem to have forgotten that racing is about WINNING. If winning is important then we will always have racing incidents. Anything else is 'merely a parade'.

Now its very nice to have a high speed parade with lovely cars making grunty noises, but it isnt quite the same thing as RACING. I'm not putting it down, I'm saying don't confuse one activity with the other. It is quite legitimate to ban physical contact if what is happening is 'lots of people on track going fast and having a fun time', it all goes pear shaped however when you try and stop racers racing from having racing incidents, it doesn't work in horse racing, or yacht racing, or athletics, why should it work in car racing?

Frankly, leaning on somebody can be quite fun, it doesn't hurt if others know you enjoy it either - its called respect.

R+C

 

Well I consider DE to be "non-competitive"

I consider club level racing to be about competition. This means working hard to be faster than the next guy and finishing infront of the next guy in race. However the main goal of most club racers is fun competition. This means competing hard, but still remembering at the end of the day competition is more important that the spot. This is more of "how you play the game" vs the result.

Pro-racing is different in that the INTENT is to win and fun is simply not a factor. If it happens to be fun along the way great, but job of a pro driver is not to have fun, but to try to finish has high as possible at the end of the race. This does not condone contact, but if a little incidental contact occurs along the way so be it. In Pro racing to if it takes 1 wadded up car per season to win 10 of 11 races then that is fine for driver and team and with a championship it is considered a success. In club racing that sort of thing is really frowned up. It can't prevent it from happening, but I personally would rather finsihed 5th in my local championship than to finish first, but wad up my car in the process. If I ever vetentured in to pro racing I would have to realize that the car is no longer something to be preserved, but merely a tool to be used to achieve results. The tool does need to be used properly however and busting up tools is not good way to get results, but the car is just a tool.

Right now car is a tool and understand I could break it anytime, but given the choice of breaking the tool vs keeping it nice safe for another day I'd keep it safe. My reward for 1st instead of 1nd is just not that great. In the pro ranks it can mean the difference between a good sponsor and no sponsor.

 

Racing is always about winning. Always has been. But, as I said before, there used to be a stigma about "winning ugly" and IMHO there still should be. If "winning ugly" (such as the 996 that did the flying drop kick on the GTO in Grand Am last year) is NOT tolerated it will largely stop. It will NOT change the fact that racing is about winning. If Max Papis had been shown the black flag on the last lap at Road Atlanta last year when he punted Henzler (sp?), and the next guy got the checker there would certainly be a lot of yelling and screaming by Max and his GM buddies, but you can also be assured that drivers will be told by their teams not to screw up a good points and money paying finish by doing something stupid - especially if the organizers consistently punish such behavior. That won't change the fact that racing is about winning.

I started my racing education by read C&D and R&T in the 60s and winning ugly was clearly NOT COOL and generally not tolerated, at least nothing even close to what is tolerated today. Hell, back then people died when someone did something stupid. I think the current tolerence for winning ugly will only change when someone is killed sadly enough.

 

More likely than not, it is a backlash to all of the modern safety equipment. A good corollary is Ice Hockey, where up until the 70s, goalies played without masks, and before the 90s, few players wore helmets. Back then, the pucks, and the sticks stayed down, and the amount of injuries was much less than one would expect. Once safety equipment was introduced, the game got nastier, and though the amount of injuries fell, it was not as much as it could have been. If you knew that you would hurt someone by bumping them off, only the most callous drivers would not be more careful.

 

This rings true to me as well, and I think it explains why drivers seem to be becoming so much more aggressive on the public streets. At this point, I honestly cannot stand to drive on the public streets. I bet half of these morons would not drive the way they do if they didn't have traction control and ABS to allow them to get away with such nonesense. I don't even think they realize how risky they are being . . .

 

Since someone brought it up, the same conclusions should be made with DE. If you take your car to the track and some bone-head scratches your nice shiny car, don't expect them to offer to pay. They might, but don't expect it.