Season 6 Race 5 Melbourne - Post race

[Tim McIver]

Firstly, I did hit David from behind, for that I very sorry. I realise how bad it is after all the training to get rear ended at T1.

I would however be very keen to see the server replay. I realise this is probably not the best way to help David calm down but I will try and defend myself for a short while. Nico has already stated him opinion and if there is consensus on that then I am happy to back down and take full responsibility. The way I see currently, it was not a one sided incident and responsibility should be shared...

From the replays I have watched, I had plenty of room to go down the left. It was my decision that the left would be the safest place for me to put my car. Braking early into T1 from row 1 or 2 is not the default safest option. It gives maximum chance being run up the back of. If at all possible I look to find a clear bit of road to brake late into. It was my impression that I had a clear piece of road on the outside.

After committing to the left David moves left across the white line. I had presumed he would hold his line. I’m not saying it was bad driving or even David’s fault, but we hardly even touched, and originally I did have enough room.

Believe it or not, I was not aware that it was me who had hit David. The thought did cross my mind, but I was fairly certain somebody else must have come through and bumped him from behind. At the end of the race I was keen to make sure it wasn’t me, and was very disappointed to find that it was. I continued racing 75% sure (and wrong) that I had not caused the incident.

I’m totally happy to hear other opinions on this one (or perhaps echo’s of David and Nico’s opinion) and be guided accordingly. Name names, I want to drive better and cause few or no incidents.

I’m all for Nico’s suggestion of everyone having the power to call a restart. I was hoping we would have a restart today, but I wasn’t going to stop racing in order to find out. It sounds like in future this will be much clearer. I suspect it should have no impact however on a T1 incident involving 2 cars, as ours was.

Sorry David.

Tim

 

[Wayne Reed]

Nicolai i am trying to send you a pm bud but its full

 

[Valerio Vinassa]

maybe Im last driver that can speak but:

someone type Race Director send us this

"The track:
I think the whole group have showed that they are able to drive safe, so there is no point in me stressing this in every e-mail. There is however one particular spot that I am worried about, and that is the exit of turn 5 (the fast right hander). If one are too eager is easy to spin the car on the curbs in the exit of the turn and that usually means end of race. Furthermore your car is likely to be stuck in a very dangerous position and it can create a mass-accident like it did in season 4 if it happens early in the race. Therefore, show extra caution in this turn."

another thing in ours rules is "no restart the race when is start" or wrong remember?we can speak about this if like change this rule.

in any case when I saw many chat for restart I go slow thinking about restart and so Nicolai passed me, was in battle with him , after 1 or 2 laps I see Nicolai park on gravel so I think now maybe restart go slow and so Valter and Peter passed me after this I understand that no restart.Im sorry for all guys that lost the race:frown:.

--------------------------------------------------

report race:

Q 20th 0.8tenths slow from my PB but is my usually place on grid
R a good start and no problem but when I turn in T4 I see ( I run with sticky name on cars ) much name and understand some problem so drive very slow drive "gymkhana" and jump out of disaster and think Im in 9th position and I tried to catch Valter until lap 15 or 16 but after no more grip on wheels so decide pit in lap 20 ( my strategy was lap 22/23) when jump out Valter was at 16sec.of advantage hard catch him, 2 laps after jump out from pit Tom were born 20 laps of nice battle ( lost Valter think incident ) I dont remember in which laps/turn Tom lost car and I pass him now Im with about 6sec. advantage and in 8th but the Blue Flag is always around the corner so go slow for let pass Vincenzo and after have tried follow Vincenzo lost car in T3 behind me Sean that immediately pass me again go slow for let pass Peter behind me now there is Tom that in T13 (think) passed me with a nice overtaking , I let a bit open the door for avoid incident but the overtaking was good.Finish race in 10th.

Congratulations at Podium and all finishers

 

[Nicolai Nicholson]

Nico has already stated him opinion and if there is consensus on that then I am happy to back down and take full responsibility.

Although it got a bit lost in all my posts I started out by saying that this was my opinion after a first look. I have not settled on any conclusions for myself, but my first impressions I have posted here to get the focus of the discussion where it needs to be

Nicolai i am trying to send you a pm bud but its full

Done!

 

[Wayne Reed]

Sent

 

[Jim Hawley]

Hey

I must apologise to Alex for not avoiding him after he got turned around, I saw an opportunity to get by on the left, I didn't expect Alex's car to roll back across the track like that, I saw a car in the wall on the right, I went left, all be it at full speed

I'm pretty sure if I have gone left and braked hard the outcome would have been the same

Sorry m8

Jim

 

[David McCradic]

I think there were a few people who slowed down and made it through fine, but then others that slowed down unfortunately just got plowed into by others going too fast. I think more caution would have greatly lessened the impact of the initial incident.

 

[David McCradic]

Congratulations to the champ, Reik. It looks like he will take a commanding lead into the second half of the season with his third win in five races.

Quali: P8, 1:22.891, satisfied with that after being unlucky finding space to put in a great lap.

Race plan: I did a lot of practice, and Medium tires were not very consistent for me especially at the end of stints. in previous races sometimes I start on a too hard compound and struggle early and make mistakes because of tire temperature, so my plan was to start on grippy Soft tires with 100l fuel, pit at about lap 18 once they had worn down to about the grip level of Hard tires, add 60l fuel, change to Hard tires for a smooth transition in grip, and then I would see how many I could pass when they pit after me.

Race: P4. I got some bad wheel spin off the line, but avoided any turn one incidents. I was almost the first victim of the Fabian/Alex incident, but I only barely clipped Alex's spinning car and escaped with no perceivable damage. I was P5 until Christian spun on the kerbs on lap 3. I was just chasing 1-2 seconds behind Fabian at this point, I think I was about half a second per lap faster but he seemed to make no mistakes, and I was making little mistakes every few laps to lose a half second or second. On lap 12 I drove off the track and lost 3 seconds so Fabian probably felt more comfortable after that. On lap 16 I hit Gaetano's stationary car, this is like deja vu of Watkin's Glen for me. It's terrible to practice so much and then have someone else's accidents become your accidents, but it was just unavoidable. This contact removed my front wing and caused my steering wheel to stick to the right and wobble back and forth a lot, so I limped back to the pits. Fortunately this was very close to my pit strategy anyway, but I lost about 17 seconds on the way back to the pit, and another 16 seconds or so fixing damage in the pits, so by the time I exited the pits I was in 11th place and being lapped by Fabian who I was just racing a minute earlier! My pace was good with over 90l fuel and hard tires, so I just pressed on as much as I could. On laps 20-24 I gained back 5 positions to those pitting, and on lap 26 I made it back to P4, but maybe 25 seconds behind Fabian now. I kept pushing hard though because I only had a 12 second gap behind me and a tire disadvantage. A mistake on lap 30 cut my advantage to 9 seconds, and then another on lap 32 cuts my advantage down to 7 seconds. I'm also holding up Jim who is 2 laps behind me, but I saw the driver ahead of him was +1 lap to him so I decide not to sacrifice my time to let him pass. On lap 37 Reik catches up to lap me at the same time I am lapping Tom Watts, so I brake late on accident and drive outside the track so as to not cause problems for Reik and also try not to lose time myself. On lap 39, now I am one lap down, so I have 2 laps to go and I notice my advantage over Vincenzo is 9 seconds so I coast home.

 

[Joe Isaac]

[FONT=&quot]Hi Guys[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I knew Melbourne is going to be a tough race; my set up was high down force 8/43, very good grip. I decided to start from last 24 p, took off very careful, T1 was okay, before T2, OH MY GOD, I could see cars flying like birds, I couldn’t believe that I managed to get thru without any damage, I jumped to 13p,so already 13 cars in a big collision. Walter took off in the front of me, I was right behind him, at about before the bridge, BANG I hit Nicolais Rouge, but where did he come from? He wasn’t on the track. After looking at replay, you could see that his car like froze on the track, well nothing I or he could do about it, I guess its bad luck. [/FONT]

 

[Sean Greenlaw]

Grats podium.

I had a slight bad start at t1 running slightly wide and slow on exit and then run along lost alot of places , i see crash and then caught in two minds which way to go and also collect alex sos dude was abit crazy start.
I was then near last place and had suspension damage but after a couple laps it felt good so didnt bother pitting to fix. i managed to get all way upto to 3rd all be it 4th place just comes out pits as i pass so realisticly 4th 5th possible ,pit i missed box by miles box changed with restart of server lol forgot to check anyway reversed lost alot of time ,back out 9th upto 7th and catching 6th bang 1st error lose fwing ,so pits fixs both wing and suspension out 11th and back up to 8th.
Overall enjoyable race alot of good battles coming back through field, cyas sepang !

 

[Reik Major]

First of all: I have absolutely no problem to repeat this event from zero. This would only raise my motivation to repeat my result.

...As an example, perhaps we decide that a restart can only be called during the first two laps, and it has to be called by at least 3 different drivers.

Sounds like a good solution, because everyone could map it as a standard text on a quick chat button. But I'm afraid we'd see a restart at least every second race. :frown: Sorry for sounding so negative on that, but I just read the whole thread for the first time (including the incidents thread) and it makes me feel a littel sad. :frown:

Considering my actual mood and the more important things that need to be solved, my race report looks as the following:

Very good start from pole - saw crash in mirrors, which made me feel sorry for the involved drivers :frown: - got chased hard by Christian Ramlow until he made mistake - the rest of the race I was under consistant pressure by Tim with a slightly growing gap - brought it home in 1st without mistakes and a gap of ~25 seconds to Tim in second - Congrats to Tim, Fabian and every point winner.....................


About ingame chat and the restart request:

To be able to completly focus in qualy and race, I disabled ingame chat in my *.plr file! So it's invisible for me inside the car. During the race I completely trust into the Race Director's decisions. I hope this answers the question, why I didn't slow down and agreed for a restart. I also didn't take notice of the huge pile up behind me. So I just drove my race...

My personal thoughts about restart: (a quotation from my post in the incidents report)

"Even though I absolutely understand your wish [vote for a restart ingame], I don't see a realistic way to realise that. Where to draw the boarder? When is a restart ok and when not? And I see the danger, that a restart option could lead us backwards to more risky driving.

The only solution can be to keep safety on the highest possible level. I think we are on a very good way but single mistakes can ever happen and if we are very unlucky it results in a chain reaction.

BUT: Chain reactions are most likely to happen in the first lap because of driving in a bunch of cars. So the risk anyone dares to take, should be as low as possible. Like Vincenzo said: Better loose a position instead of risking a contact. The race is driven afterwards.

That's why I highly recommend everyone to do some "first lap tests" before every event. It's not a big thing to load the race setup, go to the start with some AI cars and do the first lap. I repeat this procedure 5-10 times. Then I have an idea how the car handles with cold tires and brakes and as a side effect I refreshed my sences for accelerating from the line....."

 

[Nicolai Nicholson]

So many wise words from Reik it is going to take me some time to respond to it all

To be able to completly focus in qualy and race, I disabled ingame chat in my *.plr file! So it's invisible for me inside the car. During the race I completely trust into the Race Director's decisions. I hope this answers the question, why I didn't slow down and agreed for a restart. I also didn't take notice of the huge pile up behind me. So I just drove my race...

I think this is the right thing to do I see nothing wrong with everybody disabling the in-game chat and leaving the call to the race director. I think this is the cleanest way to do it.

(...)But I'm afraid we'd see a restart at least every second race. (...) And I see the danger, that a restart option could lead us backwards to more risky driving.

This is true, the danger of using restarts is that it might lead to more unsafe driving as one have a "safety net". However, I do not believe it needs to be like this.

Mistakes made that leads to incidents that again leads to restarts will not be forgotten just because we did a restart. Considering the consequences of such an incident I would expect more than ever a thurough analysis of it, where it is obvious that those involved understand exactly what went wrong etc etc.

I am not saying that a restart automatically leads to heads rolling, but it will if those guilty does not do a good/perfect job post race.

I would not like to see a restart more than maybe once a season, preferably never. But it makes sense to do it if half the group gets their race destroyd after less than one minute. The main objective for Presto GP is for people to enjoy themselves

 

[Peter Marshall]

I would agree Nico. I think everyone should consider remaining in the garage for a lap or two before leaving the game in case a Red Flag is thrown. You [Nico] will then see the name tags in the pit lane as you pass and if you think there are too many retirements then the “best” decision becomes apparent.

Most of our races are not quite so controversial. Melbourne is a very “unlucky” track for Division 1. I remember being the "cue ball" in the same place and way as Alex back in the F3000 days [season 2]. And then there was Season 4 with the 11 car pile up. Made "sense" to me that Season 6 would also be memorable. [a poor joke - soz]

I'd rather move on to Sepang, but of course I will turn up next week for a rerun. I'm not precious about championship points and it makes me sad knowing that Nico retired from the race due to misgivings about what to do....

 

[Reik Major]

Maybe we should just have a poll about how to handle the melbourne event?

For example:
- leave it as it is (with points allocated)
- rerun
- cancel event and move on to sepang (without points allocated)

 

[David Turnbull]

i vote rerun the whole event again next week.


p.s Tim, theres no way im taking any sort of responsibility for that crash, you punted me off from a distance back and hit me that hard i fly into Christian then out into the middle of the gravel, i think you should watch the replay back again if you think i was in any way to blame for your failure to anticipate the situation.

oh and im failing to see where you thought to yourself that it mustve been someone else who hit me?,there was only you, christian was away to my right hand side at the inside of the corner, reik was in front, you behind and alex even further behind and to the right, but yet you thought it was someone else who hit me? thats a cop out because you didnt want to wait, you wanted your own race to carry on without having to ruin it like you did mine in the first corner.

and your right, your excuses have done nothing to calm me down, i was on the verge of forgetting it and just moving on, but when your trying to offload some blame to me then no chance, you were entirely to blame for this accident and no way am i taking any sort of responsibility.

 

[David McCradic]

I'd vote against running the event again.

When I watch my replay of the incident, there were a few drivers who made this much worse by not being cautious,which really means this incident should have never unfolded the way it did. There were 2 cars that were unable to run after this incident, which were Alex who lost a wheel, and Anthony who was thrown off the track. Therefore 22 of 24 cars were actually able to complete the race.

I've been disadvantaged due to circumstances mostly out of my control in races such as Watkins Glen and again at Melbourne, and I just kept racing. I just have to accept that I'm in a different race than before.

Also I wouldn't like to see this get to a point where someone has an incident and they can't get a restart on their own, but if they cause a bigger incident they could earn a restart, and I think it leads to situations where recklessness is more valuable than caution.

 

[Wayne Reed]

You could always run last nights race as a none point race and have 1 more race at the end of the season. They used to have some none points race's in f1 many moons ago

 

[Wayne Reed]

Guys you two should really have this fight in pm. Its not nice to see in the forums. But please look at it as one race i bet most of the time you two or good drivers with each other don't let one race mess that up.

 

[Tom Watts]

Quali: 14th was pretty happy no were near my best time about half a second down but still no to bad good postion
Race: 9th good race for me just kept out of trouble few mistakes but tried to keep out of faster peoples way. some how got through the first lap incidents and just kept it going, not doing hugely fast laps but enough

 

[David Turnbull]

Guys you two should really have this fight in pm. Its not nice to see in the forums. But please look at it as one race i bet most of the time you two or good drivers with each other don't let one race mess that up.

what fight?

all of us in presto have been together for a few years, we know each others mannerisms, we can have debate in this forum without it leading to a fight, we usually discuss what each of us feel then leave it upto the race director, we are all big enough to have debate without name calling or going in the huff.

(saying all that i still really do need to stop posting first before ive thought things through, my mistake there)