**Cancelled** New racing rules - Minimum 18yo required

[jeromef1]

Hi everyone,

Effective right now, a new rule was added under our official racing rules.

View attachment 1705

We would like to start by indicating that all drivers under 18 we have identified have been refunded and removed from league on iRacing. The only drivers we did not refund was because they were parked because of a steward decision.

We have received plenty of message on the forum, PM & Discord PM regarding that last minute change. We understand it look harsh and a last minute call, but we have facts and numbers to justified that. Let me share that with you!

FACTS & NUMBERS
This season, for all our 5 road series (MX-5, both GT3, Ferrari fixed and F3), we received a total of 20 protests in 17 races.

8 of these protests were against drivers of 18 years old and less, which means 40% of our protests record.

For 2021/S4, we have a total of 210 drivers across these 5 road series. 7 drivers were identified as 18 years old and less (4%).

Which means that 4% of registered drivers (under 18) are responsible of 40% of the protests we received.

CONCLUSION
Based on the number we shared above, we needed to do something! I remind everyone that all PRL staff is working on a volunteer basis and we all have family to take care of! We are using our free time to work behind the scene to provide 7 series to PRL! After not even 4 weeks, we received too much protest then we would expected which raise a concern for us. The management team met together and we strongly thing that applying such rule will calm things from a stewarding standpoint.

Why are we not only removing drivers under 18 with stewarding history? Again, by the look of the numbers shared above, we can clearly see that there is a trend where drivers under 18 are responsible of too many incidents. These incidents have DNF'd a lot of cars. Now, for the drivers involved in these incidents, it's too late! These damage/DNFs can't be fixed from a drivers/teams championship perspective. By applying such rule, we want to prevent as much as we can these situation.

I would like to remind to everyone PRL's mission:

Precision Racing League is one of the largest online racing communities in the world providing championships on PC/iRacing. Our goal is to provide fun, fair, and competitive racing for everyone. Inside and outside of racing our values are based on respect, forgiveness, communication, friendship, and patience. We live by the donations of our amazing members and sponsors; built from the foundation of our values to provide new ideas, new championships, new web site content, new league services, and practice sessions for all championships. Our team of managers and organizers work countless hours 7 days a week on a voluntary basis to make the championships our community members deserve.

Again, based on numbers shared above, we think we failed to provide fun, fair and competitive racing in 2021/S4, thus the decision we took to remove drivers under 18 years old.

Feel free to comment in a diplomatic way! If you want more explanation or details, you are free to PM me, or even reach out to our staff using the contact us form.

We wish you all a good end of 2021/S4!! There is still lot of racing ahead of us!!

 

[Modoff]

Pretty disappointing knee jerk reaction here TBH. It’s just strange that you have a pro team and our hosting and advertising a “pro” league but don’t want to deal with the inevitable consequences of that competition level. Charge more for the entry and get a paid live official. There were no malicious intentional crashes in the pro series that I’ve seen. Lots of guys racing hard because you have to. Nothing I saw that would warrant a single driver ban, let alone a whole demographic.

 

[jeromef1]

Pretty disappointing knee jerk reaction here TBH. Sorry we brought the level of the league up above where you wanted it I guess. It’s just strange that you have a pro team and our hosting and advertising a “pro” league but don’t want to deal with the inevitable consequences of that competition level. Charge more for the entry and get a paid live official. There were no malicious intentional crashes in the pro series that I’ve seen. Lots of guys racing hard because you have to. Nothing I saw that would warrant a single driver ban, let alone a whole demographic.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and feedback. I would like to add that this decision was not only based on "Pro" level racing at PRL. In fact, we only have 1 Pro series . I just want to make it clear that the decision was not based only because of recent event in GT3 Pro series

Yes we can charge more and have paid steward live. However, it's not that easy to accomplish and we did try live stewarding back in time, and it was not a great success. Most of time, there was more after-race work because we had to debate with the drivers the decision. That's why we rely on members to submit protest and/or management review on huge crash.

We are not closing the door for live stewarding, we have a project for that

 

[barryf1fan]

While I find it a bit harsh as well, it really doesn't sound (read) like a knee jerk reaction. Unfortunately, numbers don't lie, and with that kind of level of occurrence it sounds like a good decision for the folks that "donate" their time to this league and the series'. I appreciate the level of stewarding that goes on here at PRL, as I'm sure all are, and reviewing incidents takes time. I personally feel that it is a fair decision - for the stewards - to eliminate almost half of this commitment.

I'm sure the decision wasn't taken lightly, nor was it an easy call to make.

 

[Modoff]

Yea I know it’s larger than just the GT3 Pro series but I only commented on that because that’s my experience. I got taken out of a race by a guy from California at Motegi. Maybe we should look into banning all drivers from California too. Forget penalizing individual drivers for their personal actions, let’s penalize everyone who fits into the same demographic as them

 

[barryf1fan]

Yea I know it’s larger than just the GT3 Pro series but I only commented on that because that’s my experience. I got taken out of a race by a guy from California at Motegi. Maybe we should look into banning all drivers from California too. Forget penalizing individual drivers for their personal actions, let’s penalize everyone who fits into the same demographic as them

I hear'ya, and consequently agree with you - it is harsh to ban a "demographic", but if you read the numbers again it makes sense for the stewards. Not necessarily the drivers of said demo group...

I got taken out last night as well, I have no clue if it was someone 18 or younger (but got no apology when it happened, or a note on iRacing or here)... but that's really the point JB is trying to make, not individual occurrences, they looked at all protests to this point and found far too many to be involving drivers 18 or younger.

It's definitely one of those "rock and a hard place" situations. Having run a MotoGP series ages ago I understand it's hard to find people to commit to stewarding - it takes a lot of time (especially if there are multiple protests coming in) to get them completed in a timely manner so as not be detrimental to the said series.

 

[Modoff]

I hear'ya, and consequently agree with you - it is harsh to ban a "demographic", but if you read the numbers again it makes sense for the stewards. Not necessarily the drivers of said demo group...

I got taken out last night as well, I have no clue if it was someone 18 or younger (but got no apology when it happened, or a note on iRacing or here)... but that's really the point JB is trying to make, not individual occurrences, they looked at all protests to this point and found far too many to be involving drivers 18 or younger.

It's definitely one of those "rock and a hard place" situations. Having run a MotoGP series ages ago I understand it's hard to find people to commit to stewarding - it takes a lot of time (especially if there are multiple protests coming in) to get them completed in a timely manner so as not be detrimental to the said serious

 

[Modoff]

Last thing, I have been defending the league choice not to have a live official, saying that’s outside their time commitment and I understand that, we all have lives. I don’t blame them for having a limit to how much time and effort they can put into the series. I’m disappointed that after more than 10-15 seasons of racing with PRL I’ll have to find a new league to compete in. I understand league admins are hard to come by, but when they are competitors and teammates of competitors it feels like blame is being put where I don’t think it belongs. I worked as an analyst for years and you can always find numbers that support your argument when you go looking for them.

 

[Mehmet_Kara]

Really ironic to see this, in the Ferrari fixed champ multiple pile ups and collisiobs have been caused by someone who isn't me, I have had 2 races ruined by others much older so it's quite funny to see this. Thanks for wasting my time and good day

 

[ShadowNinjaPug]

As a driver, I was surprised and humbled to learn that I was chasing down an eleven year old the other week. I was equally excited to learn that there were a number of young drivers competing. How encouraging to know that this sport appeals not only to a diverse group of individuals across the globe but also in age. I appreciate PRL sharing the statistics and I would agree that action should be taken. I disagree with putting an age cap on this league. I am not offering any solutions but surely a alternative route could have been taken? Young blood is good for this sport and racing whipper/snappers keeps me feeling young at heart.

Ray - 50 Years Old (Don't cap me for being a boomer, as my kids would say)
NinjaTrader - League Sponsor

 

[Mehmet_Kara]

As a driver, I was surprised and humbled to learn that I was chasing down an eleven year old the other week. I was equally excited to learn that there were a number of young drivers competing. How encouraging to know that this sport appeals not only to a diverse group of individuals across the globe but also in age. I appreciate PRL sharing the statistics and I would agree that action should be taken. I disagree with putting an age cap on this league. I am not offering any solutions but surely a alternative route could have been taken? Young blood is good for this sport and racing whipper/snappers keeps me feeling young at heart.

Ray - 50 Years Old (Don't cap me for being a boomer, as my kids would say)
NinjaTrader - League Sponsor

Exactly, wh

As a driver, I was surprised and humbled to learn that I was chasing down an eleven year old the other week. I was equally excited to learn that there were a number of young drivers competing. How encouraging to know that this sport appeals not only to a diverse group of individuals across the globe but also in age. I appreciate PRL sharing the statistics and I would agree that action should be taken. I disagree with putting an age cap on this league. I am not offering any solutions but surely a alternative route could have been taken? Young blood is good for this sport and racing whipper/snappers keeps me feeling young at heart.

Ray - 50 Years Old (Don't cap me for being a boomer, as my kids would say)
NinjaTrader - League Sponsor

Exactly, why punish drivers as a blanket

 

[CalquiN]

I am really disappointed with this decision, kids should be educated and not expelled.

 

[Darklol]

Thanks everyone for your feedback. We are taking all your feedbacks and comments very seriously. We have always listened to our members and from what we see here, we will try our best as always to find the right solution for both the league and our members.

Please understand we all try our best to please everyone as much as we can by finding the best solutions for both the league and community.

We will analyze every other possibility and see if we can find a compromise between age restrictions, more severe stewarding penalties for drivers with history etc...

Thank you all for the civilized discussion.

 

[fergy]

ban an entire demographic over 1.1 protests per race? nah

 

[Rcnick]

Looks like the best league just did the math… numbers don’t lie.
Great leadership team. I personally cant wait to rejoin this amazing series now that the appropriate changes have been made.

Thank you for preserving one of the few places us hard working adults have, to spend our LIMITED free time...enjoying what we love. Appreciate what you do, genuinely.

“If I put a cape on you, would that make you SUPER mad?…”

 

[Paulowsky21]

Great leadership team. I personally cant wait to rejoin this amazing series now that the appropriate changes have been made.

Thank you for preserving one of the few places us hard working adults have, to spend our LIMITED free time...enjoying what we love. Appreciate what you do, genuinely.

 

[MalcolmFoster]

Well done. A tough but responsible decision. Appreciate all you do

 

[Darklol]

Again thank you all for the replies and feedbacks as they are all valuable for us.

We have been reviewing all the possibilities and we believe we can come up with a better solution for the league and our members.

We will post an update shortly please stay tuned.

Thank you for understanding.

 

[Jason E Larsen]

Of the 7 racers identified as under age and removed, how many of them received protest against them?

I think we should include them, find a way to handle the successive protests.

 

[Darklol]

Of the 7 racers identified as under age and removed, how many of them received protest against them?

Not everyone and from all the feedback we received we understood that we can't penalize everyone based on a situation or single event and will address the situation shortly with all the details.