Hey everyone. No pre-race questions this week, instead I want to give an address to the league and a bit of a mission statement moving forward for the remainder of the season. It's been a rough season to start, and last week we had a bit of a boiling point. Let's look at the season as a whole real quick:
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[li]Race #1 was Talladega, we all know Talladega is a bit of a crapshoot and I still feel like there was a couple cautions that happened that really should not have happened, but overall it was the first race with a new bunch of guys so be that as it may. [/li]
[li]Race #2 Iowa, this came with the little asterisks as well because the Chevy guys pretty much had no practice due to that set up glitch. A bunch of cuations, but hey that was what it was. [/li]
[li]Race #3 was Eldora, I think that's enough said. [/li]
[li]Then we got the last week at Michigan. Easy set-up, easy track, wide open track, and what we had honestly was an embarrassment. **Though I will say this right now, what we had after the race I found will more embarrassing than during the race and I will address that as well.** [/li]
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While I can see how the first few races unfolded the way they did, we have to improve our racecraft as a league. When we started this caution system a couple seasons ago, it is about a 50/50 split between cautions that were caused by loss of control, and cautions caused by contact. It's pretty heavy now in the favor of cautions caused by contact. We have to be more respectful, we have to give and take more, we will only get better if we all make a strive to do the little things that will make us better. With that being said, there's been a lot of thought into our caution system and what we need to do because what we have in place it's not limiting cautions. Now we actually do have our first race suspension, but by no means is this going to fix our of our problems by having one less guy for 1 week. We have over half of the roster who's accumulated at least 0.5 points. That number is ridiculous.
So what we've done so far is kind of given 0.5 points for a bit of a racing deal between 2 drivers, a 1.0 to somebody being clearly at fault, and then giving an extra 0.5 point for something that was really rough and should have been avoided. Also giving out 0.5 points for protested contact and for people not locking up brakes and other things of that nature. What it comes down to is if we have to give more 1.5 point caution penalties, that's what we'll do. Instead of the 50/50s, if we have to start giving full points for people who are hanging on the other people's quaterpanels, that's what we'll do. Full points for peeps not properly locking brakes, or just plowing into a wreck Days of Thunder style because you tried to be a hero and not check up.
I don't want to do this. I don't take pride in giving Stewarding penalties. I take pride in my race craft, my race knowledge, and wanting to do the best things for this league and its future. This is become babysitting, and that's sad because we're all paying adults here. Along those lines as well, there is absolutely no wiggle room for anybody in my leagues to lose their cool the way that we have seen here lately. That goes for chat inside of iRacing, actions in the track at any point, and that goes for actions on the forums. If I feel embarrassed by what somebody does on my forms or inside iRacing (Example, no acting like a tough guy under caution or "sending a message using your fender" crap), I will park you for the rest of the season. It's as simple as that and it is my call to make if I feel it is for the best of the league. So that's the one and only warning that the entire league is getting. We also have been having too much chatter while under caution and we can't get important information out. If I call for comms to clear and people continue to talk, I'll have to start dish out penalties as well for that too. we have 6 races left in this season and a bunch of tracks that should have some very competitive races for the broadcast. Let's shine. Let's show why we deserve to be on IESN like our road brethren on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
