T1 L1 Rule

The other thread is about the dirver-marshal relationship.  Here is a (less important) thread to discuss the sporting rule at the center of this incident.

The rule:

Overtaking at the start of the race is restricted to exclude passing after the braking point of the first turn. What this means is that you can take advantage of a good start out of your grid position, and can overtake cars prior to the braking point for T1, but you must not try to out-brake or dive inside cars into T1. Rather, as you reach the braking point for T1 you must simply occupy whatever position you find yourself in, for the duration of T1. Note that this only applies at the start of the race. After the first execution of T1 this restriction does not apply (for T1 or any other turn). This rule exists to help eliminate accidents at the start of the race that are typically due to over-aggressive behavior on cold tires and full tanks, with drivers playing chicken with one another in the middle of a packed field of cars. It also helps prevent drivers (inexperienced or otherwise) from making kamikaze dives into T1, thinking they can gain multiple positions in the blink of an eye. This kind of behavior invariably ends in tears and with people feeling victimized and frequently having their race ruined before it even gets started. Rather than trying to remedy the situation with multiple race restarts, we've just disallowed the behavior that tends to cause it.

Clarification of fault: note that you can be in violation of this rule even if there is no contact or incident resulting from your behavior. A marshal may deem that your actions created unnecessary risk to the other drivers, even if you managed to 'get away with it' and not actually harm anyone else. In other words, this is not a 'no harm no foul' rule. The purpose of the rule is to condition drivers to be less competitively aggressive in T1 at the start of a race. If drivers are only ever penalized when something bad actually happens, it creates an environment where they will push the limit and gamble that they can pull off aggressive and risky moves, and that is precisely the attitude which ruins races at the start.

I think the main problem is not allowing space i treat it like my car is full of fuel. When im following sum1 as soon as i can tell they are braking i brake. even if i cant tell I normaly brake when im following someone a little bit before the start of the curb.

I think the important central point is this: as you reach the braking point for T1 you must simply occupy whatever position you find yourself in.

From this there are several points to make clear.  First the braking zone itself off the start will tend to be earlier than normal.  Also, note that the rule itself says "as you reach".  So this is not something a teenager can push the limit at on curfew, as Dennis said elsewhere.  This clause makes the spirit of the rule trump any technicality.  It is almost always pretty clear once everyone is rolling free of the grid where you should be based on your getaway.  That is where you belong based on the spirit of the rule.  Following close to exploit something else is the same as pushing the curfew.

If anything, I'm tempted to propose picking something other than the braking zone.  On a given track we could pick a marker well before the braking zone as the T1 L1 positional demarkation line.

This is a good rule, but where I think it may be going wrong is that at most races they are 2-3 a breast leading into T1.  And this may add to the confusion as to your actual position,  so would it not be more appropriate to order single file and absolutely no overtaking before T1?

My rule comment copied from the other thread:

RE: Scott's comment -- I'm sorry you felt that the ruling was inconsistent with the rule itself. But I disagree with your characterization of it as 'overzealous'. And I never claimed that anything you did was premeditated. Rather - that it didn't matter if it was or wasn't. It didn't need to be premeditated to be an infraction. It didn't require that you be purposefully trying to pass anyone.

The bottom line is that a driver is responsible for their car. In this sense it is very similar to the Loop-at-start rule. Noone ever loops their car at the start on purpose. But in order to provide an incentive to drivers to not flirt with it, to stay clear of the knife's edge at which it can happen, we assign a penalty when it does.

Similarly, to dissuade drivers from flirting with T1 incidents, we have a rule that penalizes behavior that is inadequately conservative, regardless of the eventual consequence. I've already added a clarification to that rule on the rules page, and will continue to refine it (and others) over the off-season, incorporating another season's worth of experience into our policies.

And note that your decision to swerve to the shoulder in order to avoid clobbering other cars was indeed taken into account. A 0s stop-n-go is basicaly the lowest penalty I can give. As the rules state in several places, the penalty will be proportional to the severity of the infraction. I don't do it often, but lengthy stop-n-go penalties would (and I believe have) been handed out due to more egregious T1 infractions.

But the fact that you had to take such drastic action meant that there was risk, and that those in front of you were in jeopardy due to the margin of error (or lack thereof) that you had elected to use for the start.

Consider: other cars in front of you (a) were also using cockpit cam, (b) were not themselves part of any incident, and most importantly (c) were capable of reacting to the traffic in front of them without having to careen off track in order to avoid causing a multi-car accident.