@Mike_Clark Yeah, Food for thought. I doubt a year ago I woulda been likely to make a similar post. I just woulda backed out, no question. While I’ve always wanted to do as well as possible in my races, I am a lot more risk taking now that I am protected by bumpers.
I think a mental reset is in order, to a certain extent.
There is a balance. If you are truely inside someone and they do not give you room then you have to decide. Some drivers will only start giving you room once you make it clear you are not going to back out if they come over.
Dom,
I just thought about something. You have been playing a lot of video game kart racing lately. Maybe that was a factor.
True but I dont think thats it. The game I play is solitary. It’s TT. No opponents.
While I think everyone agrees it was your mistake (totally understandable), the answer to your question is no. You are definitely not a jerk. You probably already know this all but I’m just gonna day it anyways but backmarkers are generally unpredictable because they are new, so assuming they knew where you were is where I think you went wrong. You may not always have to slow down for backmarkers but when they are new, you kind of have to. In the end, it’s racing, stuff happens, one mistake doesn’t make you a jerk. I get the feeling of catching a backmarker in the wrong place though, you really really don’t want to slow down. I did the same thing but I was the one who ended up backwards.
That is probably the feedback I should have gotten, karmically. Mischevious Loki takes the day here, and the wrong lessons are learned, potentially.
I wonder about this in context of rentals that are caged. There is a considerable amount of passing that would be a solid non-starter without cages.
Three of us went into t1 rubbing cages all the way, for example.
With cages it’s just a good natured brawl, (assuming you try not to murder the other guy). It’s not dramatic or anything. But we do lean against each other a bit and that’s something I wouldn’t do with exposed wheels.
Also, to be clear, I am not generally gonna intentionally stress out a new driver. I very much try to give them room and only battle with the folks that are more experienced. I just went mental here.
I would prefer normal rules but that doesn’t seem to happen on it’s own.
I’d hardly call it mental. Catching backmarkers in a race you don’t want to lose is simply frustrating and you don’t have much time to make a decision
The guy in front was just too slow and it seems that (s)he made a mistake just before you encountered him/her.
From my perspective, this was just a racing incident. I probably would do the same as you.
You had little touch before (s)he eventually spinned out. By the time of that, (s)he should have known someone significantly faster was behind. It would be prudent for him/her to let you pass instead and avoid any incident.
@Lei_Zhao
Hi, Lei,
Thank you. I do agree with you that in a race, you might have that expectation.
This is rental stuff, though. We are gonna get some first or second timers now and again.
Now that I have had time to think about it, what I did that was wrong, was to put an inexperienced guy in a bad position. As the more skilled guy, it’s on me to get around the fella safely. I could have easily backed out a bit and taken my chances with the dude behind.
Instead, I was impatient and committed to a line that was doomed to intersect. I guess, if it doesn’t feel right, its not. Certainly not against weekend warriors of extremely varied ability, competing for health & wellness reasons.
I agree. Good message to share and remember. When I was a race director I would remind the experience d guys that if they ran in to the kart with X on back (new guy) it was their fault. They were the only ones with the experience to avoid the accident. It may not be an absolute truth, but a good place to work from. Thanks for sharing your miss-step for everyone’s advantage.
That bring’s up one of my pet peeves. Rookies that don’t want to start in the back, run an orange plate or whatever the rookie rule is at the track you are at. That is in sprints not rentals though.
Another is race officials allowing too many things go and not enforce rules. Sounds like you were on top of things and proactive. In rentals sometimes you have to have a sock party if the officials don’t handle it.
I always take some of the blame. As in “yeah I underestimated the total lack of respect that guy really has for other drivers” or something to that effect. Or I’m the fool that thought we wouldn’t have problems today. Even well I was stupid enough to race rentals again.
@Mike_Clark I think getting frustrated with rental racing just leads to unhappiness. I think I sorta made peace with the lack of structure and general knowledge about what’s kosher and what isn’t. So, perhaps I embraced it too much, given this latest incident.
But, it’s 75 bucks. There’s no financial stress associated with the racing. More or less impossible to wreck a rental kart, or so it would seem.
There’s an opportunity to have interesting (not always good) racing cheaply in rentals. And, it’s it’s own thing. Hustling rentals is a skill unto itself, I am discovering, and it’s not just about how the karts handle. It’s also about managing the kart you are given in context of the unequal field.
It’s actually kind of interesting. As a consequence, I don’t stress about position all that much. I just try to sqeeze what I can out of the vehicle I got.
I think most of us agree that it was a ‘jerkish’ move. But the fact that you owe up to your mistake, said sorry and are willing to change your approach makes you not a jerk as a person in my book.
Ironically, that was something similar to what I did in a regular session, if you remember, when I hit the tyres on the back straight. So yeah, heat of the moment messes you up, even if you know you (maybe) should not do something. Considering this is a race, I would probably do the same. Watching the footage gives more info after the race, so it kinda shows you who is wrong, and it is you, definitely. It happens but now you will remember well what not to do. Nothing wrong in making a mistake at the end!
Totally OPs fault you should have gone outside for the pass imo you could have passed him because of the momentum. That being said on rentals (indoors) i move anyone out of my way that is slower. I race in the”pro” class so everyone has pretty much the same pace and usually if you bump someone 1 or 2 times they let you pass as courtesy (since we are racing for lap times and not position) In a club race outdoors i think any contact is bad excluding bump drafting. I always avoid contact unless its unavoidable
Yah. A learning moment. In this case, a more experienced guy would have been ok. I misjudged his reaction and awareness of my position. I really wasn’t expecting him to swing right there.
@Dennis_Smith generally I find that love taps delivered squarely at the appropriate moment allows the other guy the opportunity to a) prepare for battle or b), cede. This was not that, however. 
The link above goes to a clip of a karting wreck I had around a year ago. This was during the Ignite @ COTA race weekend and I wanted to get your opinions on it.
My initial reaction was that it was a racing incident but looking back now I can see the view that I should have been looking ahead more and should have made actions to avoid the eventual outcome but that’s just me. What do y’all think?
It looks like a racing incident to me. It suprises me the other kart went around. The contact was minor and after corner apex.
While your pit maneuver was exactly like mine, only faster, there’s one big difference… It wasn’t intentional. That looks like you just had unexpectedly more speed than the other fella, and you did not expect to close like that mid-turn.
As the other guy I’d be totally justified pontificating to you in the pits about safety and you’d be justified telling me “don’t lift, you moron.”
This is an interesting one. As I will start actually racing this year in rentals (been doing TT in my first year), I never had similar experience IRL. However, I have noticed this exact situation in sim many times and I was involved in many crashes like this. Situation is clear from your side, you just used your normal racing line and did what you usually do, seems like. Guy in front made a small mistake and there it goes. Looking only at this - his fault. There was no way (at given moment) for you to react and slow down in time on a place like that. You could have “theoretically” smashed the brakes but I don´t see any logic in that plus there was very little time to respond. At the end, it was kinda your fault as well, because you are the one who hit him from behind, but as I said, you couldn´t have avoided the incident. All in all, seems like a racing incident where the guy in front initiated the problem.