So last weekend i was racing at Norway and I had a grand old time. But i ran into an issue on driving standards and yellow flags. I’m curious how you all go about avoiding pentolites for passing under the yellow and if your philosophy changes depending on the level of event your at. in my instance I gave the spot back, but how do you lose the least amount of time or is it better to suffer the later consequences potentially?
In my opinion there are several issues with drivers passing under yellow.
First, its not fair as the driver in front is not expecting it.
Second, its a safety issue, the yellow are there for a reason, Marshalls might be in the proces of removing a kart, a driver might be out of the kart and in a unsafe place, and drivers not follow it should get a penalty even if they give back the position.
We have a series here where its a blackflag for the heat….. not that i fully agree on that in cases.
Just give it back. Sometimes you don’t notice until after.
I think the tough part of this situation is where the flagman was standing.
In WKA roadracing, yellows are a “suggestion.”
At least that’s how they’re interpreted and enforced (not.)
You WILL lose if you obey the standard convention. As wrong as this is, it’s true operationally.
For sprint, I guess it’s a case of whatever the marshalls can see when they’re distracted by the main incident.
There’s what’s ideal…and what happens.
For me, I’ve given spots back under GREEN that I felt I took unfairly. Race your own conscience.
This is a bad thing that is going on in karting right now. I would say most sprint tracks are in the same category. We have a saying amongst friends at our local track (that is in poor taste): “Left hand up, Right foot down”.
The fact that we joke about that tells you how people view cautions. If you dont go fast through a caution, you will lose the race. How do we fix this? Penalties for speed too fast in a caution corner? What track has enough marshalls to enforce that?
How about the race director saying “no passing under yellow. If you do it accidentally, give the spot back asap”.
I’m used to longer races so there’s more time to notice these things and act.
The new paving looks good. I moved out east (Pennsylvania) before they did that, but eventually I’d love to get out there and pound some laps!
You did the right thing giving it back (whether its even required is under debate, but it should be required IMO), but I would try to give it back in a way where you’re losing a minimal amount of time. In this case you went off the racing line and slowed down a LOT. Didn’t need to be immediate, it would have been better to wait until the back straight headed toward the Monza and just let off a liiiittle bit and point him by.
Unrelated, but it looked like there was a ton of overdriving from your fellow competitors in that video. Is the track slippery?
David that makes sense i should have waited til the back side to let him back by.
the track is somewhat slick especially this early on in the year. i definitely felt like we had more speed to show too if we could of got to the lead group some of the guys we were around definitely had issues over driving the apex.