So who saw the coverage of TSRS NOLA this weekend? If you did what was your opinion of on track officiating? We weren’t impacted by any calls, but we saw plenty of what I thought was rough driving and some gnarly wrecks and karts everywhere. It was our 7th regional/national level event and hands down the most carnage.
I saw some of the coverage, but didn’t really see any outcomes from calls/officiating. The aggression at the front of the field was high, but most of the racing between front runners was clean. The mid-pack was an entirely different story…crazy number of pile ups at the end of the back straight. I understand that it was the first regional at NOLA in quite some time, so maybe the overall experience level of the field at that track was low, and contributed to sloppy racing? Looked gnarly.
@Muskabeatz lots of fast guys had big wrecks that put them deep in the final. Resulted in lots of speed and skill variation for the midfield in the finals. I think that contributed some, fast guys driving with urgency and being impatient.
Turn 2 got lots of drivers. Plenty of rear bumper contact down there, and it didn’t seem to take much to go for a ride. Looked like a kart graveyard down there!
Mine snuck by the inside. One of the TB guys lost a helmet. P3 had super light contact and looped it in front of the field. Mayhem from there….
No one was at fault, but took two laps to clear the karts and they never threw a full course yellow or red. RD apologized to the field the next round.
I saw that helmet come off and wondered if it was fastened correctly? I do understand that straps are also meant to detach above a certain force level… but I would have imagined that force would be higher than what I saw.
Yikes…hopefully no one was injured. I remember a WKA National in 2009 at South Bend where I forgot to strap my helmet before one of the heat races and it was one of the more terrifying experiences of my life, especially after seeing multiple big crashes at the exit of turn 1 that year. One guy in another class did a front flip (kart and all) when he ran wide and the front of the chassis dug into the dirt. Being a teenager at the time, I think I may have still finished the heat race even with the helmet as it was. Neat idea, lol.
I can’t speak for TSRS specifically, but regional series in my experience have always been home to the most carnage and the least fun. Typically they attract the talent, but are under-resourced, or don’t have the balls to issue penalties. Hopefully this is just a one-off and everyone runs cleaner for the remaining races.
@KartingIsLife I have a video clip from a helmet cam that is terrifying. The kid bounces off of the edge of the pile, sees the helmet rolling, looks at the pile, back at the rolling helmet, and starts dropping f bombs inside his helmet. Here is an upload of the KC feed and onboard for H2 as well as one of Xander going for an ugly ride in the final barely missing a kart.
Actually that was one of my teammates. I crashed in the chicane section after the double left.
Race directing wise – I’ve got some thoughts. I think overall the thought process was let the drivers handle it amongst themselves, which I like for senior classes at the national level – specifically Shifter and an argument made for X30.
But there were so many inexperienced drivers in the mid to back of the field who just don’t even know how to race, and then a lot of rookies moving up from Junior going to the front pack that we didn’t really have an ‘old guard’ of drivers to keep the couple of newcomers in line.
I think to me, what was most surprising on track, was when I got around guys whose karts and suits seemed older, white helmets, etc. – budget racers – I think they were less afraid of crashing and tearing stuff up than the front guys with brand new stuff and bigger budgets were.
Practice was honestly sketchy a lot of the time catching someone 2 seconds off and then having them turn down on you when you’re fully alongside.
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To be honest I thought racehero was broken with so few penalties (if any at times). I’m used to 25+ penalties at the bottom of the page at uspks, skusa etc 
. Not to say that’s a bad thing, racing incidents happen but looked like a very choatic weekend overall.
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That fella with his hand up in the third short must have been crapping his pants… not one, not two, but three near misses. Well done by the folks who managed to avoid him.
My son barely missed him…said he bout crapped his own pants.
Curt thought it was you he saw slide. Sorry for the mis identification. To be fair there were lots of those colored karts on track. 
Hope your are all good. I know several guys are still pretty sore. Was pretty chaotic.
I think there’s gonna be a transition period with a new race director coming on board for this year. I definitely felt like I got screwed in the Shifter Main, but I shouldn’t have put myself in a situation to let Race Control decide my fate 
Things should get dialed in for subsequent rounds. It took me a little while to get rolling with Trackhouse Motorplex, I wasn’t perfect (and still am not)
I think my only other criticism was the incident in Shifter Heat 2 (Reed turning Zarsk around), the offending driver not being scored to the tail of the field. There was a call made and a penalty applied though, not sure I can ask for much more
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For Mini - they DQ’d two drivers that walked away from tech after scaling. They tried to return to tech and were told of their DQ. I am happy I did not have to go argue with anyone about it. On track in the front for us, was pretty clean and no penalties called.
I watched the RD issue the apology to senior and while they did screw up, I was impressed that they did that. I am not sure that would have happened in the past.
We did about 10 races with them in the past and stopped due to race impacting issues. I would come home and be upset because of things that were happening off track that negatively impacted many the weekend of many. I did not see that at all this weekend. The only two major issues were the registration lines and that KA senior deal. No scale issues being calibrated on the final day, no screw ups with the starting order, tech seemed good, things I did see on the track that I thought would be penalties were issued.
I do wish lap traffic would be black flagged in the final. But I can understand both sides of the argument.
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I thought they were? KA Junior was the group before mine and I noticed all lapped traffic getting removed.
@jd896 I saw the shifter final push to pass move. It wasn’t a clean pass, but not an outright dump off the track. Unfortunately one like that falls into the opinion category. I don’t care for that type of pass unless someone is intentionally running lines to block, then its all fair. In the states we seem to let that stuff go more than Europe.
I didn’t see the earlier heats of shifter.
They were sometimes slow to the black flag, but they were flagging people off in the larger fields for certain. Watched them do in in 206 SR and KA SR.
I think we’re discussing two different incidents?
Good to know. They left them in for micro and mini. One of the micros crashed hard in the final while negotiating traffic. 13 in mini and 8 in micro. Maybe that is why they left them since the fields were smaller.
I was intentionally slammed into and pushed off track by a driver who had been driving erratic with no race craft all weekend. Despite video evidence and the official agreeing that he was majority at fault after watching the footage, I was told that because it was not a major incident they do not issue post race penalties, but they would ‘talk to him’ and ‘tell him to knock it off’. The same driver had words with a different driver in the scale lines after pretty much each session and never received a penalty even after flipping one driver off on track.
From my point of view there was very little accountability this weekend which will contribute to more rough driving and possible major incidents throughout the year. Drivers should be held responsible for their actions.
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