Moderator's Report
SUMMARY
A race of attrition on a very challenging circuit. Ronnie Peterson kept his head to take the win from Bob Whitwell who looked to have the race in the bag until he made an unforced error at Cascades. Bob recovered to hold onto second place from Sam Blood. There were some very fast lap times set in qualifying and the race but as ever, steady consistent driving wins the day.
A very clean red zone with only one incident of note during the race.
Server replay time: 0h26m29s
Lap 15 - Dear Leap - Fulvio Policardi and Natan Veksler
Fulvio's engine explodes at Clay Hill but he decides to coast around the track in an effort to complete another lap. He keeps to the right as Bob, Ronnie and Sam fly past at racing speeds. As Fulvio exits Deer Leap his car is now crawling along at 11 mph but rather than pull off, Fulvio tries to get to the finish line. He moves over onto the racing line where he is hidden from the view of any approaching car. At this point Natan exits Deer Leap at racing speed and has no chance of avoiding Fulvio's car. A severe impact occurs and both Natan and Fulvio are out of the race.
Fulvio should have pulled off the track as soon as it was apparent that his engine trouble was terminal. Had it been the last lap some mitigation could be allowed but with more than half the race still to run there was little to be gained from freewheeling around the track. Natan did nothing wrong and had no chance of avoiding a car hidden over the crest of a rise that was practically stationary on the racing line.
Whilst there is no explicit rule addressing this issue, it is covered under Etiquette in the GPL Recommended Driver Behaviour. Specifically under the section entitled "Get off the track and out of the way ASAP if your car is non functional".