May 7th Oschersleben court rulings

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

This is the first of several reports on driving standards in the five test races we ran last weekend. As they were not championship races, I'm not going to hand out penalties.

A number of people were clearly overdriving; that is, they were falling off every 2 or 3 laps because they were driving faster than their level of skill permitted. I'm not going to name names, but you know who you are. Slow down! If you keep going off you just make the race harder and less fun for yourselves, and more dangerous for everyone else.

I've mostly only ruled on incidents which were reported to me, or in which I was involved. When the league starts in earnest, drivers who do not submit incident reports will lose any right of appeal if a ruling goes against them.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

77s: David Yates, Andy

The pace lap has barely begun when David sticks his nose in alongside Andy, spinning the latter out.

Pretty much everyone was travelling much too close during the pace lap; there really is no excuse for contact like this.

144s: Andy

Andy then works his way back up to his orginal spot in the train. As he comes through the Bilstein Schikane, he hits the gas just a fraction too hard and spins out. Very silly.

188s: Glide, manx57

As the cross the line to start the first racing lap, manx57 is several car lengths behind Glide, who warps backwards and is thrown sideways onto the grass. He struggles to retain control and slides back onto the track, tagging the back of manx. They both spin off.

We won't penalise warp contact like this in the league.

454s: Dave Gymer, David Yates

Gymer is following Yates into the T8/T9 "chicane", and Yates has a small warp which causes the cars to make contact. Gymer lets Yates back through in the final corner.

507s: Glide, Dave Gymer

Glide, in a GT car, is coming round to pass Dave, who is in NGT, for 11th place. Glide gets a good run out of Hotel, but not quite good enough to get cleanly past before braking for Hasseröder, and backs out of the move, only to simply drive into the back of Dave in the middle of the corner, spinning Dave out and collecting manx57 in the process.

This sort of contact certainly would pick up a penalty.

1715s: Paul968, Carl Parker, Smudge

After a couple of offs, Paul is rejoining on the back straight, and moves right when he sees Carl coming up fast on the racing line. Carl Parker comes round and appears to move right as he passes Paul, taking Paul off. Carl's car is very "jittery" in the server replay which suggests an element of warp.

Paul's car goes flying up in the air and comes to rest facing the wrong way. Paul does a reset as he is badly damaged, but doesn't realise that, unlike GPL, GTR does not change a car's position or orientation, and sets off the wrong way up the track, driving right into Smudge who is coming down the back straight at full pelt, with predictably messy results. Paul subsequently retires, as does Smudge after he realises that the car is going nowhere (it's missing a wheel).

The lesson to be learnt is always know what direction you're facing!