Moderator's Report
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Baracus suffers some pedal problems on entering grid but does everything in his power to avoid an incident and escapes to pit before start of race. No blame can reasonably be apportioned here but it does serve as a reminder to all of the inherent dangers of mixing standing starts and possible technical problems. With hindsight, Baracus would have escaped earlier and we all should learn from his misfortune here.
Rather than look and report the mainly sensible reactions of all those involved in the ensuing choas our (a number of mods have been involved)general overview and some resulting conclusions follows.
Standing starts are inherently dangerous but, even with the unusual and unfortunate events seen as Watkins Glen, there are steps we can all take to limit the damage. At first sign of trouble on the grid you must slow, by blending off the throttle and if unavoidable braking, thus giving yourself every opportunity to react. Here, the vast majority of the grid followed these common sense rules and should be commended. However one or two appeared to ignore them and simply carried on accelerating as normal with inevitable results. I say "appeared" because the replays only show the action and not any other circumstances that may be involved and therefore they have been given the benefit of the doubt this time.
With their undoubted popularity, we will continue with standing starts but only with certain provisos. No benefit of doubt will be given to those who do not appear, we will rely on replay eveidence alone, to take all reasonable care in the future and the harshest possible penalties, within our rules, will be given out. 'Other circumstances' cannot be taken into consideration for future offences. We feel these steps are necessary and reasonable as such actions ruin hours of preparation and racing unnecessarily for others.
