What to do when it goes wrong....

[joeg]

All our races have Stewards...though.

Face it, you are on your own out there. The best rule is to avoid contact and avoid situations where contact is likely.

Go beat on a panel before making or inviting apology visits.

[spnkzss]

This has always been an interesting thing to me. In a perfect world, 1.) If I feel it's my fault (read, I'm not pissed) I go over immediately. I'll take the beating and apologize/try to make it right. 2.) if I feel it's their fault (read, I'M PISSED) then I want to wait and calm down before I go find them. I also hope that time they will allow them to come find me. Most of the time, I just want an apology. I haven't had someone else's actions total my car so I don't have an opinion on what else I would want from them.

The problem with this logic is, you only have 30 minutes post race to protest. I can take more than 15 minutes too cool down. Then I have to find my rep. Then I have to make my way to the tower, blah blah blah. If I wait too long and feel I need to act, I normally don't have enough time.

The adrenaline rush is rough. I ALWAYS take someone else with me to get in between if I have to. Not to keep them from getting to me, but to prevent me from getting to them. The worst time I had the driver pushed me off in 4 different corners. The last one was at T3 at Summit. Literally pushed me into the gravel. The argument got no where. He didn't get it. His kids were there, his wife was there, my brother grabbed me and said it's not worth it and pulled me away.

What can you do? Type A personalities + adrenaline + feeling of being wronged = bad situation at times.

I personally would like to see the protest window be opened from 30 min to 60 min for non mechanical protests. You might get more protests, you might get less, but at least most would be done with a little cooler head.

[gran racing]

The problem with this logic is, you only have 30 minutes post race to protest.

I agree with the notion of extending the published time limit. If a person doesn't feel like they can come to a resolution within 30 minutes, vist the steward and let them know you'd like to speak with the driver and others before filing a protest, and ask if they'd extend the time limitation. I believe in most situations they will allow this - I've only tested this out once and they did.

[tnord]

actually, the one time i filed a protest, i was told i had 30min to notify the stewards of my intention of filing a protest, not 30 min to actually complete everything.