In recent days, there have been several discussions in the iRacing forums about how to clean up the racing in the iRacing dirt series. The dirty driving has become a serious issue on dirt. No pun intended. The reason for most of the problems is simply a lack of respect on the part of many drivers. Some racers prefer to drive through a competitor rather than actually try to race and make a clean pass. There seems to be a lot of confusion over the actual fix for this, so it’s a good thing I’m here to make it clear what really needs to be done and what clearly won’t help the situation. Obviously the only fix for this is to make it so that there are consequences for these actions. Here are the things that help the most:
- Double the multiplier for car collisions. If you hit another car it’s automatically a 4x instead of a 2x.
- Reduce the maximum incident points per race to 8. You run into another car twice and you are disqualified.
- Protest #1 for a bonehead move: counsel. Protest #2 (within 30 days) for a bonehead move: warning. Protest #3 (within 30 days) for a bonehead move: suspension. Any subsequent protest (within 30 days) for a bonehead move: permanent ban.
Protest #1 for intentional wrecking/carelessness/disrespectful racing: stern warning. Protest #2 (within 60 days) for intentional wrecking/carelessness/disrespectful racing: 30 day suspension. Protest #3 (within 60 days) for intentional wrecking/carelessness/disrespectful racing: permanent ban. - Single file restarts in all dirt series except the Pro World Championship Series. This is being done with success in one dirt series already, so any attempt to argue the point stems from ignorance.
These four points are the best things that can be done. There might be other tweaks that would help.
Regarding Item number three: I’m not sure how iRacing is handling protests right now because iRacing refuses to share any information regarding protests with the protester. iRacing should begin sharing some limited information with the protester. Most people think that they protested and nothing was ever done. If iRacing would be more forthcoming about the outcome of the protests, most people would feel better after filing a protest and more people would be encouraged to file protests on dirty drivers. In order for item number 3 to work, people would have to feel that filing a protest is worth the 30 minutes it takes to file one.
Regarding item number four: It has been argued that single file restarts are unrealistic. Not true. Many tracks still use single file restarts in their local shows. It varies. At one time you never saw double file restarts. I was at one dirt track a year or two ago that uses single file STARTS. That’s right, no double file at all. It made the races cleaner and put an end to a lot of pace laps wasting time riding around at caution speeds. Double file restarts are something that came about fairly recently in oval racing.
There have been some other suggestions made:
- Drier tracks. Okay, no problem. Skilled drivers can usually find more places to race on drier tracks, but drivers with lower skills will spin out, crash, and may crash others in the process. Moreover, the iRacing canned track states are currently horrendous. The tracks are much better when the track condition is created organically. This is not really a solution. Asking for drier tracks is really another way of proposing suggestion number 2:
- Multi-groove racing. This opens a whole new topic. I have no issue at all with multi-groove racing. We would all LOVE to see it, but it’s not very realistic on most race tracks. People talk in dreamy tones about multi-groove racing, running high, low, middle, low middle, high middle, outside, inside, on the wall, rim riding blah blah blah. It’s all a lot of nonsense. Most if not all tracks have one preferred racing line with another line or maybe two where you can go to pass when another driver bobbles or makes a small mistake. The alternate groove can sometimes be pretty good but isn’t really where you want to run. Some tracks have nothing much outside of one racing groove. So let’s keep it realistic. Multi-groove racing is almost a myth. People talk about it like it’s there at every track when it’s actually not there at any track with very few exceptions. Allow me to enlighten you on the truth about multi-groove racing and dispel any of those myths that are out there.
Let’s look at the racing grooves on real world race tracks that are included on iRacing as well as the tracks that will soon be coming to iRacing.
So I am the guy at the back of the pack. This idiot wants to get to the front real fast, and runs over me. Boom! we both get 4 incident points and more than likely in the ensuing wreck have to start in the back again. Green comes out and the same idiot plows through me again on his way to glory. Boom he gets 4 incident points and is DQ’ed. Hurray that will teach him to drive like an idiot. Wait, I just got DQ’ed also for being the victim.
I don’t think that works Jeff. It’s still not a fair system. The only way to make it work is for iracing to fix their incident system and start dishing out points to those the cause the incident and not just give both or more that are involved points. It may be a complicated algorithm, but over time I think they could get it down.
Maybe they could do that. But will they? Doubtful. The incident point system isn’t perfect, but if you look at a bigger picture instead of focusing on one race, it does work as it is supposed to. Idiot will move on to the next race. Let’s hope you are not in the same race as Idiot. Idiot runs over somebody else and gets the DQ. Yes, somebody else also gets the DQ. But here’s the thing: Idiot gets the DQ every time he runs over somebody. The person he runs over is usually a different guy in each session. So Idiot suffers every time and the other guy is almost always someone different. Not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got and I don’t see it changing.
In addition to lowering the incident points, iRacing should also fix the damage on the cars. If you run over somebody or hit the wall head on, you should be out of the race. That would also go a long way toward discouraging some of the sheer idiocy we see in official demolition derbies. These two things go hand in hand.
jeff your suggestions tried don’t work the crowsnest host between 400 and 500 races per month we have seen it all we blacklist crash drivers on purpose, cuss or berate fellow drivers run their mouth think they run our room or they just cant drive we have members ask us to come into to their rooms and help them clean it up we get request for copies of our blacklist we are asked about drivers we try to go in to a room of someone we don’t know boom 5 sec and were a admin the way it works in real life you can boot them for t he race or blacklist them that’s it no matter what you do people will come in just to mess up everyone race or pick fights with drivers or the host the best way is get them out the word will spread and it still happens just less often
Assuming you’re Jimmy Crow, you’ve been on iRacing since February. I’ve been on iRacing for five and a half years and I’ve operated a league for most of that time. I know what works and doesn’t work. What you describe can’t be done in official races and that’s the topic being discussed.. The fix for official races is to make the incident point system meaningful as I have described, and fix the damage model so that, if you wreck, you are out of the race.
I might point out that, if you are hosting races, the incident point system also works very well in that arena if used properly. Try setting your incidents to 10 points maximum and you’ll see what I mean. The idiots won’t make it and the rest of the serious pretend drivers will keep it as clean as possible.
I know all about the blacklist system and I use it extensively in hosted, but that does absolutely nothing for official races. All of these things are tools that can be used to clean up the racing.