Your thoughts please

[Dutch chap]

This weekend I was marshalling at Zandvoort, at was supposed to be an “A-event”, known as “the Trophy of the Dunes”. In Holland we had a lot of ‘roughness’ this ( and most of last) year(s), especially in the Clio’s and the Alfa Rome 147 GTA Cup. As I’me sure you’ve had your fair share of this as well, I must say things have really got out of control the last years with the Clio’s in Holland. In fact it doesn’t matter if it’s Clio’s or Meganes, during the last years the Renault Cup drivers really have made a mess of most races. At Zandvoort we lost three(!) of our Nissans (known to those who’ve been around just because of the ignoring the (yellow, red and oil) flag signals by drivers. The last couple of weekends it looked like an increasing problem. And now, out of the sudden, this weekend the COC’s made it clear that “enough is enough”. It helped that we didn’t have the Clio’s around, but nevertheless I praise the COC’s for showing the official warning flag (I mean the black and white, diagonally) to every driver who “made a mistake and unfortunatly hit another competitor” and giving them the black flag for a “Stop&Go” for every second offence. Believe me, it helped! We had clean racing, and it’s been quit some time ago since we had that.

How are your thoughts about the influence of the acts of the COC’s . Does it help you (=us) if the COC is acting as I described it. Does it, and this is for course, fire, incident marshals, make you more assure when going out there?

[neilwaynesmith]

On Sunday, we had what I would call a fairly major incident with the Renault Clio's on lap 1 involving 3 destroyed cars, 2 stuck on the track, Rescue personnel in attendance, every marshal on post out clearing up and tyrewall damage, but there was no red flag. This comes only two weeks after the same Clio's had what can only be described as a demolition derby involving (I believe) 9 cars at Brands Hatch so, no I personally am not particularly reassured by the influence of the COC's.

I am going out on a limb here, but in my opinion, occasionally live TV airtime has more influence......

[Mark Mitchell]

I recall a meeting at Anglesey 2 or 3 years ago when we had XR2's playing out.
They were behaving just like banger car drivers (No offence to banger car drivers - you're in the business of making contact!!)
The CofC acted upon reports from Observers and the black/white flag was displayed to the entire field. Afterwards, I think the Clerk took all the drivers into the canteen for a (Bun & a cuppa) major b***ocking.

[Fay]

It does make a difference if the C of C acts on Observers reports. For some reason though it sometimes appears (although it is not necessarily the case) that the smaller clubs, ie 750MC take more notice of the Observers views and talk to the drivers than the bigger clubs do.

As show
n on another thread (Star of the Midlands) we will be in trouble next year when the Black and Yellow's are no longer in place if the C of Cs do not talk to the drivers and the drivers continue to not react to yellow flags, and marshals do not feel safe to go trackside, we will have many more red flags. Which is not in the interests of anyone.