International GeneRally Tournament (by NAGRCA) [HL] [Login]

[TuomoH]

I trained no more than 1 hour!

Seems that I have to train more than 30 minutes for the final.

Btw, also battle for yearly hotlap ranking with you, TuomoH? Rather not, you've probably won it already

I don't know, this might actually settle it.

May the best man win.

[puttz]

Both finalists have submitted their files. I may get the results posted by sometime Monday, if not by then, then by Wednesday because of the holiday

[akouk]

I've got something to say.
On Thu 20 Dec I send to puttz a pm asking him to investigate XYYs driving beyond curbs in Nyrpol'10, as shown in pic-1.
As we remember several days before I had specifically asked puttz for explanation regarding the curbs at the straights of Nyrpol'10, as shown in pic-2, because due to the hmap of the track it was certain that you would go beyond those after the previous turn, if driving offensively.

Puttz characterized all of the indicated incidents in pic-2 as shortcutting. Rules section 5.a. also states "Do not cut the track. Cutting will be defined as making a blatant move to go beyond the curbs/sunk tires by more than half of a car."

As we can see in pic-1 XYY has gone totally beyond the curb. This position is the same as the one marked “A” in my question, which was clearly checked by puttz as shortcutting, in addition to rule 5.a.

It's worth saying that in another previous incident in R1 Hawady Buka was penalized and eliminated from the tournament because of the incident shown in pic-3. Puttz’s judgement was “On the first turn, you cut too far inside. 3 wheels were in the grass, and the 4th was barely on the road.” The funny thing with that incident is that, despite the fact that there was no curb to go beyond, as rule 5.a. states, even if there was one then Buka would have 2 wheels on the curb and 1 on the road, which I’m sure it would be a completely legal position.

As I said in the beginning I asked puttz to investigate XYY’s incident (by pm because I didn’t want to upset the finalists) but I got no reply whatsoever, not even to be informed that my objection was overruled.

My personal opinion on the XYY incident is that it is a shortcutting violation resulting in +1sec penalty.

We all know that HL combos are the trickiest and most demanding to manage and require extra attention form the organizer; a task that I regret to say puttz has not been up to.

Therefore and because I believe that rules where not applied the same for everyone I will put forth the proposition to jo.sk to exclude this season of IGRT from GWR.

[TuomoH]

Oh man, this is nasty... As I said already on case of Buka, the situation was nasty and this is even worse since this is clearly against the rules as written by puttz.

And it gets even nastier thinking that this is likely to settle the GWR hotlap ranking of 2012. I did my best to get to the first position but now if it gets overruled by bad organizing... I've got no words that can be said here.

Edit: My request would be to re-evaluate the semifinals and give a new chance for the real finalists but as you can see, I'm not in a objective position to request this.

[akouk]

XYY pm’ed me and expressed similar concerns to yours TuomoH.
As I said to him, the combo manager is the "emperor" of his combo and so his decisions are considered final, regardless being right or not.
Therefore, since puttz proceeded with the final race despite my objection, it's assumed that the objection was overruled in silence.
Nothing I can do about that, but to accept it.
IGRT results don’t change now, neither am I asking for it, because to be honest, even if it did I, would hardly have come up with motivation to race after all this mess.

[Lukeno94]

HL compos aren't that much harder than a regular one to police - you either allow all shortcuts, or ban them all and ensure you have tracks that restrict shortcutting as much as possible (either by modification or original design). puttz's halfway-house has combined badly with an inconsistent policy to make this mess, unfortunately. If it wasn't this close to the end of the year, I'd object to the removal of this compo from GWR, but at this late stage, I'm afraid I have to agree with it, as an uninvolved 3rd party - especially as XYY, as a guilty party here, is very unhappy with this as well.

[Trigger Happy]

Unfortunately this may happen, if reasons for punishments of certain behaviour are a bit confused and the judging is limited to one factor (which in particular case is irrelevant) instead of using common sense.

To first, shortcutting rules aren't here to penalize drivers only for trying to exploit full width of the track to last single inch (or for merely accidentally going off the track while trying so), it's nature of every each racer and also the errors are part of nature of racing - but to prosecute malicious driving, by exploiting checkpoints to drive by a real deviation from layout itself. In GR people exaggerate so much these rules, recall in rwl examples like legal driving through variante ascari in Monza or Vettle in India:

To second, not only wheels position and drawn tarmac/lines/kerbs are answer to everything - intention of trackmaker (often mirrored in AI racing line or object placement) are also important, e.g. I guess most us would agree in Buka's case, that tarmac is irrelevant, what more counts is the traffic sign. Actually same imho applies to Otto's track, especially to one of the banned paths in middle-middle (where such cutting originates directly from Räbinäs track).

I think it was correct not to punish XYY. The mistake on puttz' side I see only in the penalty to Buka (and lack of communication with akouk). Yes, in some sense of word akouk is entirely right with the call of ''rules where not applied the same for everyone'', on the other hand, I'd possibly think about puttz taking the lesson from 1st case to judge these cases more fair way (with considering the issue in full complexness) and if so, I'd consider good, that he did so instead of bringing another short-sighted penalty. But in the end, no matter of what's the truth of reasons not penalizing XYY (puttz will tell us), I think excluding this rather good compo from gwr for this to be an exaggerated call, only reason for such excluding would be IMHO nothing more than an intention to do a harm to akouk, which I don't suspect puttz of doing.

But just my .

[XYY]

Alright, time to enter the discussion

I agree that I drove at Nyrporl in such a way that it would be against the rules defined by puttz. And of course, technically akouk would have been in the finals if puttz had evaluated in such a way that my cutting would have been punished like Bukas cutting by a 1 second penalty.

Talking about the cutting rule itself, I agree with Ivo that it's quite stupid. Here a suggestion for puttz for the future: When I held my Trans-Am competition, I thought about shortcutting and came to the conclusion that the tracks where a bit space is left are meant to be driven by cutting a bit here and there. However, one of the tracks (Road Atlanta) had placed the checkpoints in such a way that it would have theoretically been possible to drive over a small piece of grass beyond the kerbs. I avoided this by asking Areen to add some cones there . Of course it's up to the competition organiser what cutting rule he imposes but I think that most of the racers like to have something like "do whatever you want" so that the track's obstacles limit the cutting. By doing this you also avoid discussions like "what is considered as a part of the track, is that a kerb" and so on.

In general I think the best thing to do at this moment would be to either repeat the semi-final or to give akouk a chance to race in the finals. But seeing that he doesn't want to race because of the bad organisation, it gets a bit more difficult. On the one hand it would be just fair to give akouk a place in the finals, because he followed the rules and I didn't. On the other hand, puttz has not punished my cutting.

In this case I'm not actually sure what's the best thing to do. However, let's imagine I really win the championship and maybe even GWR yearly ranking. It would just feel wrong, because I won by a somehow unfair method. And I would rather like to be only second in year ranking/3rd or 4th in championship than first with a bad taste. And even the second place for this championship feels a bit wrong, because akouk was probably better, but I took advantage of cutting and therefor breaking the rules. At the moment, I feel a bit like the guilty, but I don't want to feel like that.

Of course this is not a solution for the problem, but my PoV
I wonder what puttz will say about all this.

[akouk]

I feel as bad about this as anyone, but I think that it was correct to bring the matter up.
Anyway, if it is decided to mend things up by giving me a chance to compete, then I’ll do it with the condition that it will be a 3 driver final.

[TuomoH]

3 driver final sounds good to me.

[Jo.sk]

I've read carefully the posts of each protagonists and I also think the better option would be a final with 3 drivers ! Else I think it's unfair to include the 1/2 and the final in GWR.
However, the results of qualifs, 1/8 and 1/4 finals won't be affected and stay supported by GWR.

[puttz]

Okay, time to explain this mess This is the first chance I've had to reply, I've been otherwise occupied (non-GR related). First off, akouk, an apology is due for not replying to your PM about the matter. I didn't reply because I thought that my silence would indicate that I would not be changing my ruling, but obviously I was wrong. I should have replied to that PM. Now, secondly, I will admit that I have not exactly been up to par in the managing of this compo. In the future, I think I will stick to the rules that I layed down in my original compo, V8SC (if I don't decide to entirely retire from compo organizing once V8SC season 2 is complete due to this debacle): If the checkpoints allow, it is legal, and modify checkpoints such that it will prevent driving in such a way that I do not want drivers to do. And an explanation of the lack of penalty is due: from the hotlapcheck tool, it did not appear that XYY was cutting at that point. I usually do most of my judging by that, and if something requires further scrutineering I will watch it closely in the replay. However, it did not appear to me to require further scrutineering in that case. So, lesson learned there, don't entirely trust hotlapcheck for decisions such as this. Also, there was another part of the track where perhaps XYY might have been considered cutting, but I did not because again it was a borderline call, and also as pointed out by Ivo, due to the penalty I put on Buka early in the season, I did not want to make a repeat of eliminating a driver due to a judgment call. In retrospect, I probably should not have penalized Buka or any of the other drivers that I penalized in that round, but it is what it is. So, here is what I shall do: if Jo.sk so chooses, and the majority also wishes it, let the GWR not include semi and finals. I'll leave it up to the competitors to decide, and I will not try to protest the decision. Or, if akouk so chooses, I will as soon as I post this open up login for him and we will have a three-man final. What say you, akouk? Login is open for you if you wish to take it.

[bgcatfan]

In general I think the best thing to do at this moment would be ... to give akouk a chance to race in the finals.

Anyway, if it is decided to mend things up by giving me a chance to compete, then I’ll do it with the condition that it will be a 3 driver final.

3 driver final sounds good to me.

I've read carefully the posts of each protagonists and I also think the better option would be a final with 3 drivers! Else I think it's unfair to include the 1/2 and the final in GWR.

What say you, akouk? Login is open for you if you wish to take it.

Putting all these together we have the general consensus and also the director's decision. As a neutral observer, I think you all have done well to agree on a solution despite the difficult situation, and puttz has agreed to it.

For the record, I do agree with the others about shortcutting rules. Hopefully this will become water under a bridge and all future compos will be better because of this experience.

[akouk]

Ok then, I'll join the final.
I want to remind, that the F1-cup has provided all the necessary experience regarding Hot Lap racing, which essentially comes down to the simple action, of adjusting checkpoints to render things indisputable. Perhaps it would be good idea to set a few generic HL rules that combos ought to incorporate, in order to be qualified in a "professional" level.

[Trigger Happy]

Well, hypothetically here optimal solution IMHO would be a stone added, not a short checkpoint. A stone in XYY' path would switch the shortcut from advantage to handicap, but with reasonable time cost (of the air-lift), loosing whole lap by missed checkpoint due small cut in area of nasty elevation change and especially in a HL, where just 1 lap is run, would be way too harsh (XYY with no lap time), it'd be a silly idea. That's why never a set of generic rules should be enforced into all compos by default - they cannot fit as well as necessary to needs of every each compo, even if limited to one genre (HL in this case), individual organizer always understands better, what his particular compo needs.

BTW thump up to puttz for sincere reply.

[puttz]

Okay, akouk has accepted the offer of a 3-man final, so results will be posted once he submits his results and I am able to analyze them.
Also, if I may make one other point, one of the reasons that I did not make modifications to the checkpoints or tracks is that I am rather hesitant to do so without permission of the track authors, and sometimes it is difficult to get that, particularly when using tracks that are a few years old.

[akouk]

race done

[puttz]

Okay, results should be up in a few hours. Hang tight, everyone.

[puttz]

The finals results are up! http://puttz.byethost31.com/IGRTBracket.html
Congratulations to the first ever IGRT champion

TuomoH

The crown is well deserved after a hard-fought season and a tight final between three very skilled drivers. And an explanation on determining the second place finisher: The two drivers had 1 win a piece, and I had decided before looking at any files that a tie-breaker would be second place finishes, then total time. So, the two numbers you see (#1;#2) are first places followed by second places. Also, in analyzing the files for this, I was looking only for malicious cutting, of which there was none, and there really were no cuts that could be deemed punishable under the original rules, anyhow. Hope you all enjoyed this season despite some of the managerial difficulties This is puttz, signing off for NAGRCA and the IGRT until next season, which will bring a better rules set, new tracks, and more intense racing.

[akouk]

Congrats TuomoH
Happy to have won a stage
Congrats XYY

[Jo.sk]

Congrats to the winner (and the others )

Now the GWR can fully supported this championship until the final.
For 1/2 final, given the "little" problem during the duel Akouk vs XYY, both drivers will be classified 2nd of the event (behind TuomoH) with the same number of points.
And finally : congrats to puttz for the organization !

[puttz]

Thanks, Jo.sk. Hopefully I can run the second IGRT (which will hopefully be sometime in Spring providing my classes at university do not keep me too busy) without controversy. I've already come up with some revised rules, and I'll be sure to give myself much more time to plan and get things together than I did with this one

[XYY]

Congrats TuomoH, and also akouk. And thanks to puttz, after a rather bad incident you managed to find a good solution.