Incident Reports (Public)

Stewarding team had a hard time this incident.

It all condenced down to "is the run off and kerb at Ascari exit racing surface or not". Rulebook says "white line defines the edge of the track", but common practices with ACC has seen this rule relaxed and we've used ACCs tracklimits since there is no automatic way to monitor the cuts.

Biggest arguments to penalize Pierre:
"Poor judgement from Pierre. Went for a risky move on a part of run off that would eventually become grass and relied on Teme facilitating the pass. He had not cleared Teme before moving left while attempting to rejoin the typical track and was too close to Teme's car to have used his position ahead to dictate a line and slowly move over, thus turning himself on Teme's car and causing a 3 car crash. Teme left sufficient room to re-enter the track, at the point of contact there was still 0.5m to the right of Pierre's car.
Imo leaving a car's width applies when cars are side by side on the "racing surface". At the time of Pierre making a pass Teme had positioned himself in a way to fairly block a pass attempt from Pierre by placing his car less than a car's width from the edge of the track, a position which he held until contact. Pierre ignored this and attempted to force his way back onto the track when driving into a closing gap."

Biggest arguments to penalize Teme:
As I believe ACRL follows ACC track limits, Pierre's overtake outside of white lines is considered part of the racing surface, and is allowed. Pierre is substantially ahead of Teme by the time the track narrows, and slowly moves to the left because of it.
When being substantially ahead, I believe the driver ahead is allowed to dictate the line as long as it is done in a non-erratic manner. I believe Pierre satisfies this condition, which puts the blame for the contact on Teme for not respecting it."

All in all, the 4/5 stewards agree that the overtake was completed outside of the track limits, but there is blame for Teme not taking the speed difference into account. 10s penalty for Pierre, and a warning for Tim.