[Russell Sobie]

Well yeah, they'll happen. But they don't have to. This isn't Real Life™. This is a bunch of video game nerds using toy wheels and pedals to pretend they are driving cars that cost more money that they will likely make in a lifetime. We aren't talented enough to squeak out a couple of positions on turn 1 and expect to hold off the entire field for 20 minutes. We aren't all in the same skill level... if you are lucky, there might be one or two folks with similar lap times and consistency to you in any given race. Most of the time you are going to be quite a bit faster than the guy behind, and quite a bit slower than the guy in front. In real life, those differences are tiny. Here in pretend race car land, they are huge.

It would be best for everyone to understand the above paragraph and act with those points in mind when they compete online. If the majority of us do that, we can all safely get through turns 1 and 2 on the first lap, and then go about the fun part of online racing: safely and cleanly passing and getting passed until the time runs out and everyone crosses the finish line with their suspensions intact.

Oh, and Message Of The Day is a big billboard that shows up whenever you join a server with text created by the server administration. It's been a thing since the days of Quake, and SRS servers have one as well. I'll admit I haven't read one in a very long time... but you can bet that I read it the first time I joined a race on SRS.