[Alex Leif]

Sorry Pete I also have to respectfully disagree

Shortly after starting SRS I ended up with over 3 incident average even though I was a clean driver already and experienced in traffic. Then it took a LOT of races (over 1000) to get it down under 2.0

In fact I didn’t get incident average under 2.0 until after I reached over 800 rating. For comparison I was always Minorating A grade until it was closed; always well under 1 incident per 100 km and more often nearer to zero incidents per 1000km. And for further comparison have SA constantly over 90 in ACC.

So if I had ever been blocked from joining some race due to incident average it would have been very unjust imho.

[Igor Relja]

I'll have to side with the guys who are against including incident average as a filter for a series.

I'm risking probably being heavily subjectively biased, but I'll speak from my own experience on SRS.

I've joined just before the New Year so it means I've been racing here for almost 7 months. In that time, I've done 93 races with inc avg 3.075, or 286 incidents in total. I'll disregard one outlier - one race at Nordschleife where I had 21. So, 265 in 92 races, 2.88. With a high degree of confidence, and opening myself to a massive amount of mocking, I can claim that out of those 265, at least 240 were not my fault. Sure, some of them could probably be avoided if I've moved away (and I mean all the way, not just off the racing line, sometimes even off the track is not enough), and vast majority were not intentional, but I wouldn't be too happy camper, if I'd have to miss interesting combo because somebody else can't play nice. Just this season, I've raced in 4 F3 races, and collected 10 incidents, none of which were my fault, all were done by people returning to track straight into me or forgetting to brake. I'm not trying to portray myself as some victim or somebody who's been extremely unlucky. I think it's the case with a lot of mid/bottom of top split, where I currently reside. I'm afraid to even think about what's happening in lower servers. It's just too easy to collect few incidents. For example, you are closely following one driver, while other is following you. At heavy braking turn, the guy behind messes up, rearends you and you hit the guy in front of you. You'll get at least 2 incidents, and the guy ahead one. And that's if you are lucky not to hit anybody/anything else. Or second situation. You fight with somebody, they hit you, you end up hitting one wall and bouncing on the other. 3 incidents for something that doesn't even have to be some long, tens fight. Could be just one wrong move from somebody else. And I'm not even going into AC's collision model where the game sometimes reports 1 hit as two (or even more), or it has existential crisis and decides "Screw it, I'm a pinball simulator now" so it starts bouncing the cars around like they're made of rubber.

And I'm doing everything possible to avoid trouble. If I see somebody catching me up fast, I'll lift off and let them past, if I see somebody whit whom I've already had bad races, I'll avoid them, I don't dive bomb, or try to Verstappen other drivers, almost everything short of just stopping as soon as somebody appears in my mirror, but sometimes (or a lot of times) it's not enough to stay away from trouble.

There is (concerningly) a large number of really fast guys, who just don't know how to race, and that, IMHO, is the biggest problem here. Some people just don't know how to adjust their pace. Hypothetical situation: you qualify in the middle or at the back of a filed, let's say 10-15. Somebody who starts ahead goes off / is involved in an accident so you overtake him. Few laps later, he catches up but doesn't have the patience to wait for an opportunity so tries to overtake by doing something stupid at the corner where you can't overtake. That results in either in you defending and he takes you both out, or you move aside to let him go (and as I've said, sometimes even moving over the kerb is not enough) just for him to spin out again. Rinse and repeat. People for some reason can't comprehend that if you are catching me by 1-2 seconds per lap there has to be a reason why am I that much slower. Somewhere my line is not good enough, somewhere I have to brake earlier, somewhere I have to be reluctant with accelerating... And yet they continue to drive like they are hot lapping, with nobody else on track and with damage turned off. That happened to me in at least 10 races, and I know I'm not the only one.

Again, this is not some "oh, poor me" post, just my two cents. Any system that automatically decides that it's equal blame for an incident, shouldn't be deciding who should be allowed to race in a series or not. So I would be against incident average being the barrier. I would prefer just rating, even though the rating itself can be very misleading, it's the best tool we have for measuring skill here.

Sorry for the rant

[Pete Parisetti]

Igor, you describe perfectly well the situation most of us who frequent the forum find ourselves in. However, much as I hate to insist:

1. My own experience tells me that you can start low and work your way up to a decent level whilst maintaining a low incident rate (300 races from 0 to nearly 700 points, inc avg 1.5/1.6). I am racing in the same races as everybody else, facing the same problems you face. So, I must be doing something different.

2. I remain convinced that if you were racing against people with a less-than-2 inc avg, the problems you describe would be virtually non-existent.

[Filip Stoyanovich]

Well, on second thought, please let's do it then. There's a lot of people racing here each part of the day, so filter the crowd even more. I'm serious. SRS is a big system. It might be reasonable in the long run. There's gotta be a reason why some good fast racers are bellow and well bellow the 2.0 incident point average mark. I'm kind of working to get there. Personally, I think this is why some people join the server for the race, only to stop and disconnect shortly after start. To reduce their incident average.

Just another observation here on my part:
If you're racing here, be it server 1 or 2 or whatever, it's most likely that there will be a couple or several new people each race. This is really common in my experience. Now, since practice is in reality non-existent here, meaning about 2 minutes top while you join in, download new skins, that means that you actually don't run on track with people prior to the race, which means you don't know who you're racing with. Qualifying is hotlapping on track with others anyway. The "new guy's" faster laptime against your laptime still doesn't help you know much about his racing, except that he most likely beats you on track, for example. Now, the race starts with him in front. He makes a couple of moves during opening laps and eventually spins out and rejoins the track, somewhere around you. Now, he is steaming to get back into the positions he "rightfully deserves" and races you like you are a lapper. You rub doors, he punts you off, you hit the wall, you or both spin out into other people, whatever, that's a couple of incident points for everyone involved. Or he is just new to this whole thing, slow and is bound to be lapped once or couple of times in 20 minutes. He doesn't move away, or he does it clumsily and you two rub the bumpers. No difference, you get an incident point or two. Walking in shoes of the newcomer, he's got some incident points accumulated already in his first couple of races. He can still try and reduce that if he realizes in time what he has to do. But then a bit further into this "career" of his, he gets some newcomers too, and can't avoid incidents easily. It goes on and on. But this is what the incident system is for in the first place. To separate good clean racers from the hotheaded ones. I think the existence of this "safety rating" system helps improving the quality of racing.

Personally, I've left a number of series which were interesting to me, because it was easy to get caught up and be punished. In practice, this way of running the series with many different drivers and this sort of automated race steward system sucks if you're gonna run for the championship. The contrast is so strong and it shows it prefers speed over anything else. Qualifying is really important. Starting from somewhere midfield or from the back, if I drive really slow, I have a good chance to avoid everything bad except the unimpressive finishing result (still, not guaranteed). Simply said, what you have to do each race is get the pole position, chunk out those fastest laptimes and drive away without mistakes and of course win each race. If not, and you're just not that fast and skilled, you're really risking it staying in the race if there's people close by. You need to watch both in front and in the mirrors all the time, not allowing to accumulate those incident points. Blocking someone or divebombing on someone into a corner will rightfully earn you an incident point, one can say. Someone's divebombing move on you, will probably piss you off because you lost much more than that position only. As if struggling with all this and try to be up to speed isn't frustrating already.

[Pawel Kusmierek]

Is incident average calculated over your entire history? It would be better if it covered for example last 50 races, to promote safety improvement more strongly. Especially if it will be used as an entry criterion to certain races

[Pete Parisetti]

I don't know, Filip, I really don't want to come across as I am the only one who is doing things right, because I certainly am not. Here is my strategy, anyway:

1. I DO NOT enter a race for a car/track combination for which I am not on par with AI 100%. Racing is not for practicing - racing is for racing, and racing clean. Before you enter a race, you have to know the car/track really well. If I do it, why can't the newcomers do it too?

2. The first, and possibly second race of a new car/track combination I START FROM PITS, no matter what my position in qualy is. Last week at Barcelona F3 I did so for the first two races, and in both cases I WAS IN THE TOP 10 by the end of the first lap, and enjoyed the race tremendously after that.

3. I set objectives which are realistic for my sills level. A few months back I set out to finish p16 with 0inc in all races of a series. That's a neat 70 points. If more come, so much the better. Results: I was ALWAYS doing better than that, and I ended the series kind of 50th over nearly a thousand. Now, when I race I aim for top 10 with 0 inc. If I finish top 10 on a server 1 race I AM HAPPY, and I will not fight somebody who's faster than me to. If I fight somebody at my level, my primary concern is,again, NOT TO HAVE CONTACTS. Meanwhile, my skills slowly improve and one day I will win a race.

Is that too difficult? No, I don't think so. It's just a matter of managing one's ego and testosterone and being able to think long term. You gain rating points MUCH faster. You gain in respect from fellow drivers. And you have much more fun, except for when your careful strategy is wrecked by the people/situations that Igor describes. That happens a lot, and is a cause of much frustration and rage.

Apologies if I sound like a god of racing imparting wisdom - NOT intended at all. Just my two cents.

---

Is incident average calculated over your entire history? It would be better if it covered for example last 50 races, to promote safety improvement more strongly. Especially if it  will be used as an entry criterion to certain races

VERY interesting suggestion Pawel. I second that completely.

[Russell Sobie]

Yeah, if some new "Incident Rating" was the average of the last 50 races you actually finished in the top 15 (I'm already poking holes in this... one could easily have 0 incidents by simply registering for and not actually participating in fully 50 races), then that number might actually mean something.

Given that I keep trying to have clean races in things like the Audi TT Cup and BMW235i races (i.e. slower cars = good drivers and bad drivers with similar lap times) and failing due to other drivers not understanding race craft, anything that uses just straight up incident rating to filter users would be a mistake.

[Filip Stoyanovich]

I don't know, Filip, I really don't want to come across as I am the only one who is doing things right, because I certainly am not. Here is my strategy, anyway:

1. I  DO NOT enter a race for a car/track combination for which I am not on par with AI 100%. Racing is not for practicing - racing is for racing, and racing clean. Before you enter a race, you have to know the car/track really well. If I do it, why can't the newcomers do it too?

Nah, that's all on point, Pete. We all wish more people would think and do as you do, and you've proven it. I was referring to the other fact that often you'll be on track racing with someone you don't know. You both can come prepared for the race, everything calculated etc. Sometimes it helps to run a couple of laps or even races with someone to get to know what to expect from them in the future, braking points, the speed. But we don't have that here because these are not closed classic weekly league races in one season with a stable 20ish drivers/cars field. It's just the qualy, race and in the end the results. No practice and warmup, plus the format is with pretty short races mostly. That's one side of the problem, and that's why if you're not among the fastest to run away out of reach, it's not realistic to expect clean racing from this many different people, but it is realistic to expect trouble if you stick your nose a bit, sometimes even when backing off considerably or starting from the midfield or even upper grid or the back. Not to mention the joys of occasional server hickups or sometimes inevitable lag moments for any driver which can cause havoc, but hasn't got anything to do with clean or dirty racing on any side. You just get those incident points. And the other and worst thing is, that system as harsh and strict as it is, is not really represented properly for the newcomers which ends badly for them AND the regulars. You can't warn new people about this enough.
I hate how it works but it is what it is. But then, as someone suggested, it should be used to separate people with low incident rating from others. Then possibly, on server 1 people will have much better races. Currently, it often goes from meh to appalling.

[Pete Parisetti]

Yeah, if some new "Incident Rating" was the average of the last 50 races you actually finished in the top 15 (I'm already poking holes in this... one could easily have 0 incidents by simply registering for and not actually participating in fully 50 races), then that number might actually mean something.

You have a point there, Russel, but only in theory, methinks. 

In practice, I believe that if somebody bothers with registering and not racing just to lower their inc rating, that somebody takes racing seriously and probably would not be a troublemaker anyway. Maybe one or two would do that and still be s#@theads when in a race, but I think that for the vast majority a safety rating simply based on the last 50 races would suffice. 

What do others think? Is this something that we can bring to the Admin's attention?

[Sergio Mendez]

It’s A great idea in my opinion