[Thierry Roldan]

Hi everyone,
Right after yesterday's GT3 1h race I was reading the comments in the chat and something came up which drew my attention. I was not involved myself but it did raise a question:

Should you fight with faster cars when they come out of the pits and you are on a different strategy?

I tend to go long on my pit stop because I like a fresh set of softs to attack at the end. I'm a midfield driver. That means that I often find myself racing against the leaders when they come out of the pits mid race. I tend not to fight and just let them through but I can understand the more ruthless approach. I mean, it is for position. It is a race. You are in front on merit even though the strategy isn't the same.

I'm curious to know what the simracing etiquette is...

Peace

[Simon Merritt]

Hi everyone,
Right after yesterday's GT3 1h race I was reading the comments in the chat and something came up which drew my attention. I was not involved myself but it did raise a question:

Should you fight with faster cars when they come out of the pits and you are on a different strategy?

I tend to go long on my pit stop because I like a fresh set of softs to attack at the end. I'm a midfield driver. That means that I often find myself racing against the leaders when they come out of the pits mid race. I tend not to fight and just let them through but I can understand the more ruthless approach. I mean, it is for position. It is a race. You are in front on merit even though the strategy isn't the same.

I'm curious to know what you think.

Peace

that depends really if they are just faster at that point in the race it may be worth defending. but if you are not fighting for a possible position then you are just holding both of you up and risking an incident for no gain. you are well within your rights to defend position as you say but doesnt necessary mean it is the best thing for you to do as you will always be slower trying to defend a position than just driving to the racing line

[Virgilio Bomfim]

I'd say fight'em like every other fight. Try to not lose too much time with it, and generally the better driver (faster, more consistent, better racecraft) will end up in front.

If they are a faster driver they might not have the pace to overtake you at that point of the race for being heavier with fuel and/or running harder tires. This is where you stand a chance against them. And then, again, generally a faster driver won't lose much time finding his/her way around you.

[Jay Gabriel]

My thought is, defending a spot on the track slows both drivers. If one driver has pitted and the other still needs to pit, then you are not racing for position. It's not like a full course caution is going to show up and change anything.(like it does in the real world)

[Martin Smith]

I try to assess who I'll be fighting in the last 10 minutes and save my battling for those people, even if I encounter them before the end of the race.

It's not a question of etiquette though, you race whoever you want whenever you want if it's for position. It's just a matter of strategy.

[Tim Cullingworth]

I would not defend my place, but I would not just let them past either.

Keep to the normal racing line and just be ready when they manage to put a move on you.

[Russell Sobie]

Battles are fun, and this is Internet Points so the stakes are pretty much non-existent. Defend. Always defend. It's good practice even if it is eventually futile.

But you know, you do you.

[Simon Meisinger]

Depends on how much faster, if they're like half a second faster, I'd fight them. If they're in a totally different league, I just let them go because it would only cost us time.

[Simon Speth]

Just my two cents: Example from GT3 at Nürburgring: Me and leader did a Pitstop at roughly 30min mark. I tried to undercut with switching to softs. He pitted a lap later, he came out of pits close to me and we fighted for the win even if we were just P5 and P6 at that moment. (This battle is reasonable as we both had decent gap to P3 so could aford to loose some time)


Then I approached a car that did not pit driving in P1, it had meds on for about 45mins already. Me with fresh softs and trying to get away from batteling guy behind me was having a pace advantage of nealy 1.5 seconds a lap. He defended like it was going for the race win with driving defensive lines, blocking, and even edgy stuff like driving one off the track in mercedes arena. (This battle is totally unreasonable as he would fight for P5 after his mandatory pit stop, with defending he went around 1s a lap slower than nomal and I was 2.5s a lap slower including almost an incident and position lost against the guy behind.. All in all the guy lost 10-15 seconds in that fight resulting in 3 positions lost at the end of the race... he finished P8 or so)


So you can choose: fighting "nice" fights or be smart and race for top position.

[Donnchadh MacGarry]

I pretty much agree with the 3 Simon's (there are a lot of them on SRS), Martin and anyone else who has that train of thought, it really depends on who it is. Simon Speth gave a great example of when not to do it. I generally base it off qualifying, I take note of who was near me and who was much quicker than me, and then use that to help influence my decision if it comes to it in a race. This has become easier the longer I've raced here as I've gotten to recognise names and know how we generally compare pace wise. 

If they have pitted and I haven't, we aren't in the same race and are only slowing each other. There is also a higher chance of that person behind getting frustrated and forcing extra hard to make an overtake, meaning there's a higher likelihood of a crash. In this scenario I generally drive passively and let them by, generally a light brief coast early to midway on the straight is the easiest way as it gives them a chance to get by before the upcoming turn and so we can both take the ideal line.

If we both have pitted where I might have undercut them, then of course I will battle to hold my position as that was the whole point of conducting the undercut. If its very late in the race too, then I will battle more strongly but still keep it respectful. This is all assuming both drivers are on the same lap. If a person is a lap ahead of you and then comes out of the pits behind you, it is a blue flag scenario and you should obviously let them by as soon as it is safe to do so. I'm sure you know that already though.

---

Not to deflect your question to much, but I'd like to bring up a slightly different scenario/question that is still roughly on the same topic. Suppose Driver A comes out of the pit behind Driver B, but Driver A is a lap down. Driver A has just put on fresher faster tyres. meaning they can run faster than Driver B and now has the pace to keep up and even force an overtake. However the question is, should Driver A make that overtake and try to unlap themselves? This is kind of like that famous incident in F1 between Ocon and Verstappen at Interlagos, where the two clashed on the Senna S when Ocon tried to unlap himself. My opinion is that unless Driver B in front clearly makes way for Driver A to go by, then Driver A should just sit behind at a safe distance and coast if they get too close. I feel that Driver B is under no obligation to let Driver A by and thus can chose to stay out in front if they think that is the best option for them. I had two situations like this recently that I would like to use as an example. Note: This isn't a discussion about an incident and protesting, but more a set of actual SRS race examples and what the outcomes were due to the decisions the drivers made.

Once in a Mazda 787b race at MoSport, where I was running 4th. I did my mandatory pitstop where I switched to softs since I was getting repairs from an earlier crash and so it was worth my time to change them. When I exited the pits I came out directly behind 1st, so I was one lap down on him. 1st had pitted already and didn't change from the hards he started the race on. This meant I had much more pace then him and was stuck behind him. I didn't force a move at all though, I just hung back and coasted when I felt I got too close, generally hanging about 1.5-2 seconds behind. I didn't want him to feel I was going to try and force a move, because if he thought I was trying to then he would have taken some defensive lines and slowed himself down. I didn't want to interfere with his race at all, as I knew the driver in 2nd was catching up and so slowing 1st down by even 2 seconds could have cost him the race win. After a few laps my tyres wore out anyway and so 1st began to pull away from me. At that stage I also coasted for a few seconds on one straight to let 2nd by easily, since he got to within 2-3 seconds of me and so it was a blue flag scenario. I felt I behaved in the correct manner here, I didn't want to spend 10 seconds coasting to create clear room between me and 1st, but I felt I hung back enough so as not to disturb 1st's race. It wasn't a tough decision for me though, as I wasn't in a battle with someone for my position. Even if 5th was directly behind me (on the same lap as me, so also 1 lap down on 1st), I still wouldn't have tried a move on 1st to unlap myself. If this hypothetical 5th started pushing aggressively then I would have just let them by and let them decide themselves if they wanted to unlap themselves. I don't feel it would be fair and worth battling to hold on to 4th if there was a chance it would have caused us to slow down or hit 1st.

The other situation I had was in a very recent race at Suzuka, except this time I was the person a lap ahead of a person who came out just behind me in the pit. I hadn't pitted yet, so I knew instantly at that moment I should pit the next lap to avoid this awkward scenario as soon as possible. However the person behind didn't even wait one lap to see if I still needed to pit and tried a late move down the back straight into the final chicane. There was no contact and if we were on the same lap it was a perfectly acceptable move, but it both cost us at least 1-2 seconds and in this scenario I thought it was a pretty foolish move to make. I accept they wouldn't have know if I had pitted or not, but they could have at least waited a full lap to see if I would be smart enough to take one if I hadn't.