2014 Sandblast Appeal
Summary:
#48 penalized 10 minutes for illegal service during a fuel-only service.
#48 appealed, based on the premise of poor documentation.
Court of appeals denied the appeal, and the penalty stands.
Documents:
- Inquiry by #8 DeMasi / Kurey
- Inquiry by #7 Turner / Rhoads
- Inquiry by #48 Brandenburg / Sherwood
- Protest by #7 Turner / Rhoads
- Appeal by #48 Brandenburg / Sherwood
- Report to Court of Appeals by Anders Green
- Findings of the Court
Addendum and personal note, from Anders Green:
This was an interesting situation, as I don't feel the situation was perfectly executed by any of the parties involved. I'll summarize the lessons here:
Documentation mistake: the documentation was late and the online data, while ultimately all there, suffered from synchronization problems.
Lesson: as always, early and complete documentation IS important to give racers the best chance of competing well.
#48's mistake: changing tires during a fuel-only service.
Lesson: extra care must be taken with all documentation when competing at a new event. As the appeal is based nearly entirely documents that were available online prior to the event, it stands that the issues could have been discovered by the team before the event and a clarification requested.
#7's mistake: not being proactively sportsmanlike.
Lesson: We all want to "win it on the stages". That doesn't always just happen by itself. In my opinion, the most friendly and sportsmanlike thing that could have been done would have been to talk the #48 during service with a "Hey dude, you know this is a fuel-only service, right? Let's win it on the stages." No tires would then have been changed, and the racing would resume on the stages, where it should be. While a racer might feel like "Hey, it's not my job to do that" racers routinely lend spare parts, lend service crew people, help each other with check in time calculations, and many other things. It's no one's "job" to do anything: there is no prize money here, we are racing for fun and glory. To that end we must all strive to work toward situations where "winning it on the stages" is exactly what happens. I know that this is not a universal philosophy in motorsports, but I feel that this action would have been the best possible grassroots racing action.