Here at Flag-to-Flag, our goal is to provide a friendly environment for fun yet competitive racing, and a key part of that is ensuring our races are as fair and clean as possible.
We fully trust your judgement and conduct on the track, but it’d be remiss of us not to have a system in place to deal with occasional unfortunate incidents. This too provides a solid foundation to set out our standards to new drivers.
We hope not to have to apply the procedures set out below too often :)
Stewards
All investigations are resolved by a group of impartial stewards who vote on what action to take, if any. We aim to investigate incidents and appeals within 7 days or before the next league event.
Reporting Incidents
To report an incident send a private message to the league organiser or head steward – public complaints tend to cause unwelcome and unhelpful conflict.
You should provide video or replay evidence, with the relevant start time, and also give a description of your view of the incident.
The stewards don’t have time to review every driver’s race footage, so it’s in everyone’s interest to be proactive in making reports. Don’t be afraid to report incidents you were not involved in – doing so will ensure a fair standard of racing is maintained.
In Assetto Corsa we are able to identify collisions that occurred during the race, but it is still worth reporting incidents, particularly when no collision occurred but you were still disadvantaged.
Appeals
Drivers can appeal any decision by the stewards. To appeal, please send a private message to the league organiser or head steward – include a description of the decision and a justification for why you believe it is unfair.
Possible Decisions
The stewards typically decide between taking no action, or giving a reprimand, a position penalty in the final standings or a DSQ in severe cases.
We place a lot of emphasis on giving the position back after an incident: if you disadvantage or collide with another driver and don’t wait for them, you are likely to receive a 1 or 2 position penalty.
A penalty given to a driver who did not finish a race may be applied to the results of the next race instead, at the stewards’ discretion, unless it is given at the last race of a league season.
The stewards can occasionally choose to give a position or time penalties of a different severity.
Reprimands
If any driver accumulates 3 reprimands in a league season, they will receive an automatic 1 position penalty. After 6 reprimands, a 2 position penalty will be applied.
Sometimes we may instead give only a verbal warning, if it is a driver’s first offence. Examples include unsafe moves on track that don’t disadvantage anyone, or rage-quitting.
Corner Cutting
The built-in corner cutting penalty system in Assetto Corsa is too harsh, so we rely on our AC FtF Rules App (v4.2) instead, which is compulsory for league racing.
Remember that you must keep some part of your car on track at all times. The tarmac and white lines are part of the track, but kerbs and astroturf are not. Warnings are given when you left the track but didn’t slow down or lose any time as a result.
Thresholds for track limits violations:
- 4 valid warnings: reprimand
- 7 warnings: 1 position penalty
- 10 warnings: 2 position penalty
- 13 or more warnings: a larger penalty or DSQ.
Substantial corner cuts or illegal overtakes are treated more harshly. We also monitor corners where cuts might not be detected by the app, and any nonsense warnings given where you made a mistake will be discarded.
Cuts are reviewed on the replay so if you slow down afterwards, the warning will be removed.
Pit Lane
The rules app also monitors your pit entry speed. You should slow down to the 80km/h speed limit before entering the pitlane, or you will receive a warning. If you make no reasonable attempt to slow down, expect a reprimand or penalty.
A track limits warning will also be given for cutting across the pit exit line when leaving the pit lane.