>> What are the rules re: "jumping the start" in NASCAR? Briefly:
>> [...]
>> Am I doing anything that would be considered "illegal" in either sim
>> racing or NASCAR racing?
> Well in the 1996 Winston Select a couple cars jumped the gun so they
>did another lap under caution.
Well, the Select is a non-points race also... The steward has the
option to wave off a start if the field was not properly lined up. In
the case that he never throws the green, the safety car does not come
back out, but rather the first car in the lead lap line controls the
pacing of the cars for another lap and another chance at it.
If he has thrown the green, what will generally happen is that a car
who appears to have "cheated" will be black flagged for a penalty
(usually a mere stop and go).
This is another case, where the actual rules are administered by
humans who have a pretty good way of estimating what the "intent" of
the violator was and handling it appropriately. In the Select, if I
remember, Bobby got outside Mark before the start/finish line, but it
didn't appear to me that anyone in particular was trying to "cheat."
(Now Rusty and Dale did get a really good run on the start, but that's
one of the benefits of being up front...)
The problem with anticipating the green is that you can actually drop
WAY back and really anticipate the green flag. This causes massive
trouble, particularly when more than one person does it. Many Hawaii
leagues have rules to make this illegal (and penalize, DQ, or suspend
someone [after the race]). The sim doesn't handle it right now, but
it's something that we know we need to address in the future,
particularly for multi-player... (For single player, just don't do it,
and everything is fine, because the AI cars don't do it...)
---Jim Sokoloff, Papyrus
