LoT – Rule explanations / answering your questions

I started to write posts to try and explain some of the rules we have on our track days some months ago but haven’t got round to finding an easy way to share them as yet.

The idea is to try and explain why we have some of the rules we do. It may or maynot be useful.

If there’s something that you think it would be worthwhile me explaining, please drop me an email and I’ll look at adding it asap. It will take time to get most of the topics i’d like to add here, but it’s a start.

Just an overview to take into account before reading the rule explanations.

Over the next few weeks I’ll try and explain why we have certain rules in place. I know they may not all make sense, even after reading this but they are there for you – our club members safety. In addition to help reduce the work it takes to run LoT and the risk & hassle that I personally take by running it. LoT isn’t for everyone; some won’t like the rules – or me 🙂 but we’ve run more track days across a larger number of circuits than any other club and just about any organiser so generally the rules work. Our safety record around Europe is as good as anyone’s and much better than most.

LoT is a club. I’ve been running LoT without payment since it was started. Thus, taking the risk of running events is not a commercially based decision unlike with most track day organisers so I make decisions and rules based on keeping the risk and workload as low as possible. To be clear from a commercial view point we’ve always tried to break even over a year. If I’m not happy with the risk or work involved then in short the club stops, or is sold. That might be a bit blunt but its the facts for the last 20 years unfortunately. I have given the UK side away on more than one occassion now and I’ve also tried to sell the whole club on more than one occassion – it’s always for sale to the right person, but if you don’t have deep pockets, lots of spare time and are looking to earn a living from it please don’t get in touch:)

When writing rules and regulations I also take into account rules that are enforced by circuits and insurance. We probably run events at a wider range of venues than any other organiser in Europe and over a longer period of time than most. If we have a rule put in place by a circuit in the UK that makes sense and increases safety we generally have that rule across all our events. If an incident happened at Zolder as an example but we had a rule at a number of other days that would have prevented or helped with that incident we could be negligent if we didn’t also have that rule at Zolder. This is not something we would be able to defend with you, your families, in a court or with our insurance company. So generally we have the same safety rules at all events. As an aside having a clear set of rules that are the same on all events reduces confusion and ambiguity – i.e. you go to Brands Hatch and have one rule but go to Zandvoort and have another, its much easier to try and have the same rules at all events, where possible.

Likewise, if we have an incident on an event and it could have been prevented by putting a simple rule or procedure in place it would be stupid not to do so. In addition, I’ve run a few hundred races, both at national and international level. This probably means I see more accidents than most organisers would see as generally they are not involved in an organisation/clerking/race direction level at races. This experience is obviously taken into account when writing rules.

[Autor]

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