Another Possible Black Flag Explanation
A friend recommended that I take a look at the NASA (this NASA, not that NASA) club codes and regulations, specifically the instructions/explanations about black flags. We were instructed by Chief Perp Jay Lamm and maybe by Sam that a furled (rolled up) black flag pointed at a car means “hey, you! You’re black flagged, bring it on in!”
However, it turns out that the NASA rule is a little more subtle. An open, unfurled black flag means to bring it in, but a furled black flag means “warning, you are driving in an unsafe manner or you did something wrong. If you continue to do so, an open black flag will be shown to you.” Those furled black flags are pointed at the discretion of a corner worker but don’t mean that the car need exit the race.
In other words, the NASA rule and the LeMons instruction were precisely contrary to one another. My recollection may be inaccurate, but I’m pretty sure that on at least one of my phantom black flag incidents, I came in as a result of a furled black flag pointed at me.
I’m sure the corner workers were more familiar with the NASA standard rather than the LeMons standard. Not to whine, but in an ideal world, these rules would be identical; I suspect that’s really the intent, but Jay is erring on the side of caution. For future reference, I think we shouldn’t come in unless and until we see our car number on the black flag number board.
And we really need to figure out the frequency that race control is using at all tracks we race at so we can monitor that frequency and let our driver know when they’ve actually been black flagged.
I asked around briefly and the people at race control didn’t know what the freq. was that they were using. Might have to spend some time scanning for it, but we didn’t have that kind of time and I was the only one who (barely) knew how to use the scanner. Next time!