Teeeman wrote:The rule violated was use of liquid lubrication and intentional formation of bushings. Use of water in the build is not illegal, but intentional bushings are.
This contradicts part of what you communicated to me privately. While I continue to retract my comments about supposed claims that evaporated water is a "liquid lube", I no longer retract my comments about the inability to distinguish between lubes (graphite) and "bushings" (clumped graphite).
Teeeman wrote:I would ask that anybody with a firm and publicly stated opinion the tear down was wrong please provide a solution to how the bad rule could have been gently but effectively enforced.
Just brainstorming...
- Fix the unenforceable rule. ("There is no right way to do the wrong thing.")
- Rely on the honor of all participants not to violate the unenforceable rule knowingly, and on the competence of all participants not to violate the unenforceable rule unknowingly.
- Have race personnel observe the lubrication of all cars, and impound the cars after they are lubricated. For a regional derby, that means that all the local derbies have to observe and impound the cars on your behalf.
- Switch the regional derby to an unscheduled, unscored format without trophies, so the best cars in the region can be seen by a wider audience, but without hard feelings over who won by (intentionally or unintentionally) violating unenforceable rules.
- Evaluate whether the regional derby is supporting the real purpose of your organization's derby, and continue to hold the regional derby only if it does so. (The real purpose of our derby is not to see which car crosses the finish line first.)
I know, they aren't the kind of suggestions you're hoping for. But I agree with Randy. You can't enforce the rule with pre-race inspections, and you can't enforce the rule with post-race tear-down inspections. It seems to me that your post-race tear-down inspections offer little benefit.
Furthermore, I believe that once a car passes inspection, it should race. Disqualifying a car after the builder(s) can no longer correct the problem is wrong, IMHO.
Furthermore, I think it is unreasonable to expect participants to understand that illegal "bushings" can include clumped graphite that results from certain application techniques. Leaving it to the inspector to determine whether the "bushings" are intentional or inadvertent just compounds this problem.