The way in which Reef is portraying this isn't fair at all.
That sentence has nothing to do with Reef in particular, but he's chosen to misread and misinterpret it for his own purposes.
In the NBS race, Reef was behind an incident involving the driver in question. At the moment of the incident, he shared his opinion with this driver about what happened and who was at fault. After we posted the results, the driver wanted an explanation about an infraction resulting from this incident and mentioned Reef's "on the fly" perspective from the race.
As part of my response (which I forwarded to both Reef and Skoty), I pointed out that a spontaneous opinion about an incident from an uninvolved driver does not hold much ground in comparison to our analysis of the replay. This concept is particularly relevant to this incident because that opinion simply amounted to "it was the other guy's fault." Obviously, we're not going to take this at face value and forget about the replay.
All in all, relying upon a live, play-by-play account of an incident from an uninvolved third party - after the fact - is a highly imperfect and ultimately impractical means of making a sound judgment about what happened. When our interpretation of the incident was combined with this reasoning, the driver seemed to understand and no further questions were asked nor confusion generated.
As I've explained, that sentence refers to a common and repeatable scenario. You could substitute "Reef" for any other driver.
: But somehow, by taking it way out of context, Reef has turned it into a convenient insult and used it as an excuse to release his misguided frustrations.
Some of you may be wondering why only Skoty and I were involved in the penalty decision. :cop When we assign penalties, the majority of infractions are pretty objective (think pitting stuff), but aggression-related items can be more subjective and we like to have multiple agreeing opinions about something before deducting points. Unfortunately, all three of us are rarely online at the same time, so it's not unusual for only two administrators to review an infraction. Early last week, I had compiled a fairly complete list of infractions, but I simply couldn't find Reef. Therefore, I asked Skoty to take a look at a couple of incidents, including the one in question, so that we could get the results up as soon as possible.
Due to this situation, we often amend the results after their original posting when something needs to be corrected. Reef knows how this works. Rather than providing this display, he could have easily brought up his objections in the usual manner appropriate. But he hadn't even looked at the replay before he became angry about that sentence. Thus, for him to turn around and complain about us ignoring him about the incident is absurd. As Reef himself once told another driver: "bad form on your part."
Sadly, based on his comments, it appears that Reef has officially
jumped the shark. In truth, had Skoty or I done something - anything - other than extend a full measure of respect to Reef, I'd have some understanding for his state of mind, but he's displaying the same misinformed and reactionary frustration that has foiled others in the past. As we've all witnessed from time to time, it's a lot easier to be angry than to be right. As is often the case, Reef's lack of evidence, much less reason or cause, to back up his assertions, assertions that are truly meant to be insulting (note for the slow: the sentence wasn't insulting in the least), is disappointing but predictable.
From my perspective, Reef may even undermine his own rant. If we're so unjust, so unfair, and so unreasonable, then he shouldn't want to continue to hang around a place like that. I'm not suggesting that he leave because he's a good competitor on the track. You can't, however, have it both ways: gripe, make up stuff, and go on like nothing happened. No, if Reef sticks around, then he'd effectively counter everything that he believes.
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