You Be The Judge (Revived)

Back around 2000-2001, before YouTube made it easy, I would post sequences of single video frames on the original version of this site to highlight questionable calls made by track officials.  I called that section of the site "You Be The Judge".  More recently, the calls have been much better, although I'm sure some would disagree with that statement.  Based on this incident, maybe it's time to bring back "You Be The Judge".

Your comments welcome.

This clip highlights what I'm sure everyone agrees was an unfortunate call.  Many critics of the track and track officials tend to think there is always some agenda behind every missed call, but in my capacity as videographer, I get to watch the races more times that just about anyone else and also hear what officials are saying about particular calls.  (BTW, when you purchase my videos, YOU get to hear what the officials say too!)

After doing this for over ten years now, I can safely say that most, if not all, officials are trying to make the right call.  They do not have the benefit of instant replay immediately after an incident and must make the call based on what they, or other officials, remember seeing.  On numerous occasions, fans and racers alike have told me that the video is different from what they remember seeing.  That could be caused by the camera angle or simply the fact that the person didn't see everything that happened, maybe catching only the end of the incident.

The call made in the example above probably falls into the latter category.  If you miss the first part of the clip and only pick it up around 15 or 16 seconds in, you might have made the same assumption as the official did and think the 14 car caused the 7 to spin. 

In a perfect world, the entire track would be covered by the officials at all times, but since one doesn't know where the others are looking at any given point in time, that will seldom be the case.  Do bad calls happen?  Yes they do!  But my opinion is that track officials (at least our local track officials) do the best they can with the information they have and sometimes they get it wrong.  What amazes me is how often they get it right!