Using on the experience and feedback gathered throughout the past few seasons, we have decided to update the THR Catalog of Penalties. The updated catalog is valid with immediate effect. In the interest of consistency, it will already be applied for the decisions concerning Round 1 of the Audi 90 GTO championship.
Changelog
1) No decay for penalty points
If you receive a penalty point in a championship, you will retain it until the end of the season of that championship for all purposes.
To better understand why this is a change: penalty points serve two purposes. First, to reduce the number of points a driver found guilty of an incident has in the championship. Let's understand these as "passive penalty points". These did not decay in the past and will not decay in the future either. The second purpose "active penalty points" is to track how frequently and heavily drivers got in trouble during the same championship, and to apply further penalties based on the number of penalty points gathered by a driver. This second purpose previously had a decaying factor built into it, clearing the active penalty points of a driver once they had 3 clean races without adding any penalty points to their score. That decay was removed in the interest of fairer racing across the entire season.
2) Revision of the weighting of default penalties
In several past championships, we noticed that the intensity of a penalty didn't always make a tangible impact against the advantage a driver got from causing an incident, especially in 1 vs 1 situations. That is why this category received the highest boost in default penalty points. Also, an intensification can add up to 2 points to any penalty now.
3) More transparency on intensified/mitigated penalties
The new penalty matrix is meant to help drivers understand some examples of what may lead to intensified/mitigated penalties in incidents they caused.
Thank you to everyone who provided feedback to us.
