This is a really interesting discussion.
I'm involved in a small club and we have racers ranging in age from 7 up to 70
I think the phrase 'work in progress' is a great one for our younger racers. With patience & time + backup from the parent (usually the dad) guidance can be given to improve their 'racecraft'. It's great when you see a young driver go from bashing the car around the track to a fast and courteous racer
The more difficult end of the scale is the older racer who should know better but drives through other racers to get around the track or uses other cars as a brake!! In a small club its extremely difficult to tackle racers like this, we try & give constructive feedback, some listen, some don't!. We do have a ‘clubman’ class which is blinky + 10.5t max so that helps with newbee’s.
We constantly joke about a bunch of grown men playing with toy cars, just to remind ourselves we do this for FUN
There's a fine line between a racing incident & poor driving, my rule is if I see a racer continually driving in a poor manner then we tend to have a word or apply a penalty and explain why they got it.In my own driving if I bump/hit a car by accident I will always say sorry about that on the podium & if I’ve flipped the other persons car I’ll wait, most of the time the other driver will just say go ahead & don’t wait.
It can be exhausting trying to run a race day; you also need to race, work on your car & deal with other racers driving standards and complaints about each other!, sure what else would you do with your Sunday
I find that certain racers get all wound up when it comes to championship days and race as if their life depends on the end result. We all want to do well + we are all competitive by nature but there are other racers on the track also trying to enjoy their racing & it is up to you to get around them & be a better driver.
I’d have to say, we sometimes tend to look at the past with rose tinted glasses :-) The younger drivers today are not all bad, in fact I find most of them are fine as long as your willing to put a bit of time into them & you get the support of their parent(s) which unfortunately is not always the case :-(