[jgannon]

I really don't mean to derail this thread, but I'd like to point out for future GDC consideration that this is an excellent demonstration of how defective the wording of bumper rules was this year. Calling the rules unclear is inaccurate; they are very clear... the only problem is that everyone seems to find them clear in a different way. If there are any two people on this planet who should accurately understand these rules, they are Dave Lavery, a guy who helped write the rules, and Russ Beavis, the guy in charge of telling inspectors how to enforce them. For there to be this substantial of a disagreement this late in the season is really troublesome.

I don't think there's any question that literally hundreds of teams are going to show up to competition with illegal bumper configurations this year. For many of them, it won't be because they didn't read the manual, but rather because they read it, applied a reasonable degree of logic, and still ended up with a different interpretation than the one intended. I'm afraid it's going to be a huge mess, I feel like it could have been avoided, and I'm very hopeful for vast improvements next year.