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Did I punt a guy like a jerk?
Once you already have overlap on a lapped kart, the only real decision is whether you abort or accept the contact if they close the door. Checking up is clean, and it is also how you donate a place late enough in a heat that a quicker kart behind you will not give it back.
I still think most club stewards will call that avoidable if you had room to back out, even when the other driver turned in. Karts do not absorb a side-by-side hit the way a car does, so holding it can take you out as easily as them. Where do you draw that line?
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The line most stewards draw is simpler than the argument on track. If the quicker kart still had room to lift after the overlap showed itself the contact is treated as avoidable, even when the slower driver turned in. Closing the door is a real fault in its own right, but it does not excuse the one who could have abandoned the pass and chose not to.
What usually happens at club meetings is that the blue is late or missing altogether, so the fellow being lapped may not know you are there until you are already committed. That is why easing out of the overlap and waiting for a safer place is the procedure, not holding a half overlap into a corner you cannot both occupy. Checking up may cost a position to the kart behind you. Collecting both machines, or a penalty that puts you behind him anyway, costs rather more..
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A kart has almost no crush structure, no suspension travel, and a solid rear axle, so a side hit is not damped the way it is in a car. The impulse goes into yaw almost immediately, and because the two machines have similar mass you take roughly the same velocity change they do. Overlap only means the intended paths already occupy the same space. It does not generate a force that will stop the other driver turning in.
Aborting, by lifting or steering out while there is still room, is the only input that reduces closing rate. Holding the wheel into the hit is a shared impulse that often unloads a rear contact patch on both karts, which is why both can spin. Club stewards usually call that avoidable whenever the overlapping driver could still change speed, because that is the driver who can still alter the collision.
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That groove on a dirt oval is one kart wide more often than not. A lapped kart sittin on the cushion or huggin the bottom is just runnin the only line that works, not cuttin you off.
I'd take the slower line for a corner before I lift in the slick. Checkin up mid-turn on a heavy track will stand you up and then you gave the spot away anyway, maybe spun it too. It ain't gonna hurt nothin to wait one more corner and pass where the track opens up.
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