Steward Guide

You've been entrusted with one of the most important roles in sim racing: making sure on-track disputes are resolved fairly. Racey's stewarding system is inspired by FIA race governance — structured, transparent, and accountable. This guide teaches you how to use it effectively.

For the full technical reference, see the Stewarding Guide and Stewarding Quick Start.

Your Role

What a steward does on Racey

As a steward, you review protests filed by drivers about on-track incidents. You examine the evidence, discuss with your fellow stewards, vote on the outcome, and issue a ruling that may include penalties. Your goal is consistency and fairness — every driver deserves the same standard of review.

How you get the steward role

Your league admin assigns you through League Settings > Staff Management. They'll invite you by email or username and assign the Steward role. You'll see a new Steward section in your navigation once it's active.

Stewarding requires the league to be on a Pro or Enterprise plan. Free-tier leagues cannot use the stewarding system.

Your permissions

The Steward role grants three permissions:

You cannot:

• Assign stewards to protests (that's protest.assign — league admin only)
• Edit penalties after they're applied (that's penalty.edit — league admin only)
• See real names during blind review (only league admins and platform admins can)
• Manage league settings, roster, results, or billing

Reviewing Protests

Getting assigned to a protest

When the league admin assigns you to a protest, you'll receive a notification. Open it to go directly to the protest, or find your assignments in the Steward Dashboard at /steward.

Each protest shows:

• Incident category — contact, blocking, unsafe rejoin, track limits, jump start, pit lane, unsportsmanlike, or other
• Description — the submitter's account of what happened (20 to 10,000 characters)
• Evidence — up to 10 items (links to video clips, screenshots, timestamps)
• Lap number and corner — where it happened
• Round details — which race the incident occurred in

Blind review explained

Blind review is one of Racey's standout features. When enabled on a protest:

What you see:

• "Driver A", "Driver B", "Driver C" instead of real names
• Labels are assigned deterministically — complainants first, then respondents, then witnesses — so the same driver always gets the same letter within that protest
• All evidence, descriptions, lap/corner info, and incident categories
• Other stewards' notes and votes

What you don't see:

• Who filed the protest
• Who is accused
• Real names, avatars, or profile information

Why it matters: Even well-intentioned stewards can be unconsciously influenced by knowing who's involved — championship leaders, friends, rivals. Blind review eliminates that entirely. Your decision is based purely on what happened on track.

Who always sees real names: League admins and platform admins always see real identities, even during blind review. They need this to manage the overall process.

Reviewing evidence

When examining a protest, focus on:

• The facts — what physically happened? Who was where? What were the gaps?
• The rules — does the incident fit the selected category? Does it violate the league's code of conduct?
• The evidence quality — is the video clear? Does it show the full incident from multiple angles if possible?
• Context — lap number, corner, race situation (first lap vs last lap, battle for position vs lapped traffic)

Watch any video evidence multiple times. Check different camera angles if provided. Read the description carefully but make your own assessment from the evidence.

Conflict of interest

Racey automatically detects two types of conflicts:

• Team affiliation — you share a team with someone involved in the protest (complainant, respondent, or witness). The system flags this automatically.
• Self-assignment — the league admin assigned themselves as a steward. This is flagged as a potential conflict.

When a conflict is detected, your assignment shows hasConflict = true with a note explaining why. You should seriously consider recusing yourself in these cases.

Recusing yourself

If you have a conflict — or any other reason you can't be objective — recuse yourself:

• Open the protest from your Steward Dashboard
• Click Recuse
• Optionally explain your reason (up to 2,000 characters)

Once recused:

• You cannot vote on this protest
• You cannot add notes
• The league admin is notified and can assign a replacement
• Your recusal is visible in the assignment records

Important: you can only recuse before voting. Once you've voted, you can't take it back.

Making Decisions

Adding steward notes

Before voting, you can share your analysis with fellow stewards using private notes:

• Open the protest
• Click Add Note
• Write your observations (up to 5,000 characters per note)

Notes are timestamped and visible to all assigned stewards (but not to the involved drivers). Use notes to discuss the incident, share observations, and work toward a consensus before voting.

Voting on a protest

When you're ready to make your call:

• Open the protest from your Steward Dashboard
• Click Vote
• Write your vote (up to 200 characters) — for example:
• "Racing incident — no further action"
• "Violation — avoidable contact, 5-second time penalty warranted"
• "Warning — borderline but not penalty-worthy"
• Submit

You can only vote once per protest. Make sure you're ready before submitting.

Issuing a ruling

Once the steward panel has reviewed the evidence and voted, a ruling needs to be issued. Any steward with protest.rule permission can do this:

• Click Issue Ruling
• Fill in:
• Verdict (1-100 characters) — the short-form decision (e.g., "Avoidable contact — time penalty")
• Explanation (10-10,000 characters) — the full reasoning behind the decision
• Public summary (optional, up to 5,000 characters) — a version suitable for sharing with all league members
• Unanimous — toggle if all stewards agreed
• Appeal deadline (optional) — set a cutoff for appeals
• Submit

The ruling triggers:

• Notifications to all involved parties (complainants, respondents, witnesses)
• Discord notification if the league has it configured
• The protest status changes to Ruling Issued

Applying penalties

If the ruling calls for a penalty, apply it directly from the ruling:

Each penalty requires:

• Target driver — who receives the penalty
• Season and round — context for the penalty
• Type — one of the 12 above
• Value — numeric value (seconds, positions, or points depending on type)
• Duration — number of rounds (for suspensions)
• Reason (5-5,000 characters) — explain why this penalty was chosen
• Conditional flag — mark if the penalty depends on future behavior

How penalties affect standings: Only points deduction penalties directly affect championship standings. The scoring engine subtracts the penalty value from the driver's round total (never going below zero). Other penalty types are recorded on the driver's record but don't change point calculations directly.

Appeals

What happens when a ruling is appealed

Any involved party (complainant or respondent) can appeal a ruling. When they do:

• The protest status changes to Appealed
• All assigned stewards are notified
• The appeal includes written grounds explaining why the ruling was wrong

Who resolves appeals

Appeals are not resolved by the original steward panel. The league admin (or a designated reviewer with protest.rule permission) handles them. This prevents the same people from reviewing their own decision.

One appeal per ruling

Each party gets one shot at appealing. There's no appeal of an appeal. If the ruling set an appeal deadline, the appeal must be filed before that deadline — once it passes, the window closes permanently.

What the appeal outcome looks like

The reviewer issues a free-text outcome (up to 200 characters) for each appeal. Once all appeals on a ruling are resolved, the protest automatically transitions to Appeal Closed.

The Full Protest Lifecycle

flowchart TD
    A[Driver files protest] --> B["Status: Submitted"]
    B --> C[League admin assigns stewards]
    C --> D["Status: Under Review"]
    D --> E{Steward has conflict?}
    E -->|Yes| F[Steward recuses]
    F --> G[Admin assigns replacement]
    G --> D
    E -->|No| H[Review evidence]
    H --> I[Add private notes]
    I --> J[Vote on outcome]
    J --> K{All stewards voted?}
    K -->|No| H
    K -->|Yes| L[Issue ruling + penalties]
    L --> M["Status: Ruling Issued"]
    M --> N{Party appeals?}
    N -->|No| O["Status: Closed"]
    N -->|Yes| P["Status: Appealed"]
    P --> Q[Review appeal]
    Q --> R[Issue appeal outcome]
    R --> S{More appeals pending?}
    S -->|Yes| Q
    S -->|No| T["Status: Appeal Closed"]

Best Practices

Consistency is everything

The most important thing you can do as a steward is be consistent. Similar incidents should get similar penalties. If contact in Turn 1 on Lap 1 gets a warning one week, the same kind of contact shouldn't get a race ban the next week.

Keep notes on past decisions so you can reference them. Some leagues maintain a precedent log — ask your league admin if one exists.

Focus on the incident, not the driver

It doesn't matter if the driver is the championship leader or dead last. It doesn't matter if they've been penalized before or never. Judge the incident on its own merits. Blind review helps with this, but the principle applies even when you know who's involved.

When in doubt, discuss

That's what steward notes are for. If you're unsure about an incident, write your observations and let other assigned stewards weigh in before voting. Two or three perspectives almost always lead to a better decision than one.

Write clear reasoning

Your explanation isn't just for the drivers — it's for future stewards who might face a similar incident. Explain what happened, what rule was violated (or why it wasn't), and why you chose the specific penalty. "Driver A hit Driver B" isn't enough. "Driver A braked 20 meters later than the previous lap and made unavoidable contact with Driver B at the apex of Turn 3, resulting in a loss of position for Driver B" gives everyone a clear picture.

Common scenarios

Related Guides

• League Admin Guide — how admins set up stewarding and assign stewards
• Driver Guide — how drivers file protests and appeals
• Quick Reference — permission matrix and workflow cheat sheets
• Stewarding Guide — the full technical reference