Ask any long-running league what almost killed it and the answer is rarely a slow server or a bad track pick. It is a stewarding dispute: a lap-one divebomb, a penalty someone thought was unfair, a decision made in a Discord argument at midnight. Drivers will forgive contact; they will not forgive inconsistency. GridChief ships a full race control system so decisions follow a process instead of a mood. Here is how to run it.
Let drivers report incidents properly
Incident reports start on your public standings page, where any driver who is logged in, has a linked iRacing account, and raced in the round can click Report Incident. The form asks for the round, the driver involved, a description, the lap and time, and evidence: an iRacing replay file upload and up to five external links to clips or screenshots. That structure matters. A report with a replay attached is a stewarding case; a vague complaint in Discord is an argument. Point your drivers at the button and watch the midnight arguments stop.
Race control is a queue, not a chat thread
Reported incidents land on the Stewarding page, the race control hub for Owners and Admins. The triage row at the top shows open incidents, open appeals, and drivers at risk, and filter lenses switch between Needs action, All incidents, Penalties, Warnings, and Appeals. Every incident starts as Pending and stays in the Needs action queue until someone rules on it; anything older than eight hours gets flagged so reports never sit unreviewed. The queue is the point: every case gets looked at, in order, by the same process.
Three outcomes, two penalty types
Reviewing an incident gives you three decisions: No Penalty, Penalty, or Dismissed, plus a notes field for the reasoning. Write the notes every time; six weeks later, when a similar incident happens, your own precedent is the consistency drivers are asking for. If you pick Penalty, you choose between a points deduction and a time penalty. Time penalties are entered in seconds, get added to the driver's interval, and finishing positions recalculate automatically, including in-class order on multiclass rounds. One rule of thumb: time penalties only work for lead-lap finishers, so for lapped or retired drivers use points instead.
You do not need a report to act
Stewards see things drivers do not report, especially when the victim is the field in general. Apply Penalty on the Stewarding page (or the steward button next to any driver on the Results page) applies a points or time penalty directly, no incident report required. Direct penalties show up on the Penalties lens like any other and can be removed from there if you change your mind. Standings recalculate automatically either way.
Warnings, and what happens when they pile up
Not every offense deserves points off. Warnings are conduct records visible only to Owners and Admins, tied to a specific round or left general, and on their own they cost nothing. The teeth come from accumulation: enable warning penalties in Settings and accumulated warnings convert automatically into a points penalty. You control the threshold, the deduction, and the cadence (every N warnings, once at N, or each warning past N), plus an optional rolling window so only recent rounds count. The Drivers at risk tile shows anyone one warning away from a penalty, which is exactly the conversation you want to have before the penalty, not after.
Appeals without the drama
Every penalty system needs a pressure valve. Drivers can appeal a penalty they received from the Penalties lens with a written reason (auto-penalties from warning accumulation are excluded, since those are managed through the warnings themselves). Appeals land in their own lens and triage tile, and ruling on one is a clean binary: Uphold removes the penalty and recalculates standings, Deny leaves it in place, both with optional resolution notes. The appeal status stays visible next to the penalty afterward, so everyone can see the process worked, whichever way it went.
Publish decisions on your terms
Transparency calms leagues down, but stewarding announcements should be deliberate. GridChief never auto-posts decisions to Discord. When your webhook is configured, the Discord panel on the Stewarding page lets you send a single decision, bulk-send everything unsent, or post a one-round summary recapping every decision at once. Each post type has its own toggle in Settings, and sent items are marked so nothing double-posts. A round summary after the final ruling reads like an FIA bulletin and ends the speculation in one message.
The process is the product
None of this makes individual calls easier; judging a 50/50 racing incident is still hard. What the system changes is everything around the call: reports arrive with evidence, every case gets reviewed, penalties follow declared rules, appeals have a path, and decisions get published once, in writing. Drivers can disagree with a ruling and still trust the league. That trust is the actual product of good stewarding, and it is why leagues with a visible process keep their grids.