Penniless, I think you're absolutely right, and I'm glad it's a parent that's said it. The 'win at all costs' attitude certainly seems, as far as we can tell, to come in a fairly large degree from the parents. Watching cadets around the pits with parents etc., they certainly don't often look like they're having an amount of fun that's commensurate with the amount of money being spent on them. And if you're an eight-year-old with parents who have bought a massive motorhome and are paying a fortune for you to run with a team (who buy into the whole "taking cadets deadly seriously" thing because it makes them money) and whose response when you maybe don't have such a good session is "what happened? you let so-and-so get up the inside" and things like that, then you're going to feel the pressure and drive accordingly.
You can see it in the parents' attitude to driver's briefings. There are very rarely any questions or comments from the senior drivers after briefings, but there's often parents with something to comment on. I'm sure if the parents didn't take it so seriously then the kids would calm down and not treat every moment on the track as a competition. I say again, red flag in three lap practice, three months running. Something is not right with a class where that's happening.
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