I believe the current thought is.......,"you blow the hard deck, argue your case to the CD", you give a good case (possible in your case), no penalty. Carry on.

I have posted a few real world examples where some "value" for a hard deck may land someone even though the flight may be "safe".

As I stated before, you can't fix stupid, nor can you make rules to remove stupid and not possibly kill good skill.

Good discussion, not a current competition pilot but I have done local flying in 1-26 and up, regionals and Nats. In general, you will likely find (as mentioned in this thread) "winners" are not usually scraping rocks or doing other unsafe maneuvers.

I started going to contests where you picked your start time at the pilots meeting (as support/crew) and have been around as support or flying since.
Many rules changes, still stupid stuff going on (see my earlier post about a pilot with good brakes not being able to stop on the pavement on HHSC....).
Sheesh.

I still have no say in this current discussion, just following along to see what rules I may deal with down the road.