Often I find myself racing on blackwood and the first turn is a terrifying ordeal-around 1/3 of the starts have some kind of crash as the drivers jostle for position.

you could reduce speed by having a much shorter straight or a chicane

The track is fine, its just Turn 1 divebomber heroes that ruin everything.

Is the track wrong or should people just learn that you cannot win a race in the first corner, but only lose it?
I strongly believe in the second option.

Well you can use custom grids and thereby reduce the speed into the breaking zone... but turn 1 shenanigans are usually a quality of field or discipline of field issue. However I recall league races that gave the green flag signal for their rolling starts on the back straight in Blackwood for similar reasons.

Yeah cant hardly blame the track