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Lapped cars under safety car (22 posts)

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James_mc said 1 year, 7 months ago:

I think the point that some people perhaps miss is that the safety car is not so much to keep cars slow (the yellow flags and drivers can do that), but to ensure that the cars are all coming in one batch so that the marshals have clear space/time to clear up the mess or to move cars/drivers out of the way.

e.g.; Safety car takes 3 minutes to go round the track, 30 seconds for the train of cars to pass the incident scene and then 2 mins 30 to do stuff rather than 10-15 seconds as the cars circulate.

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mnmracer said 1 year, 7 months ago:

What james_mc said.

As for letting the lapped cars passed, I don’t know when they changed that (didn’t even notice), but it was probably because it kind of defeated the purpose of the safety car.

As for unfairness, as said before, the Safety Car already gives the number two an advantage in that he is able to catch up quickly. The disadvantage of overtaking those lapped cars is relatively small in comparisson.

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James_mc said 1 year, 7 months ago:

mnmracer – as you say, I suspect that keeping the lapped drivers in the train rather than have them scooting round is important, I think also the time it takes to have them catching the end of the snake means that even more time is spend behind the safety car.

I think (for what it’s worth) that the lapped drivers should hold station, partially for the “train issues”, but it’s also hardly fair that a driver in the lead (a) has his (or indeed her!) time advantage wiped out and (b)has their advantage of having already passed through the traffic wiped out too. Although I do miss the effective rolling starts that you used to get.

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moshbeard said 1 year, 7 months ago:

Rather than letting the lapped cars unlap themselves they should just drop backwards so all the cars are in order of position.

I do feel it’s a bit unfair that the leader (and any other drivers) who were miles ahead of the car behind them lose their advantage, but if they can’t stay in front then they probably weren’t meant to be ahead in the first place.

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W-K said 1 year, 7 months ago:

I feel the safety car is a necessary evil, and just regard it as one of those things that sometimes brighten up a boring race. Just like a sudden burst of rain.
This event was caused by Kobayashi, who for me spoilt an interesting end of the race. Would liked to have seen Jenson put Seb under pressure, just like Canada.

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Girts said 1 year, 7 months ago:

I think it wouldn’t be so easy to arrange it as there would be too many blue flags that could confuse the drivers. I also think it would be kind of artificial as SC makes the leading driver lose his advantage over the following car(s) anyway and getting all the lapped cars out of the way would disadvantage him even more.

I believe the current SC rules are more or less OK; there is some chaos after the restart but it is exciting as well. I would even consider getting rid of the blue flags completely.

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Icthyes said 1 year, 7 months ago:

Raymond, he was 9 seconds adrift already when they crossed the line at the start. I’d say that’s a pretty big problem, although it says more about Trulli’s place in F1 than lapped cars being in the way.

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