Safety Car Changes

[FredericRobinson]

Radio Le Mans and Dailysportscar.com reporting a move to localised speed controls for next year, along the lines of the 'ring 24, good news if we get fewer full-course cautions

https://www.dailysportscar.com/?p=18894

[Rs2oo]

What lines ? What do they do differently ?

[DS240]

Safety car... Everyone must hit a speed limit button. Everyone travels at exactly the same speed. If you need to pit, then you pit and you simply lose time and join back in whenever.

The accident site can be marshalled and if necessary cars slowed further through the site.

All clear, everyone is off again with minimum delay. Everyone is still focused because they have been maintaining their positions.

[Mellow Yellow]

But surely this would remove the potential for the ACO to manipulate the race in favour of French teams, can't see that happening

[Engineer1]

AUDI / VAG are French?

[Red Firecracker]

Rs2oo said:

What lines ? What do they do differently ?

It's a combination of the zonal caution areas used at the N24 and the Code60 used in the Dubai 24. If they can get the technology working, it should work really well and be a lot fairer than the Safety Car Lottery.

[mrmr96]

DS240 said:

Safety car... Everyone must hit a speed limit button. Everyone travels at exactly the same speed. If you need to pit, then you pit and you simply lose time and join back in whenever.

The accident site can be marshalled and if necessary cars slowed further through the site.

All clear, everyone is off again with minimum delay. Everyone is still focused because they have been maintaining their positions.

This is a quote from the link:

"To make the change we want to move towards would require an in-car marshaling system, to neutralise not the whole circuit but simply a section of the circuit directly affected by an incident. That kind of system requires a high level of accuracy from a GPS based system and I hope and believe that this will be in place for 2014.”

So does that mean that actually most of the track will be at full racing speed, with a GPS based speed limiting system engaging near the crash site?

[Red Firecracker]

mrmr96 said:

This is a quote from the link:

"To make the change we want to move towards would require an in-car marshaling system, to neutralise not the whole circuit but simply a section of the circuit directly affected by an incident. That kind of system requires a high level of accuracy from a GPS based system and I hope and believe that this will be in place for 2014.”

So does that mean that actually most of the track will be at full racing speed, with a GPS based speed limiting system engaging near the crash site?

The Code60 does rely on the driver maintaining the lower speed rather than an automatic restrictor, I believe. I can't see any team willing to have an automatic restrictor placed on their car, plus there would be the massive complexities of the different chassis and wiring integrations. Remember, the seemingly simple leader lights took longer to get working on all the LMP2 cars than the GT or LMP1 chassis due to the same issues.

[Munter]

mrmr96 said:

This is a quote from the link:

"To make the change we want to move towards would require an in-car marshaling system, to neutralise not the whole circuit but simply a section of the circuit directly affected by an incident. That kind of system requires a high level of accuracy from a GPS based system and I hope and believe that this will be in place for 2014.”

So does that mean that actually most of the track will be at full racing speed, with a GPS based speed limiting system engaging near the crash site?

I think it might just be reporting that you've been naughty, rather than some form of remotely activated speed limiter.

[Rs2oo]

Sounds like a no-brainer to me. Lost count over the years going to LMS where the safety car has totally ruined a fantastic dice between two or more cars, one pits then gets stuck in the pits waiting for the second or third safety car to pass before rejoining over half a lap behind.

[Mellow Yellow]

Engineer1 said:

AUDI / VAG are French?

Most blatent case was 2010, just a few laps into the race ( See here), Peugeots 1,2,3,4 immediately followed by the Audis, the article does tone it down a bit and clearly Wolfgang Ullrich had to bite his tongue. There were barely a couple of seconds separating the Pugs/Audis, it was a miracle (thanks to a backmarker) that the safety car managed to slot in between 4th and 5th. By the time the safety car pulled in the Audis were around half a lap down on the Pugs. It happened in previous years too, both with Peugeot and before that Pescarolo, not so much of an issue with the latter but Peugeot were more than capable of winning without the need of outside assistance. At the start of 2010 I'd have been happy to see Peugeot win but when their last remaining runner retired with just over an hour to go, I felt it just that Audi took the win.

[Rs2oo]

Mellow Yellow said:

Most blatent case was 2010, just a few laps into the race ( See here), Peugeots 1,2,3,4 immediately followed by the Audis, the article does tone it down a bit and clearly Wolfgang Ullrich had to bite his tongue. There were barely a couple of seconds separating the Pugs/Audis, it was a miracle (thanks to a backmarker) that the safety car managed to slot in between 4th and 5th. By the time the safety car pulled in the Audis were around half a lap down on the Pugs. It happened in previous years too, both with Peugeot and before that Pescarolo, not so much of an issue with the latter but Peugeot were more than capable of winning without the need of outside assistance. At the start of 2010 I'd have been happy to see Peugeot win but when their last remaining runner retired with just over an hour to go, I felt it just that Audi took the win.

Totally totally agree, I've mentioned this on here before, blatant cheating. They also let one of the Pugs out of the pits seconds in front of the pace car (can't remember the year) after stopping it at the pit exit, then at the last second, it got a green light letting it out almost in front of it. These changes should be implemented before Peugeot or another top French team re-enter.