New safety car rules… April Fools?
Discussion
I won’t try and explain the rules, they need to be read. Three safety cars as normal, but then what appears to be some sort of multi lap merry go round of Merging, Pass Around and Drop Back. Meanwhile the pit lane entry and exit opens and closes at various times. I’m sure the design of this is to not penalise drivers who get caught out, but what does a safety car offer which FCY doesn’t? At least with FCY there is no penalty and pits stay open, but with this new process there will be cars having to pit due to their cycle, then holding, losing position, then rejoining, then pass around, then drop back. And this is down to the teams to manage or they get a 2 lap stop go. Honest mistakes could ruin the entire race. Maybe I’m just not seeing the genius of this plan.
Vette_1978 said:
what does a safety car offer which FCY doesn’t?
The obvious answer is big gaps in the traffic so Marshalls and track workers can move stuff about etc. Also the Race Director can control the speed of the safety cars if need be. FCY just means a slower constant stream of race cars.Safety cars at LM have always been a bit of a lottery as to which one you get put behind so anything to try to address this I think is a good thing - will it work? I guess we'll find out...
Fairly sure they’ve changed FCY to close pits unless it’s an emergency fuel stop or tyre repair etc. Or does that not apply at LM?
Personally I don’t like watching FCY as a real boring watch. For Le Mans they don’t really do FCY or need to.
Long periods of barrier repair or significant crash at Le Mans (and other races) the safety car does get the field bunched and then allows periods of clear track for the Marshalls to get on with stuff. Saw a trailing oil leak on racing line through chicanes there and this type of incident hard to sort under FCY.
Hope rules don’t extend periods too long. Assume you’d start with classes separate like IMSA. But it gets irritating if 23 hours of racing ignored and it all comes down to 30 min sprint race at end.
Personally I don’t like watching FCY as a real boring watch. For Le Mans they don’t really do FCY or need to.
Long periods of barrier repair or significant crash at Le Mans (and other races) the safety car does get the field bunched and then allows periods of clear track for the Marshalls to get on with stuff. Saw a trailing oil leak on racing line through chicanes there and this type of incident hard to sort under FCY.
Hope rules don’t extend periods too long. Assume you’d start with classes separate like IMSA. But it gets irritating if 23 hours of racing ignored and it all comes down to 30 min sprint race at end.
I guess my worry will be that as soon as Eduardo utters the safety car on track line, that we than know there will be a 30 minute reshuffle which will then artificially reshuffle the classes and in effect restart the race. So if Corvette have a 2 min lead going in to the last hour, and a safety car comes out, that with 30 mins to go that advantage is lost. Now, if Corvette are 2 mins down and running second it’s a different matter.
I think F1 has shown that safety car rules are a complete fiasco.
Nobody should be put at an advantage or disadvantage by a safety car/pit stops. I know the Americans think that "bunching" makes it more exciting, but nowadays with different strategies, it puts the cars at the front at a disadvantage e.g. if they're running on old tyres. And pitstops under Safety car or FCY need a time penalty at the pit exit.
Nobody should be put at an advantage or disadvantage by a safety car/pit stops. I know the Americans think that "bunching" makes it more exciting, but nowadays with different strategies, it puts the cars at the front at a disadvantage e.g. if they're running on old tyres. And pitstops under Safety car or FCY need a time penalty at the pit exit.
RL17 said:
Bathurst was good let the stragglers go past safety car but only a minute or so before SC comes in. Bit trickier with 3 SCs
Could take ages if dick around and have a SC for each class at the end
It gets them out of the way without gifting the lap back which I though was a decent way of doing things Could take ages if dick around and have a SC for each class at the end
Peugeot are back, the cynic in me says this will present a fantastic opportunity for the ACO to give them more of a helping hand whenever there is an incident. It used to be a regular occurrence with Peugeot (and Pescarolo before that) never demonstrated more blatantly than in 2010: Three laps into the race the three Peugeot's led with the Audi R8s harrying them, then "our Nige" crashed his Zytek and the three safety cars came out. It didn't seem possible to slot one between the third place Peugeot and the R8 in fourth but they did; thirty minutes later, when the race restarted that safety car had dropped the Audi's back by 57 seconds!
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it's time to place a bet I just hope that they don’t go towards the IMSA model. A lap lost should stay lost, not repeatedly be given back to arrificially keep more cars in the frame for the last hour.
Don’t get me wrong, the yank “way” is fine for entertainment value, but imo totally unsuitable for the worlds greatest race. It’s meant to be hard, that’s the point!
I also don’t see the need to “get stragglers out of the way”. This is multi class sports car endurance racing, not GP2. Half of the whole point is the careful balance between risk and reward - do you fall in line and lose 4-5 seconds through the Dunlop esses, or do you send it round the outside of the 488 and stay in the fight for the lead? Sometimes it works, others you get a McNish moment!
Seems strange to me that after years and years of stability, they want to mess with it all. IMO the only thing needed was to have the 3 safety car trains follow a fixed time gap, removing the Peugeot effect - but I think the ACO like having that lever to pull
Don’t get me wrong, the yank “way” is fine for entertainment value, but imo totally unsuitable for the worlds greatest race. It’s meant to be hard, that’s the point!
I also don’t see the need to “get stragglers out of the way”. This is multi class sports car endurance racing, not GP2. Half of the whole point is the careful balance between risk and reward - do you fall in line and lose 4-5 seconds through the Dunlop esses, or do you send it round the outside of the 488 and stay in the fight for the lead? Sometimes it works, others you get a McNish moment!
Seems strange to me that after years and years of stability, they want to mess with it all. IMO the only thing needed was to have the 3 safety car trains follow a fixed time gap, removing the Peugeot effect - but I think the ACO like having that lever to pull
Some Gump said:
I just hope that they don’t go towards the IMSA model. A lap lost should stay lost, not repeatedly be given back to arrificially keep more cars in the frame for the last hour.
Don’t get me wrong, the yank “way” is fine for entertainment value, but imo totally unsuitable for the worlds greatest race. It’s meant to be hard, that’s the point!
I also don’t see the need to “get stragglers out of the way”. This is multi class sports car endurance racing, not GP2. Half of the whole point is the careful balance between risk and reward - do you fall in line and lose 4-5 seconds through the Dunlop esses, or do you send it round the outside of the 488 and stay in the fight for the lead? Sometimes it works, others you get a McNish moment!
Seems strange to me that after years and years of stability, they want to mess with it all. IMO the only thing needed was to have the 3 safety car trains follow a fixed time gap, removing the Peugeot effect - but I think the ACO like having that lever to pull
there have been some very unlucky teams getting behind the 'wrong' safety car through no fault of their own... I remem the pink pig had a relatively easy win for that reason.I like Porsche and Michael Christensen comes from my region in Denmark - even so, I had to admit it was somewhat unfair...Don’t get me wrong, the yank “way” is fine for entertainment value, but imo totally unsuitable for the worlds greatest race. It’s meant to be hard, that’s the point!
I also don’t see the need to “get stragglers out of the way”. This is multi class sports car endurance racing, not GP2. Half of the whole point is the careful balance between risk and reward - do you fall in line and lose 4-5 seconds through the Dunlop esses, or do you send it round the outside of the 488 and stay in the fight for the lead? Sometimes it works, others you get a McNish moment!
Seems strange to me that after years and years of stability, they want to mess with it all. IMO the only thing needed was to have the 3 safety car trains follow a fixed time gap, removing the Peugeot effect - but I think the ACO like having that lever to pull
Have only just seen this as was catching up with WEC race after being away at WE
Didn’t see much of IMSA race, GTP was hit in a pass around too.
Final 30 or so mins of IMSA 12 hours Sebring 2023 in dark after late safety cars - pretty action packed
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=you+tube+sebring...
Didn’t see much of IMSA race, GTP was hit in a pass around too.
Final 30 or so mins of IMSA 12 hours Sebring 2023 in dark after late safety cars - pretty action packed
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=you+tube+sebring...
Edited by RL17 on Tuesday 21st March 12:53
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