Quote:
Originally Posted by joeb
I would say, that you can't guarantee there will be cautions, or adequate periods of them to get laps back.
I don't think anybody would say IMSA has the best safety car procedures, and nobody will say they like them, but you have to keep in mind how we got here.
I can't recall all the details, somebody else please fill in if you do, but prior safety car regulations had an issue with class separation, and depending on your exact track position and when the safety car was deployed.
It was a regular occurrence to have a class leading car gain a lap on the rest of its competitors simply by where they were on track. This ruined many a race in the eyes of the teams and fans alike. So the current scheme was developed with input from the teams to make the procedure more fair.
There are probably ways to improve the system, but some of the things used around the world, like Code 60, have been said to be not possible in the US due to insurance regulations.
Some of the advantages of the current system include less messy restarts (I know it doesn't seem like that, but it's true). By allowing the faster cars to the front and separating the classes, you don't have a situation where the green is waved and a prototype is trying to cut through gt and lmp3 traffic that are in their own race. Having a car dart through like that on restarts caused problems with the old IMSA system.
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Indeed, this is a far better system than say at le mans, where you can either be lucky or unlucky to pick up a different safety car so a 10 second lead could all of a sudden be 3 minutes.
I agree that IMSAs safety car procedure eliminates some of the endurance aspect by allowing cars to get their laps back, but it also eliminates a lot of other issues too.
tbh, its the least of all the evils, provides exciting races.
And as noted above, theres not the garentee of safety cars....they ran the entire Roar 2 hour race without one....