|
The thing we're not really discussing here is the quality of the entries now days.
We had SC periods before. The difference was that cars broke a LOT more back in the day, so even SC periods made no real difference. Now, mechanical issues are actually the exception, not the norm. It's now expected that a manufacturer backed entry will NOT have mechanical issues. This alone makes things much much tighter.
If you look at 1996 (picked a random year), the gap between 2nd and 3rd was almost 50 laps. Less than half the field finished. There were 11 FCYs. So even if you gave 2 laps back per yellow (double today), then the 3rd place car was 30 laps off the lead.
A big reason it is tighter now is cars now break a LOT less than they used to.
|