The deployment of a safety car is for obvious reasons, but an
unfortunate side-effect is that any gains earned from racing are
generally negated as the field bunches up directly behind the lead car.

Would it not be fairer to simply have an additional higher level of
'virtual safety-car, where all cars must reduce to a specific
speed-limit (just like they do in the pit lane) and the lead car becomes
the safety-car ? That way earned leads would be maintained.

I guess there would nothing practical that could be done on a red-flag
restart though ....

geoff
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On 12/12/2021 5:00 PM, geoff wrote:

The deployment of a safety car is for obvious reasons, but an
unfortunate side-effect is that any gains earned from racing are
generally negated as the field bunches up directly behind the lead
car.

Would it not be fairer to simply have an additional higher level of
'virtual safety-car, where all cars must reduce to a specific
speed-limit (just like they do in the pit lane) and the lead car
becomes the safety-car ? That way earned leads would be maintained.

The safety car has been used in F1 much longer than the VSC, which was introduced in 2015. The problem with replacing the traditional safety
car entirely is that the very bunching of the pack (which seems unfair)
is sometimes necessary to produce an adequate uninterrupted time window
for corner workers to do their job.

I guess there would nothing practical that could be done on a
red-flag restart though ....

With only the VSC available one would see more red flag situations.

--
Mark Jackson - https://mark-jackson.online/
I love being told I'm growing up wrong by people
I don't want to turn out like. - Caulfield (Jef Mallett)
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