No more pit lane closures @ safety cars

[Miguel]

Would be so much simpler if as soon as the double yellow flag(yes an american racing term for SC sign, full course yellow) is waved everyone must deploy their pit speed limiter. Simply done. Everyone maintains relative position and no calculation have to be made or messed up... and most importantly nobody speeding thru an accident zone a la Alonso at brazil.

That would deny the advantage the SC has: keeping all cars together, lapping considerably slower than usual. Why is it an advantage? Because workers at the accident or the troublesome part of the circuit have around 1m 50s of "free work". If all cars engaged the pit limiter, you would have cars passing there every 5-10s, without a real time lapse to work without distractions.

[ISLAMATRON]

Would be so much simpler if as soon as the double yellow flag(yes an american racing term for SC sign, full course yellow) is waved everyone must deploy their pit speed limiter. Simply done. Everyone maintains relative position and no calculation have to be made or messed up... and most importantly nobody speeding thru an accident zone a la Alonso at brazil.

That would deny the advantage the SC has: keeping all cars together, lapping considerably slower than usual. Why is it an advantage? Because workers at the accident or the troublesome part of the circuit have around 1m 50s of "free work". If all cars engaged the pit limiter, you would have cars passing there every 5-10s, without a real time lapse to work without distractions.

We are talking about the time from when the yellow flag comes out to when the SC picks up the leader. The main concern is drivers racing to the pits. After that point of course the SC would pace the field, and they would bunch up behind him.

[timbo]

We are talking about the time from when the yellow flag comes out to when the SC picks up the leader. The main concern is drivers racing to the pits. After that point of course the SC would pace the field, and they would bunch up behind him.

Well, Safety car is a fast car, it would take a lot more time to make a formation in the limiter.

[Miguel]

Ah I see, I misunderstood you. In any case, I think that the system must provide some warning in advance. You certainly don't want the ECU to engage to neutral throttle in the middle of a corner when you are going fast and may need throttle to control the car.

[franciscoevaldez]

Hi, this is my first post but i've been reading the forum for some while now.

I think ISLAMATRON's proposal is very interesting, maybe the new SAFETY CAR DEPLOYED message could mean you have 5 seconds to press the Pitlane Speedlimit button. They could deactivate it upon crossing the start/finish line, that way you won't get the "race to the pits" scenario and cars re-pack closely during the first full-SC lap.

[davecooper]

Sorry if this has been mentioned before on this thread but I read something yesterday that suggested a signal would be sent out to all the ECU's to automatically bring all cars down to a "Safety car " speed. If this is to be the case, the cars would be held at their relative distances to one another on the track during the SC period. In this case, someone who had built up a good lead by the time the SC was deployed would maintain his time advantage over the second placed man etc and a SC period would not bunch everyone up again.

[shir0]

...ahhhmmm...

Just to clarify things a bit..the thinga-ma-jigga in the cars which will be used by the FIA/Race Controls to police "race to pits" scenarios during Safety Car periods are not "Remote-Activated, Engine Rev/Speed limiters" or anything akin to that. These will more like a form of "Location and Timing" mechanism which will be activated remotely but only once the Safety Car Deployed message has been sent to the timing monitors.

Once this system has been engaged, it will take note of where each of the cars are on the track (using the cars' onboard GPS transponders), relative to the pit entrance. Then, based on the car's location plotted at that exact time, the system will calculate the time it will take for each of the cars to reach the pit-lane entrance while running on a "SAFE SPEED" (benchmarks of which has not been published as of yet) as been pre-determined by the FIA. This "minimum-time-to-pit-lane" will then be displayed on each the cars display unit and will be counting down to 0.

From that fact, the rule might be that, the cars should not be able to reach the pit-lane entrance before that countdown timer expires. Otherwise, it's a penalty.

If a car/driver has decided not to enter the pits during a Safety Car period, the system still engages but will be ignored by the driver since he will not covered by that specific rule only. That rule for following that mechanism only applies to cars that will enter the pit-lane during the SC period.

Theoretically, the drivers who've decided to pit could still run towards the pit-lane at "unsafe" speeds, then braking/slowing down before they enter the service road leading to the pitlane. Another thing; how will it be decided if a car, which is not entering the pits, is running about at an "unsafe" speed? Commonly, the Safety Car itself will dictate the pace...but how about those cars behind the SC which will not enter the pits? If they are far enough from the SC when the SC got deployed, what will limit their speed until they've caught up to the SC?

[timbo]

Theoretically, the drivers who've decided to pit could still run towards the pit-lane at "unsafe" speeds, then braking/slowing down before they enter the service road leading to the pitlane.

But what is the benefit of doing so?

Another thing; how will it be decided if a car, which is not entering the pits, is running about at an "unsafe" speed? Commonly, the Safety Car itself will dictate the pace...but how about those cars behind the SC which will not enter the pits? If they are far enough from the SC when the SC got deployed, what will limit their speed until they've caught up to the SC?

Once again, what is the point of going "unsafely" fast for them? You're not supposed to overtake under yellow and if you're not going to pits you'd better save fuel.

[ISLAMATRON]

All this confusion is why it would just better if the drivers were required to engage the pit speed limiter(or maybe a higher SC speed limiter) as soon as the full course yellow or SC is displayed.

[timbo]

All this confusion is why it would just better if the drivers were required to engage the pit speed limiter(or maybe a higher SC speed limiter) as soon as the full course yellow or SC is displayed.

I think it is problematic to engage limiter at the same time in the close pack. Imagine monaco at the beginning of the race, drivers may play cat-and-mouse.

[ISLAMATRON]

All this confusion is why it would just better if the drivers were required to engage the pit speed limiter(or maybe a higher SC speed limiter) as soon as the full course yellow or SC is displayed.

I think it is problematic to engage limiter at the same time in the close pack. Imagine monaco at the beginning of the race, drivers may play cat-and-mouse.

NASCAR drivers dont seem to have a problem slowing down in a big pack when there is a debris caution. They are going faster, the packs are bigger(more cars) and packed more densly... of course the drivers would slow down to a reasonable speed before engaging the SC speed limiter. As soon as the SC limiter signal goes out there should be no passing so the first thing on the drivers mind should be to get down to the speed limit so they dont incur a penalty, and how to do it in the most efficient way. Passing or being passed is not part of the equation. Maybe the drivers could use the age old techniques of hand gestures to communicate with each other.

F1 fans could really learn something from american racing(not often is that said) in terms of how safety car & yellow flag situations can be effectively, efficiently and fairly be handled. After years of oval track racing the americans have pretty much got caution flag periods to a science and have transferred that applicable knowlegde to road racing as well.

1 thing f1 also needs to do is to decrease the number of laps an SC period takes, they are entirely too long.

[timbo]

F1 fans could really learn something from american racing(not often is that said) in terms of how safety car & yellow flag situations can be effectively, efficiently and fairly be handled. After years of oval track racing the americans have pretty much got caution flag periods to a science and have transferred that applicable knowlegde to road racing as well.

Not saying that you're nessesarily wrong I think that oval racing with apparently no visibility problems (blind corners etc) and that it is run with relatively constant speed makes it easier to manage the pace.
Still I think it is intersting to see how they handle safety-car on road courses.
What I clearly don't like in threads of such type is that most folks apparently start to blame FIA automatically. Sure FIA can't do everything right, but I won't pretend I am smarter than all those people. Let's wait and see, apparently there were successfull tests of new safety-car regulations and I just can't imagine that they don't discussed the possibility of using limiter to control speed. There probably were some arguments against it.

[ISLAMATRON]

There probably were some arguments against it.

What could they be? I have yet to think of any, any ideas?

[timbo]

There probably were some arguments against it.

What could they be? I have yet to think of any, any ideas?

For example there's no need to slow down cars that much, drivers are good at controlling their pace. Apart from Alonso's incident @ 2003 there were none I can recall. You just have to prevent drivers from speeding up to gain time before pitting, that's everything needed.

[shir0]

Theoretically, the drivers who've decided to pit could still run towards the pit-lane at "unsafe" speeds, then braking/slowing down before they enter the service road leading to the pitlane.

But what is the benefit of doing so?

could this be the answer to your inquiry:
Article 40.7 of the '09 Sporting Regs: any car leaving the pits may be overtaken by another car on the track before it crosses the second safety car line

Caution: it may still require some deep pondering on your part...

Another thing; how will it be decided if a car, which is not entering the pits, is running about at an "unsafe" speed? Commonly, the Safety Car itself will dictate the pace...but how about those cars behind the SC which will not enter the pits? If they are far enough from the SC when the SC got deployed, what will limit their speed until they've caught up to the SC?

Once again, what is the point of going "unsafely" fast for them? You're not supposed to overtake under yellow and if you're not going to pits you'd better save fuel.

aaahhmm... read my comment above...same thing, mate! some more thinking required, of course. not to mention a little bit of imagination.

FYI...I'm not against new rules or experimntation with rules. What I'd like to have are solid black and white rules if we're to have rules at all. Otherwise, I'd be seeing more of these kind of whining: "why did they give him a 25sec penalty after the race"... or "he clearly slowed down for the other car to pass, but it's just that the Almighty gave him a talent for overtaking"...or "why did a certain Brazilian got away with dangerous driving in the pitlane"...

...yada...yada...yada...