Let's talk about the revised Safety Car procedure for 2024?

[clkgtrlm1]

Belated Happy New Year.

New topic, Purely because there has been no chat for a long time......................

What do we think about the ACO / WEC revised regulation for the the Safety Car procedure for 2024?

Anything got to be better than last year surely?

clk

[Werner]

Well, abandonment of the sorting of cars by category will for sure shorten the duration of each safety car phase, this simply took to much time last year. Compared to the pre-2023 procedure each safety car phase was about 15-20 minutes longer in 2023. I'm still not a fan of the "wave-by. Probably more exciting for the race but very questionable from a sporting point of view. Why the hell should cars which have lost already a full lap get this back?

[Barry]

Not a great fan of safety cars at LM, seen to many races ruined by them, the year the Pink Pig won, 3 of the 4 classes were basically over before half way due to safety car interventions and insurmountable time gaps when the race resumed. The cars are far to reliable these days, if a lap or even 3 minutes is lost it is very difficult to make that up.
I much prefer full course yellows.
I appreciate that some issues require the safety car to provide gaps in the traffic, however I think more situations could be covered by a FCY, especially if severe penalties were dished out to drivers taking the p*ss.
I would almost prefer to see the race red flagged, the cars pulled into the pits and then, on resumption, released in the order and time gaps than the vagaries of a SC.

[Werner]

I fully agree, Barry. I also wondered occasionally why they sent out the safety cars just to retrieve one car out of the gravel on a 9 mile track. "Slow Zones" would have often been sufficcient.

[Lorry]

The safety car has corrupted the results in F1 all too often in recent years, as cars run to different pit stop and tyre strategies but can win a free pit stop.  LM is a little simpler, and the old system was about as good as you'll get, but the merge and pass around mean you don't just gain a 20 pitstop, but you can gain up to a whole lap.  I suspect this comes from the Nascar principle of bunching the cars up to create more overtaking, but the whole concept is unfair.  Next clever idea will be having a raffle, and if you win you gain a free lap