Safety Car Lap Q.

1: no.

2: MSC was already in 15th, just a lap down. All he gets to do is unlap himself, he'll still be 15th.

 

Others where also a lap down .

 

From 15th back had all been lapped.

In the "old days" of the SC, you had to hold position - So lets say Michael had just gone a lap down when it came out - He'd have been in "2nd" (albeit a lap down) at the restart.

They realized that sucked and tweaked the rule such that they now line up behind it in their true order.

Get it now?

Cheers,
Ian

 

Forget about how many laps behind you are. You can be in 2nd place and still be lapped.

It's where you are on the race track relative to the guy in front of you so 14th place might be 80secs behind the leader 15th place is 1 lap down because the lead car just overtook you.

Unlapping yourself still means you have to go around that whole lap to catch up on 14th position car who is already 80secs behind so you are just following a train of other cars.


When you pit in SC conditions you are stuck in whatever position you come out of the pits.

 

SC doesn't overtake anyone..... In fact, it waits in the pitlane and is released just ahead of the race leader who catches it up and leads the train.

Now, lets say the leader (only) has just lapped the backmarker guy. That means the car that 'appears' to be in 2nd in the train is in fact 'last'. This guy (& any other lapped cars if applicable) are given the 'lapped cars may now overtake' message - He's now allowed past and runs all the way round the lap and joins the back of the train, where he should be, albeit no longer a lap down.

Make sense now?

Cheers,
Ian

 

Yeah, it sucked big time. I think a couple of years ago during a SC situation, a Ferrari driver (can't remember who) got stuck behind a lapped car and had to deal with it while the car ahead sped on and won the race.

It was an awful situation and made me wonder why the guys in NASCAR could figure it out while the geniuses at F1 couldn't. Well, better late than never.

-F

 

These days the SC tries to enter the track where 1st place car is but the rest of the cars may still be out of sync. For example the grid behind the SC might be something like

SC 1st 9th 2nd 10th 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th

Now to fix this they let 9th and 10th unlap themselves so when it restarts its back to

SC 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th

Everyone is back on the lead lap so 9th and 10th are no longer 91secs behind the leader they are 3secs behind the leader and less than a second behind 8th place so they actually gained time to 8th place and now 2nd place car doesn't have to worry about overtaking backmarkers on the restart...


Back in the old days they didn't allow for unlapping so the SC situation from above could of looked like

SC 7th 8th 9th 1st 10th 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th

 

Rings vague bells.....

However, the initial argument (since amended as noted) was that the front runners always have to deal with lapping the backmarkers. If, say, the leader was the only one by, why should the guy in second effectively get a free pass to move up?

Further, the backmarker should have got a blue flag as soon as the track went green and moved out of the way. So it shouldn't have been a big deal......

Cheers,
Ian