Virtual Safety Car

Zerkfitting

Zerkfitting

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I understand that the F1 virtual safety car means drivers must reduce their speed to some percentage. I'm wondering how officials enforce it. I can't believe a driver can run the proper speed on their own (they would be tempted to fudge the speed). Is there a car feature that limits the speed to the correct virtual safety car speed?

I've also noticed that when F1 uses a real safety car, teams can pit while the car paces the field. The luck of the draw allow some teams to take advantage of a free pit stop and that situation has influenced the outcome of a race on occasion. F1 can't do an American style caution for a couple of reasons, each pit services two cars and the pit lane is usually too small for easy blending of many cars entering and leaving the pits. I think they should close the pits when the safety car is on the track.
 
Might not be not as workable as it might sound, but maybe the FIA could remotely engage the pit lane speed limiter and slow all the cars equally. Give them a 5 second countdown like WEC does with yellow flags. Drivers will cheat the VSC any way they can, but this would eliminate that, or at least curb a bit of it.

I think it would also be a good idea to prohibit working on the cars during a red flag. If everyone has to pit under green that eliminates a yellow screwing someone over.
 
There isn’t really a limiter button like there is for when you’re in pits since it’s set to percentage of a reference lap time and not a certain slow speed. I forgot what exactly it is but it’s something like reference lap time + 30%, and they have to maintain a positive delta through all of the various sectors and mini sectors. A 1:30 lap becomes a 1:57 under VSC and the engineers usually remind them to “stay positive”, meaning their dash is reading +.100 if they’re one tenth slower to the required lap time through their spot on the track at the moment.
 
I'm reminded of an attempt by IRL (or maybe it was CART?) to maintain driver intervals during cautions. The notion was everyone would restart with the same separation they had before the yellow. I recall it involved displays around the track showing drivers showing incrementing interval numbers. The drivers were expected to run at a pace that kept them seeing the same number as they passed each display.

Of course nobody cheated on that. :XXROFL:
 
Charlie Spencer said:
I'm reminded of an attempt by IRL (or maybe it was CART?) to maintain driver intervals during cautions. The notion was everyone would restart with the same separation they had before the yellow. I recall it involved displays around the track showing drivers showing incrementing interval numbers. The drivers were expected to run at a pace that kept them seeing the same number as they passed each display.

Of course nobody cheated on that. :XXROFL:
Click to expand...
Are you talking about the "pacer" lights they used for a few years at Indianapolis? Bobby Unser admitted he figured out how to cheat it.
 
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