Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Yellow Flag = No Passing....kinda.....

So when a racer sees a yellow flag, it means something bad happened beyond the flagstation waving a yellow flag.  So there is no passing FROM the flagstation until after the inncident.  This is how every driving school, go-kart place, and racing series conducts themselves.

This is how 24 Hours of Lemons conducts itself.  Once a racer can see a waving yellow there is no passing.  Can you see the confusion? 
One: being different than the rest of the world. 
Two: where a person "sees" the waving flag is relative.  If the driver is looking way ahead he/she can see it at the begining of turn 9.  If he/she isn't they won't see it until after turn 9. 
Three: in the pictured senario, even though the inncident is at the end of the longest straight of the entire track, every one is forced to slow down to pace car speeds for the entire straight! 
Four: There have been several accidents caused by a lead car stomping on the binders in a turn because they saw a flag, the ppl behind them may not have seen it, and plow into the rear of the lead car.  This doesn't happen w/ traditional yellow flag rules, because the racer has more time to see the flag.

Unfortunatly TSB didn't realize this until 1/2 way through day two at Autobahn.  I hope any other teams out there learn from our mistake.

For instance, Aaron passed a car on the exit of turn 9, the pass was completed WELL before the flag station waving the yellow flag (Start/Finish), this resulted in black flag.