[Purist]

The ALMS cautions did get longer in those last few seasons, but not this long. They were trying to keep the overall leader from screwing up battles in the lower classes.

Now, a thought occurs to me that could help substantially. First off, no one class should have its own dedicated lap on which to pit. Have the P/PC cars pit together, and the GTLM/GTD cars pit together. This, then only requires two laps. Also, I think you can eliminate the need for wave-by's by modifying this procedure. Have ALL the cars in the appropriate classes pass down pit road on their designated pit lap. Those that don't choose to pit continue on down and stop somewhere past the pit boxes, until the pace car queue has passed, and then they rejoin. In fact, if the pace car queue is going enough faster than the pit lane speed limit, those who are just passing through may not need to stop in pit-out at all before rejoining.

The cars that did not make a stop end up ahead of those in their class that did. Wave-by's go bye-bye. And there is no need whatsoever for any cars to do any great amount of catching up to a queue, except for when the yellow is first thrown and the pace car is deployed. Unless there is an issue that interferes with the pit-in or pit-out, or clean-up takes longer, this procedure should only take three yellow laps total.

Finally, if the track crews can clean up an incident more quickly in the closing stages, to get the race back to green for the finish, they damn well ought to be able to do it at that greater efficiency at any point during the race. I don't advocate hurrying up for the sake of hurrying up, because we want to avoid mistakes. However, there should be no substantial discrepancy between how long it takes to clear similar sorts of incidents, regardless of when during the race said incidents occur.