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Originally Posted by schmidder
I was here camping, what, exactly did they do?
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They chose to not meet the minimum pit stop time in the final pit stop, cutting it short by about 30-35 seconds. The drive through penalty took 25 seconds. The commentators reckoned they saved around 14 seconds, maybe closer to 10 when you take into account the pit exit.
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Originally Posted by TRspitfirefan
Congrats to Magnus Racing! What a victory! Those Audi's were certainly the class of the field today.
So........ What's everybody's view on the way Land and WRT gamed the system on the last pitstop? Clever exploitation of a mistake in the SRO rulebook....Or a blatant disregard for the spirit of the event that showed a lack of respect for their fellow competitors and for us fans. Obviously the ideal solution would be proper pitstops without a minimum time, but sadly that is not viable for many of the teams.
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It was just clever strategy. They worked out the fastest way to the end of the race, which is what the engineers are paid to do.
SRO created this problem by having over complex pit regulations. They themselves have used it to penalise teams that appear to have done nothing wrong before. So it was only a matter of time until a team used it the other way. SROs attempt to make simple rules has quite often made them hard to understand and balance. It's something WRT have complained about in Blancpain.
Not to excuse what the teams did - but is it not a bit silly that we're looking at the IGTC being marketing as a sort of World Championship, and we have minimum pit stop times? For PWC and the Pro/Am and Am classes in Blancpain sure, but for the (apparently) top GT racing series in the world?