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I've worked live tracks with major incidents
under Code 60
under Full Course Yellow
under Safety Car
and
under local Double Waved Yellow.
{and that's my order of preference, although at some circuits DWY can beat SC when it comes to driver compliance}
When a local yellow just won't do, Code 60 for marshal maximum safety would be my choice. Every time.
It's 37.2823 mph (thanks Dave Patrick), slower than a lot of traffic on a 30mph roads are. How often do we walk with our backs to normal roadside traffic?
Gaps are irrelevant at those speeds. What a marshal needs is safe controlled working conditions - something lacking on many occasions when a safety car is deployed.
How often do we see
cars not catching up to the main group in front (quite often)
cars still running at race pace to catch up to the cars in front (far too often).
Code 60 implementation means that the whole field has control imposed within a matter of seconds. Likewise when the incident is cleared - all points green flag, racing recommences everywhere (and if drivers have to watch for a green, it means they're looking at the flag points)
Deploying a safety car takes time, especially for those less than life threatening incidents, usually control waiting until the leader approaches, but then again, deployment will miss the leader all too often. Then once the incident is clear, the pack may have to be reshuffled to play find the leader and there tends to be one more lap to be sure (unless the chequer is close).
For me this year has been frustrating - due to the Bianchi modifications. We could clear single seaters from Paddock bend gravel in 3 to 5 minutes under the old way of local DWY - now we have to wait for a SC deployment, wait for the majority of the field to get lined up behind it - then control lets the JCB loose. 1 or 2 laps of SC to get rid of the visitors, then one more lap to be safe - easily 4 laps of SC - in all about 10 minutes on Brands Indy - and as for crash prone series that will only use SC.. what a waste of track time.
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