[Rules] Problem with 5 second penalty?

[Hawkwood]

How would the 5 second time penalty work if the driver behind was lapped and therefore could not complete the race.

I don't know exactly how far ahead Maldonado was of 11th place today, but he was lapped and Maldonado wasn't.

How would it work if Maldonado was only 2 seconds ahead of the guy behind, but between them was the race leader who then finishes the race?
Maldonado would then go in to complete his final race lap, but the lapped guy would not, as his race would be over.

I'm currently watching my recording of Shanghai WEC and so cannot quite remember some of the specifics of Texas today, and not really sure if I've made plain what I'm trying to say here, but just thought I'd ask

[Nicholosophy]

Originally Posted by Hawkwood

How would the 5 second time penalty work if the driver behind was lapped and therefore could not complete the race.

I don't know exactly how far ahead Maldonado was of 11th place today, but he was lapped and Maldonado wasn't.

How would it work if Maldonado was only 2 seconds ahead of the guy behind, but between them was the race leader who then finishes the race?
Maldonado would then go in to complete his final race lap, but the lapped guy would not, as his race would be over.

I'm currently watching my recording of Shanghai WEC and so cannot quite remember some of the specifics of Texas today, and not really sure if I've made plain what I'm trying to say here, but just thought I'd ask

The penalty is an addition of 5 seconds to his race time. So I'm guessing in that situation it has no affect. The problem of course is that cars can't fight to stay on the lead lap any more so what do you do?

[redreni]

Originally Posted by Nicholosophy

The penalty is an addition of 5 seconds to his race time. So I'm guessing in that situation it has no affect. The problem of course is that cars can't fight to stay on the lead lap any more so what do you do?

I don't know what they do. What I think they should do is apply a two-stage process.

So let's say there's a 20s penalty to be applied to car A, first they should look at the time index when car A crossed the line to start the last lap and compare it to the time index when the leader crossed the line to win. If there is less than 20s between those two events, car A should be classified as having finished a lap down. In our hypothetical case, let's say the leader took the chequered flag 2s after car A started his last lap, so after the penalty is applied car A is deemed to have been lapped, even though he actually finished on the lead lap.

The second stage is the tricky one - working out the order of the lapped cars, i.e. where car A comes in relation to the cars that finished the race a lap down.

I'd suggest working this out based on the most recent gaps between car A and each of the lapped cars that can be measured - again in absolute time rather than relative to the leader. A similar thing happens these days when there's a red flag - they no longer have to go back multiple laps because they use data from the timing loops to establish the order at the latest possible point before the red flag. So, in this case, don't take the postions and gaps from the last time everybody crossed the line, but from the latest point at which gaps between the relevant cars could be measured before the race ended, at whichever timing point gives the most recent information. Then apply whatever's left of the time penalty, i.e. in our example 18s, to get the final race classification.

Not perfect, but the OP is right that effectively letting somebody off what is already a very lenient form of penalty just because the leader couldn't be bothered to lap him, but did lap the cars that were just behind him, seems rather an unfair way of doing it.

[ScotsBrutesFan]

You might want to ask the question in a general form in the marshal forum, there are folks in there who work in race control for meeting and events.