Safety car blues

A sight seen too often in the 2018 Bathurst 12 hours-the safety car board and a yellow flag.

One of the disappointments of last weekend Bathurst 12 hour GT race was the number of safety car deployments particularly in the first 6 hours of the race. Some of the deployments were to recover cars which had stopped out on the circuit due to mechanical failure but most were for accidents. The mixture of widely varying levels of driver experience, car speed differentials and the very demanding and unforgiving track leads to many accidents.
Going back 20 years or more they did not have the safety car system at Bathurst and when an ambulance or a tow truck was out on the track the drivers merely had to slow down on the yellow flags around the incident and as they passed the ambulance or tow truck. It was a very dangerous system.
Now as soon as an incident occurs the safety car goes out and picks up the leader and then leads the field around at a reduced pace until the incident is cleared. The disadvantage of the safety car system is that it bunches up the field so in an endurance race a driver can work up a decent lead and it immediately evaporates when the safety car comes out. Secondly the safety car introduces an element of chance in the timing of pit stops. A team can make a pit stop for a driver change fuel and tyres and next lap the safety car comes out and a rival team can pit under the safety car and lose much less track time.
I cannot see any alternative to the safety car system imperfect though it is. It has made the racing much safer. My only real whinge with the safety car process on Sunday was that sometimes it looked as if the safety car should have come off a lap earlier.

A very bad day at the Mountain.

The driver of this Marc sports car - an Australian special-had a really bad 12 hour. In fact he did not make the first lap ! He hit the wall up the top of the Mountain right after the start so we had the safety car out for the first racing lap. Imagine the atmosphere in this team's pit. All that effort and money to get the car into the race and this happens. Of course it may well not have been the driver's fault. He could have been nudged but that would not have eased the pain. But at least their Adelaide Panel Repair sponsor will come in useful - although I suspect the damage may well be beyond repair