Post here all non technical related topics about Formula One. This includes race results, discussions, testing analysis etc. TV coverage and other personal questions should be in Off topic chat.
A local signal? Is that right? There have been times in the past when cars have been tracked at the wrong locations. For example, when Kovalainen retired at Barcelona Turn 4, Martin Brundle said that the commentators' driver tracker showed him at Turn 7 (which isn't too far from Turn 4, to be fair) - in that case, the local locator signal from Heikki was close enough that the signal got confused.
Couldn't a local transmission from the light posts be similarly confused?
Tim.Wright wrote:About the lights, I think the explanation is quite simple. I'd guess the dash lights are triggered using the GPS information of the vehicle which is then processed to decide if its within a yellow zone or not.
Given that a. Gps update rates are often in the range of upto 20hz and b. The expcted latency for the information to be sento to race control, processed, and then sent back could be about 1 secind of delay, its possible the car travels 100-200m before the display is updated.
Exactly and we 're assuming that the data refresh rate was working at optimum throughout the event, which it very well may not have been since its likely the trackside system with transmit in the 2.4GHZ band and therefore can be affected by the wet weather
Well I know race control uses the track position data of the cars for many decisions and automated analyses/actions, including automated dash light control. Now if you've ever seen those screens showing the real-time car positions on track, there always seems to be some jerkiness in their movement, hinting more towards being an inherent inaccuracy (not uncommon for position tracking systems!) than isolated errors. If so, it wouldn't be a reliable substitute for track side indicators and thus being irrelevant when investigating a possible infringement imo. (I actually disregarded the use of a transponder based system for dash light control, like DRS detection and sector timing, since such an error would be extremely unlikely.)
The situation is more complicated when electronic flag panels and flag marshals provide conflicting information. One of the aims of using panels is to allow placing the marshal in a safe position away from the track. Although flags might have precedence over panels, I wonder at what point it becomes unreasonable to expect the drivers to note a distant flag-waver.
But all those technicalities aside. With everybody being so focused on overtaking under yellow flag conditions, I miss the whole slowing down part being mentioned. As I see the overtaking ban just as an additional way to encourage slowing down. Compared to overtaking, I'm way more fuzzy about how much drivers should lift. I know FIA has access to detailed telemetry from all the cars, but how do drivers determine how much to slow down exactly? "Slowing down" just seems oddly vague compared to the usual strict rule definitions in F1.
An overtaking under yellow flag makes me immediately think about possible speeding, just as seeing an easy pass on the pit straight (being simultaneously released) can't help me wonder somebody messed up their pit limiter settings.
