Richard wrote:Maybe I'm missing something but an earlier race would have been worse? They started under the safety car for 2 laps then stopped on lap 3 for the rain to ease up. After that we had pretty good racing in inters for most drivers. Many of the drivers were still setting good times on inters at the end of the race.
In contrast, lets say they brought the start forward by an hour or two, then the race would have ended in very heavy rain, the same sort of stuff they started with today.
The race was going to be wet whatever time is started, and it seems to me that we were fortunate most of it took place in a window of relatively less heavy rain.
The main advantage of an earlier start would have been to reduce the time pressure and allow full use of the 4hr window in which the race can take place if necessary. There's no point having a 4hr time window when sunset is 2hrs after race start at an unlit track.
In terms of safety car deployment I think that a good rule to go by in cases like this would be that if a car has gone off due to a slippery circuit (rain, oil, whatever) then heavy vehicles can't be deployed without a safety car. Sure you could get 2 cars going off at the same place under normal conditions but the probability is much lower especially if they give even a slight lift once the yellows are out. On the other other hand, once you have a slight dip in the track where the water is deeper, or a river is forming or a patch of oil has been dropped the odds of multiple cars leaving the circuit with very a similar trajectory are hugely increased even if they do lift.
