One day soon the current Pace Car procedure will ruin a Formula One Grand Prix and affect the results of the Driver’s World Championship in a major way.

We inherited the system from the United States where spins and accidents on the Ovals are quite frequent and luckily, not too dangerous. The majority of their races are exceptionally long and the “bunching-up” of the cars adds extra interest and prevents boredom.

One of our options for F1 would be to freeze the lap times of each competitor prior to the incident and then start re-timing when the pace car came in. The aggregate times would then settle the outcome of the race.

If a car had to make a Pit Stop, then the time of visit would affect its race time, as normal. The big drawback would be the difficulty in “following” the race, particularly as a spectator at the track concerned.

Perhaps modern technology can come up with an answer?

GT