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Old 7 May 2012, 15:00 (Ref:3070688)   #98
b195
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Join Date: Nov 2003
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Adelaide
Posts: 46
b195 should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
I would agree with what is said there, however that misses the exit from the previous corner (Kolb), where Frosty drives up the inside of Tander with a significant overlap. However Tander continues to move over on Winterbottom, with both Frosty's and Reynolds' onboard cameras indicating that Tander pushed Frosty very close to the edge of the track.

So as I see it, it goes: Tander squeezes Frosty out of Kolb, Frosty moves back at Tander, contact is made, they separate, then Tander moves back towards Winterbottom and contact is made again. To me that means Tander's moves initiated both contacts, the first one indirectly (by pushing Winterbottom so far to the right despite him already having an overlap) and the second one directly. If Winterbottom hadn't been alongside the first move might have made sense (ie to block a car attempting to pass), and even if you get squeezed, there should also be a limit as to how far a squeezed driver pushes back, but I felt Frosty was within his rights to move Tander back to the left considering Tander had just done the same thing to him.

All in all, I think no action was a fair enough decision - I couldn't blame either Tander or Reynolds "enough" to lay the blame at either of their door enough to deserve a penalty.

What I didn't see was where Tander said "when Whincup passed me, he's on softs, that's cool he was passing me, but he just sort of hit me and ran me wide and Winterbottom got up the inside". The only time Whincup and Tander appeared to get close was just as Whincup was completing the pass. I'm not even sure the two cars even made contact, and if so it was just a minor bumper graze, and it wasn't as if Whincup ran anything other than the line one would expect the passing car to take at that point anyway...

Re the safety car, as I understand in the case of a serious incident (fire/rollover/track blockage) they just take the first available car but in general they take the leader, though it seems the rules aren't quite written that way (but rules and how they are interpreted can be two different things).

I certainly can't remember the last time they didn't take the leader apart from when Bezzy won at Symmons Plains in 2004 (the SC there triggered by a more serious crash). I certainly don't think this time it was a serious enough incident to warrant not picking up the leader. So yes, the SC probably was implemented correctly, but OTOH, it isn't how it has been implemented in 99% of cases AFAIK. Hopefully some improvement or clarification will improve matters for the future (fingers crossed).
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