It gets abused yes, yet the rules are still a mystery to me. You now ghost as soon as the penalty time starts decreasing, normally when slowing down yet there's a few spots on some tracks where you can shave off and ghost by lifting off the gas. As a result people were serving penalties in front of the pit again and then they go solid as soon as the time depletes, which you can't see when approaching, so they might go solid one inch in front of your bumper, which happened to me.... twice.
However in one race on nurb 24h people with penalties were drafting through me at full speed, I had a penalty as well and also saw other cars with penalties go through each other. Yet when I tried to test it out in another race I just draft bumped into the car in front of me on the long straight instead of going through.
So no, you don't automatically ghost with a penalty, yet I have seen plenty instances where people with penalties went straight through other cars. Perhaps when you have a penalty you can't hit penalty free cars (as a crude harassment protection?) or the higher penalty car can't hit lower penalty cars. Of course since the system only guesses who hits who it might all be random in practice.
It's a confusing mess creating yet more problems and uncertainty.
I even just did one with a 9 second lead on the last lap and almost lost, I deserved to for that rubbish really and I was only in front because the fastest driver (at the moment) made a mistake.
... car was awful though, rear wanted to step out in every corner and because I don't do TCS/CSA I just short shifted whole circuit for better stability out of the corners and also better fuel consumption.
well done
