Out of curiosity, I revisited the Laguna combo again. Pitstop delta is ~19 seconds (pit time + tyre change minus track time bypassed). I calculated that 1 stop (7S/8S, no fuel saving, +20s penalty) is approx 7 seconds faster than normal strat (7S/7M/H1, no fuel saving). Whereas a no stop (15S, fuel saving, +20s penalty) is approx only 4 seconds faster than normal strat. The key though is that with a 1 stop you have to push hard the whole race and if you get blocked by a slower car in the second stint, game over. With a no stop you're less affected by other cars (just make sure they pass you without sending you to shadow realm), but depending on your car stretching the tyres & fuel the whole race can be sketchy. And of course, now that the cat's out of the bag and everyone is using the loophole strat, they will all end up sharing the same piece of track and tripping over each other. If you use the "normal" strategy and run in clean air, you might end up being faster in total race time despite the on paper disadvantage
Really cool how everything works out, but I still maintain that this probably wouldn't work anywhere else because the pit delta at Laguna is oh-so-perfectly equal to the penalty time
I've seen some people comparing this to mixed compounds as well. I had been using mixed compounds to make some cars behave better even before mandatory tyre reqs were a thing (e.g. harder front on Ferrari Gr.3 to combat oversteer, harder rear on FF/4WD Gr.4 to combat understeer), so I didn't really see it as an exploit. Just an opportunity for the more "handicapped" cars to compete on equal grounds, especially when high tyre wear were involved. Is it unrealistic? Probably. But then again not being able to change your suspension setup to cure chronic handling problems isn't realistic either (e.g. excessive rear toe and LSD accel).
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