I'm hoping this will calm some people down before they post.
First off, these are photos from ACTUAL qualifying laps that I personally stewarded. I used Pan Mode 2 to minimize distortion.
In all three cases, when I saw it on the
initial replay, not only did I thought it was clean, others that were in the room thought so as well. However, when I saved the replay and checked the angles in photo mode, this was the result. It wasn't until I focused all my attention on the left front tire on replays multiple times when I finally noticed what was going on.
When you aim for the curbing, depending on the angle you take, there are generally two results.
1. The right rear hops up, which makes the car go relatively straight. Often, that means you're at risk of hitting the wall on exit.
2. The curbing pulls the car hard right.
Given how the car understeers, it's safe to say that everyone wants to have #2 happen because that lines up the car for the exit faster than most of us can using the pad/wheel, which translates to a faster time. However, when this phenomenon happens, it brings the left front perilously close to the curb. Why? Partly because the curbing's so tall, the pull is quite sudden. The fact that the curb's a tad more squarish than chicanes at other tracks doesn't help.
The result? If the car angle's off even just a little, or if the pull's strong enough, a driver will
inadvertently have what is shown on the pictures happen to them. Worse, because of how quickly this happens, both the driver,
AND the steward will likely not realize it. Therefore, we get the end result of a lap that we think is clean, based on the two-wheels-on-tarmac rule, when it is actually not. Even in laps when the car used the curb, and it was clean, the distance between the left front and the curb was surprisingly narrow, much to my dismay.
To sum it up, this is something that simply didn't get noticed at all until this week, and unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to properly remedy it before it ballooned into this big mess.
