Slipstream in GT Sport is Overpowered

It appears I'm going to be a dissenting voice!

I agree it's an issue trying to pull away from cars but setting a tow at 0.75s and no further is ludicrous and completely unrealistic. Get two big GT-Rs doing 170mph and you'd get a tow - albeit a small one - from 2s back, or more. Cornering, being in a tow isn't going to hurt a slower car or a road car anywhere near as much as it is a high downforce car so you can gain down the straights for free, then don't really lose anything through the corners and gain again on the next straight. I'm sure we've all tried to follow closely in the Super Formula - bloody difficult isn't it?! Yet at the same time, easier if you're ahead to break the tow.

Real life tows work from quite a long way back and it's easy for most people to see this in action in every day life, put the display on your road car to fuel consumption, go down a motorway and follow a decent sized vehicle at about 50mph and you will see your consumption improve compared to when you're on your own. This is a slipstream from between 1-2s at very low speeds in comparison to racing. Even the skinniest of the skinny - cyclists - doing under 40mph use a slipstream to save energy so it stands to reason that racing cars will save fuel by sitting in a slipstream.


In all but high downforce cars, the lead car of the train is at a disadvantage physics-wise because that's the car that has to break the air, but it does have a clear view of the track. All the points raised by the OP while valid, are just side effects of having a slipstream and the suggestions to reduce the distance for the slipstream to take effect would actually make it more unrealistic.

My opinion is they've got it pretty good from the perspective of realism, but it's causing some issues when combined with the format of qualifying and races, more so qualifying because the reduction in time allotted and increase in tyre wear has effectively made it a one shot deal
 
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Ashthebash
My opinion is they've got it pretty good from the perspective of realism
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I agree with you that there is some effect a long way back in real life, but ultimately you don't see the "car park before the last corner" situation in real life, so the effect can't have such a make or break effect on your qualifying time as it does in the game.
 
Ashthebash
It appears I'm going to be a dissenting voice!

I agree it's an issue trying to pull away from cars but setting a tow at 0.75s and no further is ludicrous and completely unrealistic. Get two big GT-Rs doing 170mph and you'd get a tow - albeit a small one - from 2s back, or more. Cornering, being in a tow isn't going to hurt a slower car or a road car anywhere near as much as it is a high downforce car so you can gain down the straights for free, then don't really lose anything through the corners and gain again on the next straight. I'm sure we've all tried to follow closely in the Super Formula - bloody difficult isn't it?! Yet at the same time, easier if you're ahead to break the tow.

Real life tows work from quite a long way back and it's easy for most people to see this in action in every day life, put the display on your road car to fuel consumption, go down a motorway and follow a decent sized vehicle at about 50mph and you will see your consumption improve compared to when you're on your own. This is a slipstream from between 1-2s at very low speeds in comparison to racing. Even the skinniest of the skinny - cyclists - doing under 40mph use a slipstream to save energy so it stands to reason that racing cars will save fuel by sitting in a slipstream.


In all but high downforce cars, the lead car of the train is at a disadvantage physics-wise because that's the car that has to break the air, but it does have a clear view of the track. All the points raised by the OP while valid, are just side effects of having a slipstream and the suggestions to reduce the distance for the slipstream to take effect would actually make it more unrealistic.

My opinion is they've got it pretty good from the perspective of realism, but it's causing some issues when combined with the format of qualifying and races, more so qualifying because the reduction in time allotted and increase in tyre wear has effectively made it a one shot deal
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I shall join you in playing devils advocate.

Whilst the pull you get in gt sport may be a little strong compared to real life in terms of how far you pick up slipstream is pretty realistic.

David Coulthard has said loads of times on F1 commentary that you pick up a tow from over 2 seconds back. F1 cars no doubt create a bigger hole than a gt3 car but I'm guessing 1.5 seconds is prob about right for them

People do underestimate the power of the slipstream I think, as you mentioned you can use it in motorway driving, it's a massive factor in cycling and motorbike racing and even in long distance running. In running the runner behind is using 30% less energy.

As I said I think the pull you get is a bit strong but the distance you get it from is fine.
 
All of PD's efforts of trying to take the wrongest possible decisions on so many areas -slipstream, penalty system, DR cap/ FIA Point System, not listening to community (even not to the participiants of live events who obviously know what they're talking about)- allows only 1 conclusion: they try to force us not to take this game seriously.
 
I never said that it was unrealistic to catch some degree of slipstream from as far back as 1.5 seconds. In an ideal world, I would actually keep the range at 1.5 seconds, on the condition that slipstream strength work on a 0-100% scale instead of what we've got now. I stand corrected in my claim that it's entirely on-off (thanks Dodge Lamb), but there's still an unrealistically sharp benefit the moment your car is inside the 1.5 second threshold, with slipstream strength right now running on something closer to a 50-100% scale.

And because the slipstream is too strong on the outer edges of the range, it's making qualifying draft trains more viable than they should be, and allowing drivers who would otherwise be dropped to stay with the car in front of them in the race. A realistic sliding scale won't eliminate this entirely, but it'll be a huge improvement.
 
breeminator
ultimately you don't see the "car park before the last corner" situation in real life, so the effect can't have such a make or break effect on your qualifying time as it does in the game.
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I wonder if some of this might be due to factors other than the physics. In real life, you get one shot at each race, and every race counts. In the current pre-season, potentially only 3 out of 40 races count. So the fact that you can discard 92.5% of your results incentivises a very high risk approach, because it's preferable to have mostly terrible results with the occasional amazing result, rather than consistently good but not exceptional results. In real life, you'd do really badly if >90% of your qualifying sessions resulted in ruined laps, so perhaps it's more that than the physics that causes it to not happen in real life.
 
breeminator
I agree with you that there is some effect a long way back in real life, but ultimately you don't see the "car park before the last corner" situation in real life, so the effect can't have such a make or break effect on your qualifying time as it does in the game.
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If you take Fuji in the GR4s as an example, it was always going to exaggerate it with its huge straight. It can definitely be a problem in qualifying with the car park scenario but I'm pretty certain it would also happen in real life if they had one lap to qualify with everyone else on track at the same time with cars that can follow each other closely. I'd rather see the qualifying format change than the slipstream characteristics

pantherjag
I shall join you in playing devils advocate.

Whilst the pull you get in gt sport may be a little strong compared to real life in terms of how far you pick up slipstream is pretty realistic.

David Coulthard has said loads of times on F1 commentary that you pick up a tow from over 2 seconds back. F1 cars no doubt create a bigger hole than a gt3 car but I'm guessing 1.5 seconds is prob about right for them

People do underestimate the power of the slipstream I think, as you mentioned you can use it in motorway driving, it's a massive factor in cycling and motorbike racing and even in long distance running. In running the runner behind is using 30% less energy.

As I said I think the pull you get is a bit strong but the distance you get it from is fine.
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Think they said at Monza in F1 cars the 'Goldilocks' zone is about 2.5s. Close enough to get a tow at near top speed but far enough back to not be affected by dirty air in the corners where you need the downforce. Maybe worth a few tenths over a lap but it's an advantage they all want if they can get it and a reason why we had that shambles there last year!

As for the amount we gain, not sure how accurate that is, there are bound to be some examples from real racing somewhere and I totally agree that people are underestimating the power of it. It's always there whenever anything is moving and when objects are trying to move at speeds up to and over 150mph, wind resistance - or the lack of it - has a huge effect

Obviously this clip is from F1 but does demonstrate how much of an effect it can have, in 9s Leclerc gains 0.13s on Vettel so is around 1.5% quicker down the back straight at Monza despite being a good distance behind at the start of it



Using Fuji in GR4 as an example again, the main straight is over 20s so even if you gain 1% by just about being in the tow at the start of it that's nearly a quarter of a second by the end of it!

breeminator
I wonder if some of this might be due to factors other than the physics. In real life, you get one shot at each race, and every race counts. In the current pre-season, potentially only 3 out of 40 races count. So the fact that you can discard 92.5% of your results incentivises a very high risk approach, because it's preferable to have mostly terrible results with the occasional amazing result, rather than consistently good but not exceptional results. In real life, you'd do really badly if >90% of your qualifying sessions resulted in ruined laps, so perhaps it's more that than the physics that causes it to not happen in real life.
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I do think this can have an effect. I tried to get a tow at Fuji because the opportunity was there with two cars just ahead (nobody had a tow off me though!) but totally dismissed it at Spa, trusting my own pace to get me a decent spot rather than risk getting held up in a gamble for pole. Eerieissss was in the race at Spa and qualified about 5s off the pace so I'm waiting to see if he sticks that vid up to see if he just binned it or got caught out looking for a tow because there were a few who were miles off the pace
 
breeminator
I wonder if some of this might be due to factors other than the physics. In real life, you get one shot at each race, and every race counts. In the current pre-season, potentially only 3 out of 40 races count.
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Whilst we're on that subject, it would be better for the integrity of the competition if we went back to one-shot FIA during the main season. That way you've only got 40 races to get 10 good scores overall, and 10 to get 3 in each stage if they actually select tour competitors on per-stage performance this time like I believe they should. Drop rounds are important for an online competition for several reasons, but there has to be at least some punishment if a fast driver consistently underperforms in the actual races.
 
Ashthebash
It appears I'm going to be a dissenting voice!

I agree it's an issue trying to pull away from cars but setting a tow at 0.75s and no further is ludicrous and completely unrealistic. Get two big GT-Rs doing 170mph and you'd get a tow - albeit a small one - from 2s back, or more. Cornering, being in a tow isn't going to hurt a slower car or a road car anywhere near as much as it is a high downforce car so you can gain down the straights for free, then don't really lose anything through the corners and gain again on the next straight. I'm sure we've all tried to follow closely in the Super Formula - bloody difficult isn't it?! Yet at the same time, easier if you're ahead to break the tow.

Real life tows work from quite a long way back and it's easy for most people to see this in action in every day life, put the display on your road car to fuel consumption, go down a motorway and follow a decent sized vehicle at about 50mph and you will see your consumption improve compared to when you're on your own. This is a slipstream from between 1-2s at very low speeds in comparison to racing. Even the skinniest of the skinny - cyclists - doing under 40mph use a slipstream to save energy so it stands to reason that racing cars will save fuel by sitting in a slipstream.


In all but high downforce cars, the lead car of the train is at a disadvantage physics-wise because that's the car that has to break the air, but it does have a clear view of the track. All the points raised by the OP while valid, are just side effects of having a slipstream and the suggestions to reduce the distance for the slipstream to take effect would actually make it more unrealistic.

My opinion is they've got it pretty good from the perspective of realism, but it's causing some issues when combined with the format of qualifying and races, more so qualifying because the reduction in time allotted and increase in tyre wear has effectively made it a one shot deal
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The distance it’s not the problem it’s the strenght of it that’s completely off the charts, you don’t get a real kick up in speed until you are 3-4 tenths behind another car (talking about GT3s) and for sure you don’t get those insane amounts of dirty air in a GT car in general, they don’t create nowhere near the amount of vortexes that can disturb the car behind them creating such extreme feel of understeer. All it takes is watching other sims and real races to see how close GT can stay behind each other without having issues, so in my opinion it needs to be turned down quite a lot to be somewhat realistic.
 
iFerrari
The distance it’s not the problem it’s the strenght of it that’s completely off the charts, you don’t get a real kick up in speed until you are 3-4 tenths behind another car (talking about GT3s) and for sure you don’t get those insane amounts of dirty air in a GT car in general, they don’t create nowhere near the amount of vortexes that can disturb the car behind them creating such extreme feel of understeer. All it takes is watching other sims and real races to see how close GT can stay behind each other without having issues, so in my opinion it needs to be turned down quite a lot to be somewhat realistic.
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Like I said in a later post, whether the amount we can gain is accurate I don't know. But slipstream trains in qualifying and difficulty breaking the tow are to be expected because the cars used in the Manufacturers Championship can follow each other closely. Nothing OP or unrealistic about that.

To be fair I'm not sure we get something that's off the charts either.

Replaying Fuji on Sunday, in clear air I touched 156mph at the end of the main straight in the Jag, with a big slipstream from less than 0.5s behind coming onto the straight and low fuel? 158mph
 
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I haven't logged into here for ages but had to for this. It's ruining the game!

In quali I used to be able to plan my own session, get a free space on track and go for 2 laps. Now I have to glue myself to the back of a train of drivers, hope none of the 7 people in front make a big mistake, hope no one tries to overtake from behind, hope no one crashes into me and gives me a penalty (P system is a whole other discussion) just to get a chance of a decent laptime. And I can make as many minor mistakes as a I want because the slipstream just pulls me back towards the guy in front. So essentially mediocre/bad driving can still give you a good laptime while great driving can still leave you in last place. Your entire lap is irrelevant, all your time is gained on the last corner & run to the finish line. It's embarrassing to be a part of and no exaggeration, it is 90% luck whether you start top 5 or last place. Every qualifying session is now like it used to be on Blue Moon. Even BRANDS HATCH was faster with a slipstream!

Then once you start from last place purely because the guy in front went wide and lost the slipstream for you on your only Q lap, the entire race you sit behind the guy in front because his slipstream nullifies your slipstream, and so on right to the front of the queue. If we didn't have people starting on different tyres there would be no overtaking at all. I don't buy the argument that this gives us close racing. It allows 1 guy (2nd in queue) to get closer on the straight, and then enter the corner with absolutely zero grip and end up back where he started that's pretty much it. Anyone further back can't get close and even if they do, gets killed by dirty air from the car in front of the one you're overtaking. F1 fans have complained about this for the last 2 decades, so GT, after several fantastic WTs and live finals with lots of close, fair(ish), real racing, decide nty what we need is to take the one thing everyone hates about F1 and put it into our game, so the qualifying sessions become a lottery and the race becomes a stalemate with some meaningless tyre overtakes.

This is the worst state the game has been in since it was launched from a fun/racing POV. There have been all sorts of idiotic changes but I've always said "at least the racing is still good and the competition is there". Well I can't anymore! I thought it was a joke in December, came back from hiatus last week and they made it WORSE!
 
Today, I had several instances at Interlagos where I was coming off the last corner in the Gr3 GT-R and was anywhere from half a second to nearly a second back from a driver without slipstream. Now, the GT-R is a bullet down the straight but the slipstream effect was so ridiculously powerful, I was able to overtake just about everyone at will, sometimes even before reaching the start-finish line! Conversly, I kept getting knocked down the grid every time in qualifying because slipstream got drivers ahead of me every time. I rarely get to practice slipstream q because I'm the one people want to draft with and that doesn't seem fair to me or anyone else forced to be the conductor.

At this rate, we might as well decide everything with a lottery ball machine. That's what I'm seeing out there.
 
Many things in Gran Turismo is exaggerated. I think the overpowered slipstream is the most benign of the lot.

If you want to discuss it from a more casual aspect, people will play this game and expect some things to be more pronounced so that they can get a stronger feel of what that kind of racing is like.

We like top speeds we like high power and we like that slingshot feeling when using slipstream to overtake.

Its obviously better I think it be overpowered than to even be realistic because you would get a lot of people complaining that that effect is not 'pronounced enough.

I think for PD if they end up chasing realism to the nth degree then its just not "Gran Turismo" is it?
 
Great thread OP 👍

I really hate the effect of dirty air so I prefer to qualify by myself even if that means losing the slipstream. Because of this my qualis hasn't been great this season. In the race however it works to my advantage in all the fuel limited races because I'm good at adjusting the fuel mix/short shifting, and you're not driving 100% all the time so you can deal with the slight grip loss. The OP slipstream literally allows me to save seconds in the pits while the guy ahead plows the air :lol: So I dunno, I have mixed feelings about it. Yes it's not realistic but I think we all know PD's main intention is always to produce close racing through whatever artificial means necessary. The BOP, slipstream, tyre wear multipliers, points system. They're all done to get that viral side by side Cody vs Miyazono finish in the end. I mean a lot of people have been saying GT esports is more exciting than real motorsports. Is it worth making the game more realistic to lose that? It's a tricky answer and I don't know if we'll ever get that balance right tbh.

BTW, I think this is more proof of how impressive Hizal's straight flush performance in the last year's final really is. All the combos in that event were slipstream sensitive, yet he didn't lose a single race. Just shows how much faster he is than everyone else.
 
OutlawQuadrnt
Today, I had several instances at Interlagos where I was coming off the last corner in the Gr3 GT-R and was anywhere from half a second to nearly a second back from a driver without slipstream. Now, the GT-R is a bullet down the straight but the slipstream effect was so ridiculously powerful, I was able to overtake just about everyone at will, sometimes even before reaching the start-finish line! Conversly, I kept getting knocked down the grid every time in qualifying because slipstream got drivers ahead of me every time. I rarely get to practice slipstream q because I'm the one people want to draft with and that doesn't seem fair to me or anyone else forced to be the conductor.

At this rate, we might as well decide everything with a lottery ball machine. That's what I'm seeing out there.
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As you would know, they've done that at live events before ;)
 
schnick
As you would know, they've done that at live events before ;)
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Which in a roundabout way, gives us reason to hope that if we keep the complaints about the state of slipstream going, we can get a change in time for the offiical season. The collective community did eventually manage to get the Nations Cup live events changed to one-make races. And as much as PD largely do their own thing in regards to updating the game, they can and have listened to complaints in the past when the demand for change gets loud enough. Let's try to keep this topic relevant and see if PD will do something.

At this point Ash has convinced me that changing the magnitude, not the range, is the solution. Gran Turismo claims to be the real driving simulator after all, and whilst going back to the previous 0.75 second threshold would be an easy fix for the racing, it wouldn't be a step forwards in terms of realism and GT marketing itself as a sim racer.
 
I just sit here nodding my head to everything.. Slipstream atm is absolutely disgusting and a big part currently of ruining the game. Bring back 0.8 please..
 
TonyJZX
Many things in Gran Turismo is exaggerated. I think the overpowered slipstream is the most benign of the lot.

If you want to discuss it from a more casual aspect, people will play this game and expect some things to be more pronounced so that they can get a stronger feel of what that kind of racing is like.

We like top speeds we like high power and we like that slingshot feeling when using slipstream to overtake.

Its obviously better I think it be overpowered than to even be realistic because you would get a lot of people complaining that that effect is not 'pronounced enough.

I think for PD if they end up chasing realism to the nth degree then its just not "Gran Turismo" is it?
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It is. GT Sport has gone way out of it's way to be more realistic than both GT5 and GT6. Braking is still laughable in this game cause you just smash it and the car doesn't punish you for it and the slipstream DEFINITELY needs to be fixed. If you are better than the guy behind you he deserves to drop off since he is just not good enough. People would place alot more fairly where they belong in terms of pace not this artificial bull crap.

I personally find alot more satisfaction in racing and placing where I belong and not having my pace artificially enhanced by some absurd slipstream. If the guy ahead of me is faster I wanna do my absolute best to keep up instead of believing I'm actually at his pace when in reality it's just a lie because slipstream is what allows me to hang with him. Not cool, mega lame.
 
zzz_pt
This was already pretty bad before and it was one of the reasons I quit FIA races back in 2018. I just don't like unrealistic, unfair mechanics to artificially make people race close to each other.

If I'm the slowest in the lobby and can't keep up with the pack, my bad. I gotta improve my pace and skill. If I'm the fastest, I don't want to carry others on my back, especially with fuel and tire depletion.
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I agree with every word you wrote there.

For me, it feels like the really quick drivers who can break away from the pack even with the current 1.5s OP slip (not me lol) are less important to PD than the hurt feelings of the slower drivers behind.
 
JayOTT
At this point Ash has convinced me that changing the magnitude, not the range, is the solution. Gran Turismo claims to be the real driving simulator after all, and whilst going back to the previous 0.75 second threshold would be an easy fix for the racing, it wouldn't be a step forwards in terms of realism and GT marketing itself as a sim racer.
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It's not purely a question of magnitude or range. In reality, there is a function relating air disturbance to several parameters - size, shape and speed of the vehicle causing it, and it then decays as some function of time. The effect of the air disturbance on the following car will also depend on the same parameters for the following car. For example, an MX-5 following a Range Rover would receive much more slipstream assistance than the other way round.

So to truly achieve realism, it would be modelled as a realistic function relating all these parameters, rather than adjusting magnitude and range for an overly simplistic model. It's unlikely that CPU power is the limiter for this sort of thing, as the function would not be particularly expensive to compute, the limiter is more likely to be the cost of someone's time to develop an appropriate function by researching existing published material on the subject, and conducting new research where necessary.

If the game ever added modelling of wind, that would further increase the complexity, as wind speed and direction affect the slipstream effect.

Whether it being realistic would increase people's enjoyment of the game is another matter.
 
breeminator
It's not purely a question of magnitude or range. In reality, there is a function relating air disturbance to several parameters - size, shape and speed of the vehicle causing it, and it then decays as some function of time. The effect of the air disturbance on the following car will also depend on the same parameters for the following car. For example, an MX-5 following a Range Rover would receive much more slipstream assistance than the other way round.

So to truly achieve realism, it would be modelled as a realistic function relating all these parameters, rather than adjusting magnitude and range for an overly simplistic model. It's unlikely that CPU power is the limiter for this sort of thing, as the function would not be particularly expensive to compute, the limiter is more likely to be the cost of someone's time to develop an appropriate function by researching existing published material on the subject, and conducting new research where necessary.

If the game ever added modelling of wind, that would further increase the complexity, as wind speed and direction affect the slipstream effect.

Whether it being realistic would increase people's enjoyment of the game is another matter.
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No matter what a car doesnt gain like 100-150 bhp of extra power in the drag. The old 0.8 was far more realistic. A car quick on the straight could still pull away from a slow car in the slip. Nobody complained about that.. It's PD themselves doing dumb stuff nobody ever asked for.
 
Since when do people search for draft at Maggiore Centre of all places? I wound up not getting any my first qualifying attempt there and was P14! Worse, everyone decided to run single file the entire run and I literally fell like a rock the moment I fell out of slipstream range. Obviously, I started near the front the other two tries because I did get slipstream but the whole thing felt contrived. The notion of a long train of cars on a short track babying their fuel and not losing pace because of tow is absurd and yet, that's what happened. Next combo may be the same thing all over again as well.
 
I can't believe I had to dig up this thread.

I'll give PD credit for actually reducing the slipstream effect. Also, no fuel burning for qualifying is a step in the right direction. So everything should be okay now, right? Nope. And you know why?

Slipstream qualifying is still very much a thing.

I won't write a novel about it but I'll going to be frank. Whenever I see qualifying results nowadays, I cannot see them as credible anymore. 👎
 
Both FIA races this week were particularly bad for slipstream making or braking your qualifying or race.

Especially in qualifying, you need the slipstream. If the person in front of you makes a mistake, or bails out of their lap leaving you with no tow, then you are not going to have a good time.

Nations (EMEA):


Manufacturers (OCE):


I was in this one, and had to almost stop to avoid an accident (no one's fault).

The one person who actually pulled the trigger and went for a qualifying lap with no tow, ended up 14th... so this is why queueing up like this is entirely necessary, with current slipstream mechanics.
 
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breeminator
Ah, the classic penalty for your car overlapping a ghosted car. Why does the game ghost cars? It's pointless when you have to avoid them anyway, it just makes people incorrectly think you're allowed to drive through them.
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(Off topic) Is it for driving through ghosted cars? I picked up a penalty for just passing someone under yellow, right at the end of the qualifying sesion at BMB. I'm fairly sure I didn't drive through anyone ghosted in the process.

The yellow flags are great to serve as a warning to potentially avoid an accident but to actually use them to implement penalties is just really dumb. You could set provisional pole and just absolutely game the system.
 

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