I am a experient player, not only in LFS but in a lot of simulators, and wanna suggest: Why dont make a new pit lane exit? because it ends in a bad place, can make a lot of crashes, and i think if will better the pit lane ends before the hairpin or after the chicane, better if use a tunnel, like abu dhabi track?
I don't think a tunnel would be the option of choice for what feels more or less like a club circuit; if Blackwood were real, I doubt that could fit into their budget.
That pit exit is too long. I think the current pit exit is good. Maybe they could extend the wall thorugh the whole corner, so you only are allowed to exit in the end of the first corner?
Well the rallycross pit exit was the pit exit for Blackwood back in the S1 days!
I must admit the exit is a bit of a problem as I have seen alot of people just cut onto the track... I think either returning to the S1 exit would be a good idea... the other idea I had though of was never mind the tunnel, but just follow the track around and then join on after the chicane.... that way T1 becomes tighter allowing for more daring moves! And will spice things up on the back straight as you would have someone exiting the pits at a faster speed compared to those on the race track!
i think the best choice would be the tunnel, but the exit should be 50/100m after the chicane and on the right side of the road, so cars that are coming on the track will not be on the race line.
but someone correctly said that for Blackwood in reality a tunnel would be too expensive, so it wont be a good solution.
exit before the corner would be a lot more dangerous because the cars on track go from the right to the left side of the track there for go to brake for the first corner.
in my opinion, the pit exit should continue from where is now, pass the chicane on the left, and the exit should be at the end of the riddle exiting the chicane. in this way cars that are coming from pits are faster, and those on track can see if someone is coming out of pits. and there is a very little band on the right before the highway bridge so the pit exit doesn't disturb the ideal race line.
What is with a pit exit after the chicane. I mean the turn must be next to the wall in t1 and pass the chicane on the left side. so the drivers who exit the pit are fast enough for the traffic and there is still enough runoff area for to late braking.
I have another suggestion but I don't know if it is possible within the limits of the game engine. They should add only 2 traffic lights and a big fat visible line at the exit. One light (preferably a blue one) at the direct exit if the game detects traffic coming close to T1. With the blue light on there would be a penalty if you cross the line at the exit. The other light would be visible on the uphill pre T1 section of the exit just for indication that at the line another exiting car is waiting.
Good idea in theory, but what's to stop you pitting from the lead with a big gap, then as yuo leave the pits, you're held up by the blue light because the second place car's approaching, undoing all your hard work.
An alternative is just to have the pit exit on the straight as it was, but kink the track on the opening straight slightly to accomodate it- have it so that when the drivers coming out of the pits have got up to the same average speed as the rest of the grid, you are close to the braking point.
It's just a case of making sure that there's enough of a run up coming out of the pit lane speed restriction zone to the exit so that the pitted drivers can get their speed up.
Solves the problem of drivers coming out of the pits and interfering with the race and the pit lane isn't ridiculously long.
That's a good question. I think there would be two options to solve this:
Both somehow depend on luck (traffic to be correct) so the question would be which of the two options is a more fair one.
Also I don't know how that problem is solved in real life (which may be the more important question).
1.
At the end of the speed limit there's a line. Until that you must not be any faster than 80km/h. That line could be used to take a split time. Racer A would start a time counting up until Racer B(the one crossing it after Racer A) reaches the end of the speed limit too. That time is stored for Racer B. Racer B arrives at the exit where Racer A is still waiting for traffic to pass.
Now as the traffic passes the blue light will shortly go out then light up again. This is the sign for Racer A to go and the time stored for Racer B would count down from this point on. Racer B moves forward to the line, waits and as that time is gone the blue light goes out finally (if by now there is no traffic at T1). Racer B can now go on the track aswell.
2.
No changes would be applied to the model mentioned in my previous post and both Racer A and Racer B can exit the pitlane.
Edit:
That is probably the best solution but one that requires more work to be done by the devs.
My attempt may sound a lot more complicated but I think is easier to to for them.
Why not remove the wall that nowadays separates the track and the acceleration lane and only put the nose-cones between it and "release" the pit-guys a bit after the brake-area for T1, making the track there a little wider?
If that's not a good solution, it's better to leave as it is now...