I'm not really sure that the title really conveys what I'd like added to the game but this is something that has bugged me of late.

Background
We host a monthly LAN party at the local University and around 20-30 folk attend regularly. At each LAN I have prepared a 'race weekend' format championship. About 10 folk race in the championship (they are only running the demo - trying to convince them that it's worth the money). We have a large screen and projector to display the race for folk to see.

Problem:
During quallifying the order of the cars is determined by thier order starting the session, so switching views from car to car to follow and commentate on the proceedings is difficult as after the initial lap some cars are out of order and there is no way of knowing where the next car is going to be that you are going to switch to using the tab key. For the race this is no problem with the exception of lapped cars.

Solution:
In spectator mode have an ability to select individual cars with timing information constantly available.

This is not something I expect in the next patch, but I'd like it to be considerd before release as it would make demonstrating the game to others much nicer.
Also I'd really like the ability to 'cut' my own version of the race using either the cameras that are provided but allowing user input for panning/zooming. Or for all cameras to be user decided. It would make the championship something worthy of recording as a movie then. I understand that both of these probably require quite a lot of work and I'd far rather have a complete game/simulator first.

Cheers

(yes I know some of these things are available through 3rd party mods)

In spectator mode, I think if you click (or maybe right-click) on the controller type they are using (Kb, Ks, W, M) and it'll jump to that car.

Good ideas. Your first suggestion isn't particularly important to me, but I can see what use it can have for people.
Definitely agree on the second one, this is something I would really like to see in LFS some day. I've been experimenting with one of the addons available that can do this and it gives great results. IMO the default camera's aren't that good.
Another thing that would complement both your suggestions would be some sort of "situation prediction thingy". What I mean is, someone get's a blue flag, or there's a yellow flag situation, two cars very close to eachother or whatever, and LFS automatically switches to the action. But I can imagine this would maybe be quite difficult to do right.

An auto director mode had occured to me to but if you ever play anyother game with an auto director you soon find that it is useless as it will switch from the leading pack battle to the backmarkers being lapped. In general I'd prefer the option to control it myself over the computer having 'an idea' of what to look for.

Edit:
Cheers Tristan that certainly works in replay mode. I'd tried clicking on the names but never thought to click on the contol type. If it works in the qually I'll be very happy.

It would also be very handy to have a modifier key to change the behavior of Tab and Shift-Tab. Something like Alt-Tab and Alt-Shift-Tab, that would move from car to car depending on their position on the track instead of their position in the race.