I've seen this in use on other games and it works well. The main purpose is to prevent wreckers from bothering the actual racers. The main issue is if pit stops are relatively long enough to put a player down a lap, then collision (and normally drafting) is off.

There is a tiny time window (time window = car length / speed) during the time when a lapped car is crossing the finish line. This can be solved by using 1/2 lap counters is another (cars can't be close to each other and not be on the same 1/2 lap, so implementing a 1/2 lap counter solves the problem).

Drafting with collision off is another issue. Normally drafting is off when collision is off, to prevent two cars with collision off from teaming up and drafting through each other. This can be a problem if pit stops put players a lap down, which would prevent those players from drafting cars that hadn't pitted yet.

Invisible cars? :thumbsdow

The idea you descrive above has a good purpose, but would probally be exploited. People would just make themself have high ping and go hotlapping on the track to get normally impossible times in the race when they could just drive as they were the only ones on the track.

When invisible cars that aren't solid are used in real racing I'll want this. Until then, no.

Well exactly. This would totally negate the need for blue flags. Overtaking slower guys is a skill which you need to learn, as is leaving the line to let a faster guy pass. These are valid racing techniques.

Sometimes I wonder if people don't understand the flags though, and that's why they don't deal with them properly. Maybe it should have some sort of description option on by default so that it said "Yellow Flag - Obstruction" or "Blue Flag - Allow Race Leaders to Pass" or something. Done in smaller text right underneath the current flag message.

With the option to turn it off, of course.

Quote from Dajmin :

Well exactly. This would totally negate the need for blue flags. Overtaking slower guys is a skill which you need to learn, as is leaving the line to let a faster guy pass. These are valid racing techniques.

Sometimes I wonder if people don't understand the flags though, and that's why they don't deal with them properly. Maybe it should have some sort of description option on by default so that it said "Yellow Flag - Obstruction" or "Blue Flag - Allow Race Leaders to Pass" or something. Done in smaller text right underneath the current flag message.

With the option to turn it off, of course.

If it comes on as standard, so new people see's it, then sure, I agree.

But in the end I think people are ignoring them, not that they don't know what they means.

Possibly. Ignoring them isn't usually that big a deal when it's a yellow (unless there's a major blockage on the track, but that doesn't happen since there's no catastrophic mechanical failures) but causes an issue when it's blue. You can't tell in-game whether someone is being more vigilant because a yellow flag is up, but it's obvious when someone isn't letting a faster driver pass and they need punished for that.

Would a DSQ even stop them doing it? Or would they need an actual ignition cut like some other games have? I know GT5P cuts your power if you have a major collision.

As my sometimes-avatar says:

Now that is a propper suggestion!
Speed limit that is put on on EVERY car as soon as there is a yellow flag in a sector. This is of course server chosed, but would be real cool. If the sector is a wreck feast - why not cruise thorught it in 80kmh? Or make it 100kmh I don't know, but I liked that suggestion!

But there's no need to limit the speed like that by default. Any feature should be added to punish people who do something wrong, not force everyone to jump through crazy hoops in order to prevent it.

They'd be black flagged if they did it IRL, they should get black flagged in-game too.

Problem with black flagging and force spec people would be that it's impossible for the system to understand who's the crasher and who's the victim, therfor I like it better as it is now to be honest

The crashing part is harder to solve, I'm focusing on the blue flag issues. It's not impossible to judge who caused the fault but it would take a whole range of calculations to work out, which may be more bother than it's worth.

The blue flag thing is easy enough to implement - if you get shown a blue flag for more than a couple sectors your car stalls out and your laps aren't counted. I'm not sure what the rules are in real racing, but I don't see how wrong you could go with that. A whole lap to pass a backmarker can't be asking that much, especially since they're supposed to ease up to let the leader go.

To prevent wrecking I'd also suggest that a maximum time limit could be imposed per sector. If you haven't left the first sector within a minute or two you're not racing. That way if a wrecker hangs around, they don't cross the 2-sector blue flag limit but they also are clearly no longer in the race and can be removed.

-1, remember jos verstappen crashing into montoya?
Such things just happen.
short footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExAP4T2CSDU

It would make game less realistic.
LFS its about racing as close to real as possible not for convenience and easy fast racing.
So -1

Quote from Dajmin :

The blue flag thing is easy enough to implement - if you get shown a blue flag for more than a couple sectors your car stalls out and your laps aren't counted. I'm not sure what the rules are in real racing, but I don't see how wrong you could go with that. A whole lap to pass a backmarker can't be asking that much, especially since they're supposed to ease up to let the leader go.

That is not foolproof. Sometimes you might end up being blue flagged when you are actually faster than the person behind you. You are driving away, but you are not far enough so the blue flag keeps showing up.
This could happen when you had trouble and had to pit for extra long to fix your car for example.

Quote from Dajmin :

TThe blue flag thing is easy enough to implement - if you get shown a blue flag for more than a couple sectors your car stalls out and your laps aren't counted.

Meh. There are situations where you get the blue flag for a long time despite the other car being far behind. I wouldn't really want my car to be stopped just because the other has stepped on my 'blue flag tail', but then for some reason it's not fast enough to really catch up.

I had the impression the blue flag message is somehow distance related, because the it comes quite early with slower cars, but the same never happened to me on the faster ones.