Cars have been able to benefit from a well-timed caution, using the 80 km/h slow down period to take free stops.
The system that will be trialed this weekend will see the lane closed for the initial slow down period, and then re-opened once the field is behind the physical Safety Car.
The increasingly convoluted system was a topic of detailed discussion on the latest Lucky Dogs podcast, with Kostecki lamenting the resource that has gone into the matter.
He feels that the initial introduction of the 80 km/h slow down, done to stop drivers racing to the Safety Car line past potentially dangerous situations, was unnecessary – and that Supercars would have been better focusing on matters such as the controversial interlocking wheel design.
“I can’t believe the amount of work that goes into this,” said the reigning Bathurst 1000 winner to co-host Will Brown.
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“Like the old system, honestly, [it] didn’t have many faults. How many incidents did we have? We didn’t have one.
“And if there was a car that badly hurt or whatever else… I remember you at New Zealand when [Mark Winterbottom put you in, it got red flagged.
“Like, I don’t understand. And then we drive around with wheels that are like Beyblades and we still can’t fix that.”
Brown quipped that he is worried about getting a penalty through misunderstanding the new system.
“I went into [the Triple Eight] briefing and they’re like, ‘yeah, you can’t pit under full course yellow. You can’t do this. You’ve got to speed up here. You’ve got to slow down there.
“And I’m like, I’m going to get a penalty somewhere…”
Kostecki added: “All I know is that [in] the time you’ve just explained that to me, I’m still struggling to understand [the rules].
“And now I’m going to have to explain this to my mum and she’s grown up around motorsport.
“If she can’t understand [the rules] by the race, then we have a serious problem because how’s the person at home [meant to understand them]?”
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