Pit strategy - what the....

Hi again everyone,

I was watching a 55% distance race at Imola in San Marino as part of a world championship season (2007 mod with a generic 2006 performance file, but with the 2001 circuits) and everything was going fine, I wasn't driving as anyone, just enjoying viewing what happened.

Running order was as follows:
1. M Schumacher
2. Kimi
3. Alonso
4. Fisichella
5. Massa
6. Button
7. R Schumacher
8. Webber

But then the pit stop phase came and I was utterly baffled by proceedings - 18 of the 19 drivers running came into the pits (the only one who didn't was Tiago Monteiro) on lap 17. Michael came in and his pit stop went fine, but then there was an absolute mess behind him as Raikkonen and Alonso came in, but with Fisichella (who was just 6 seconds behind on track - only a moron would have brought him in then with no threat of a safety car) following in behind them. Fisichella was blocking Raikkonen's route back into the pit lane but then Kimi rammed into Alonso, no damage caused but it was a total mess, the two then left the pits allowing Fisichella to finally be serviced, but by now guys like Ralf Schumacher and Webber, about 15s behind on track, had also entered the pits.

Alonso came out ahead of Raikkonen, but both are now 30s behind Schumacher (probably race over), Fisichella is twelfth behind drivers like Christian Klien and Scott Speed, while poor Rubens Barrichello had to spend over a minute in the pits after a carbon copy of the Alonso/Raikkonen/Fisichella incident where Barrichello was stuck behind his team mate and left the pits a lap down on Schumacher. All of the drivers running behind their team mates were severely penalised (Fisi and Rubens, but also the likes of de la Rosa, Kubica, Rosberg), yet no team in real life would handle it this way especially if their two cars were relatively close on track, as most of these drivers were. Of these drivers only Massa's race not being seriously compromised, and Monteiro, who'd been nowhere (he was 17th or 18th I think) was now running eighth.

I'd previously saved my game on lap 9 and have tried running this race several times, but the same silly and unrealistic outcome occurs every time. Has anyone else seen any events like this, and are there any measures I can take to prevent this. I'm starting to think I should just go back to my save at the end of the previous round and start a new grand prix for this race.

your issue is likely caused by the magic data.
Edit your track's magic data using TSM.

you should modify the % of strategies if you want more cars than Tiago Monteiro staying out, and the window needs to be set to 1 or higher to avoid stacking
(and yes, I think you need to restart the race)

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GPGSL - Yakuza driver

GPGSL activity check app: Direct link - Source code - Have you posted?

Thank you very much. I'll try that, I think I'll give the race another go and see if the same thing happens again first but if I get it again I'll make those tweaks you suggested.

FWIW this was the final result of the race, just thought it was entertaining to see what would happen.

San Marino GP (34 laps)
1. M Schumacher (Ferrari) 49m 40.125s
2. Alonso (Renault) +26.245s
3. Raikkonen (McLaren) +39.248s
4. Massa (Ferrari) +39.394s
5. Heidfeld (Sauber BMW) +49.581s
6. R Schumacher (Toyota) +51.276s
7. Webber (Williams) +59.732s
8. Fisichella (Renault) +1m 23.652s

The remaining 10 finishers all finished a lap down - in order this was Klein, Button, Rosberg, Monteiro, Speed, Sato, Coulthard, Kubica, Barrichello and Liuzzi. Schumacher's Ferrari was not far behind Fisichella on track at the end but once Fisi had overtaken Klien with three laps left he was fast enough to stay ahead and on the lead lap. Pedro de la Rosa was running tenth before dropping out with an engine failure with two laps to go, the other three retirees - Trulli, Albers and Yamamoto - all dropped out before the pit window.

Prior to the pit stops, Raikkonen was about 7s down on Schumacher, Alonso a further 5s behind the McLaren. Alonso was probably the fastest man on track, I'm not sure he'd have jumped Raikkonen in a normal pit window but it would have been an interesting battle for second and there is no way Schumacher would have won by over 25s in a normal race.

The Honda drivers were probably the biggest losers, without the pit stop mess Button would have been sixth at worst I think, probably higher, and only Alonso and Michael Schumacher set faster race laps than him. Barrichello was only eleventh but he was faster than de la Rosa and may have grabbed a point with a bit of luck. The only driver to finish behind Barrichello was Liuzzi, who had a major excursion into one of the gravel traps (as did Kubica, but he stayed ahead). Heidfeld was the biggest winner, I've no idea whether he could have passed Ralf or Webber in the pits but he got ahead of those two as well as the unfortunate Fisichella and Button, the latter of whom had previously passed him on track.

Imola and Spa have this bug in the original Magic Data.

Download my Magic Data pack from GP4 Central and use CMagic to apply the fixed version.

Note: You will need to restart your race - you won't be able to load your saved game after applying new Magic Data.

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Intel NUC 8i3, 8GB RAM, MS Sidewinder Wheel

Actually it is simple you have to adjust the pit stop window to around 5 laps in order to avoid this situation. But if you have chosen to play with the rain coming down somewhere in the race then it would change accordingly by the computer and there is a possiblity that more than half of the cars will pit in one lap to change to wet tyres and there is nothing you can do about it.