I'm running weekly R3E events over at RaceDepartment, and one major issue we have is the mayhem that ensues with an ill-timed slow-down penalty. This is especially an issue with large (20+) grids heading into the first few corners. Someone goes a little wide to give way, gets a slow-down and everyone else just piles into him. Usually the end of the race for one or more participants. Obviously we could choose to run without penalties altogether, but human nature being what it is, that will almost inevitably end up in a verbal shout-fest after each race, with people accusing each other of not respecting track-limits. Another option would be to use drive-throughs, but since these are open races we have people of wildly varying skill-levels, and there's every chance some of the new racers will misjudge a corner, go too wide and get a drive-through. Which is particularly galling if you're already off the pace. So, seeing as we already have wrecker-prevention, would it be possible to add this to the slow-downs? In such a way that when you receive a slow-down you immediately get ghosted, and stay ghosted for e.g. 10 seconds. Giving you enough time to get off the racing-line, serve the slow-down, and rejoining safely. And as always, I'm no programmer, so I have no idea whether this is a monumentally impossible task. But it would give us the best of both worlds.
This + a little time like 5sec. in which you can start solving the penalty by your self (starting it = completly off throttle), after it stars automatically. Especially with FWD-Cars the Lift-Of-Oversteer due to the penalty is not catchable, when you get it within a corner...
I wish they would just get rid of it completely, warining, warning, drive thru then DQ`D would be my prefered route, or even a slow down sector, 2-300 yds off the racing line on the S/f str8 hugging the pit wall to do a slow down, as it is it kills the game at times.