..a lot of probably pretty smart people worked this out and decided going for it...only saying it works imo.
Passive aggressive much?
Also 'a lot' equals a committee and we all know how that horse turned out. ie. did it really work, has it ever really worked? I mean there was a shit tonne of sandbagging, lobbying and outright cheating to game the system and they changed it every other year so I can't say it ever worked.
I never understood lap time based penalty systems.
What did they try to achieve? I would think it's a championship where the winner is not determined 2, 3, 4 races before the end of the championship.
What makes you win a championship? Is it fast lap times or how you finish races?
You can obviously be the fastest in the race, but that doesn't mean you win...you can be taken out, engine failure, crash the car into a wall...all that can get you a zero point finish, but you've done the fastest lap...means zero points, last in the standings (if it's the first race), but a penalty slowing you down a week later.
Other extreme, a massive crash ending the race of the people on P1 to P5...a slower guy like me (on P6) comes along winning the race...that's luck for me...happens rarely that I win a race...50 extra kilos for the next race...yeah, in the end I'm still leading the championship in this example if it's the first race of the season.
You can extrapolate this concept, but it all ends up in the leader in the championship most likely driving the heaviest car...and he's likely the fastest as well.
Again, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should do that. It's just that I struggle to understand lap time based penalty systems.
Of course I get the idea that the fastest guy has the best chances finishing a race first. However, getting someone some ballast even if his race went wrong is something I don't understand.