You started with a listing the title 'slow drivers and safety' not 'speed differential and safety'... hence the majority of the views in the replies.....
Your suggestion of 10% difference is also too small. That's often the difference between the front and the rear of the grid in many races.
Persoanlly, I don;'t think it's down to the speed differential as much as the general skill differential. Those of us teaching new drivers should be stressing the BASICS more... firstly: "THINK about what's happening around you and mke NO sudden or unpredictable changes".
The NEXT task is to teach those drivers who are GETTING quicker to think about THEIR surroundings! During endurance raciung, the thring I spent most RAMMING home to drivers was N*E*V*E*R to start an overtaking manouvre from TOO FAR BACK! The problem occurs when a driver who is going to brake later anyway, arrives behindf a slower driver who will brake earlier and may WELL change direction during the manouvre. If the fast driuver has already committed himself to his 'passing line' from 20 metres back and is now on a SINGLE 'curve' which will arrive at the apex in 3 seconds time..... and the slower driver changes direction...... then it's going to be 'bye bye stub axle!'.
The quick guys will get away with that 99 times out of a hundred BUT.... that means they will lose their stub axle (and thus the race) on every 100th attempt! In an endurance sarce, that comes up WELL over 100 times per race!
Teach your quick guys to THINK about this problem! Run through the INEVITABLE result of committing to overtake in a ceratin place when the driver you are following still has LOADS of (good AND stupid) options that he may choose! Teach your quick guys to go for the overtake when the slow driver has reduced his options as far as possible!
If you think it through, you'll note that quick drivers only overtake OTHER quick drivers when the options have been reduced as far as possible!
Usually, to get bye someone quick, the overtaking driver has only left the overtaken driver a SINGLE option (line, braking point, exit line) and has waited until the leading driver is committed to that SOLE option and can't go anywhere else. The difference with overtaking slower drivers is that they still retain some OTHER options. The slower the driver, the MORE the options they COULD take! Thus, it can be MUCH harder (and more dangerous) to overtake a SLOW driver than a quick one!
Not much can be changed about that.
Ian
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