The biggest problem I have had with the Battenburg is knowing who the leader actually is.
It's fine if you are so close to the leader that you can see, but if you are more than a corner away, there are few of us with such great situational awareness that we know who / where karts the other karts are. ( For those feeling smug about always being at the front, how many of you know which karts are at the back on the rolling lap and when the novices actually join the pack? )
Second problem is knowing where you were in the order. In the worst case, the first drivers slotting in behind the leader are the back markers, potentially reversing the entire grid. As everytime I have encountered the battenburg it has been in rain, the battenburg order bears no resemblance to the race order. This is made even worse when the battenburg comes out early in the race and one has those who are less confident in the rain trying desperately to catch up and stay with those who are more confident in the rain.
The regulations are unclear as to what happens if the race runs out under the battenburg. Nominally the flag should not come out till the race leader passes, but I have seen the flagmarshal be confused as to who should get the flag. The results were then published in the order behind the race leader, very different from the positions on the track at the time the battenburg came out.
As I understand it, the idea of the battenburg was that it would save time rather than having a red flag, particularly if parc ferme was already full with the previous race. Without an electronic place board telling you the order in which to line up, it is difficult to make it work satisfactorily at club level.
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