None of the arguments FOR heavy damage in this thread have a contingency plan for people that are helpless victims of getting nailed by someone being careless. I'm not gonna spend hours practicing for a race just to have it ruined by someone else's carelessness.
(I realize that can occur without heavy damage - however it's even more likely to occur with heavy damage)
I thought I'd elabourate a bit more on what I said on the 1rd page (thought I did there but checked and I hadn't), the way cautions worked in the Tuna Cup in GT5 did kind of take into account multiple car incidents caused by lag or one person's carelessness / accidental error. I forget the exact details for certain but so far as I remember if 2 or more cars were involved in an incident (say there was a lag spike that caused your and my cars to collide resulting in damage) then those not involved would race to the start / finish line and slow down to caution speed for a lap.
Damaged vehicles would get to the pits as fast as possible, repair and then catch back up to the back of the pack as quickly as possible. Once the leader reached the line again after 1 lap at caution speed the race restarts, depending on the length of track and severity of the damage the cars that pitted may have caught back up to the pack or at least not be too far behind.
I "think" that was basically how it worked and from what I remember it did, for the most part, work quite well. Of course if I'm completely mis-remembering this through rose-tinted spectacles or something can someone please correct me
.