Racing behind the CoVid Safety Car

So, What is the Safety Car?

In motorsport, a safety car or pace car is a car that limits the speed of competing cars on a racetrack in the case of a caution period such as an obstruction on the track or bad weather. The aim of the safety car is to enable the clearance of any obstruction under safer conditions, especially for marshals and/or await more favorable track conditions weather-wise.

The prime purpose of a Safety car is to limit the speed of the cars on the track when the track is under caution conditions. During this “caution period” competitors are not normally allowed to pass the safety car or other competitors, and the safety car leads the field at a predetermined safe speed, which may vary by series and circuit. At the end of the caution period, the safety car leaves the track and the competitors resume normal racing. 

Opportunities during a Safety Car

A lot of teams look at the Safety-car period in a race as an unplanned opportunity to fix or ‘tune’ their racing machines or strategies in real-time. The basic premise is that to do something like this (using a pit-stop) you would lose more time(and racing edge) - relative to the cars not stopping - under normal circumstances than you would do under the safety car. For example, let's assume a track where the average speed is 100 mph for the lap and the average lap time 100 seconds. If you stopped in the pits let's assume it adds another 25 seconds to your lap time, this means you've taken 25% more time compared to the other cars. However, if the safety car is out, the lap times double to 200 seconds, your pit-stop now only adds 12.5% to the average lap as it is the same duration, so the penalty for stopping is much less. So, if a team is intelligent enough to time their improvements, changes, and fixes at the right point during a Safety car period, they might emerge out of it at a higher position and competitive edge.

What can the Travel Startups learn from it?

Whether we like it or not the menacing Corona Virus has come into the Travel industry as an uninvited Safety Car, and tremendously limited the racing prowess of almost every player in the field! Just like in motorsport, we can either look at this as an impediment - and be demotivated -  or seize the opportunity to go back to the drawing board to come up with new plans, strategies, and killer capabilities to emerge out of this unprecedented situation as a stronger player.

A lot of companies have already started adopting this positive mindset - and starting to focus more on building their product and technology capabilities -  during this pandemic that some folks have started describing scarily as a ‘nuclear winter’ for the travel industry, as bookings plunge and borders close! Example: Berlin-based GetYourGuide and ticket booking website Omio said they are hunkering down, and planned to spend the expected quiet period working on tech systems to ensure they were more competitive when travel resumes. And the co-founder of Klook talked about how he intends to bring his “fighting spirit” to get the company through this global storm

So, it is time to put on your Product and Engineering hats - and give a rest to the Voucher/Coupon code battle strategies!  Time to build some innovative features and products to make the lives of travelers much better when they come out of this ‘Corona Cloud’ and ready to hit the road again! 

While this learning does not apply only to the Travel Companies (tech and otherwise), they could gain the most from this positive approach during this extraordinary situation caused by Lord Covid!