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My assumption is that until people really start to use a track properly, you're just guessing how they'll deal with parts of it. Particularly where track limits are often modified at the end of a season.
Maybe, but this has been a track that has been in regular use in F1 for 15 years or so (personally I'm still of the opinion that even on a new track, you paint a pair of white lines and you stay within them). I can see the issues in enforcing it, "How far beyond the boundary does someone go?", "Is it intentional?", "Did they actually gain time?". And of course it's not as simple as "Well just put some gravel out there" as that's not necessarily going to work for all types of car/bike racing.
But having one set of rules for quali/practice and one for the race is bad enough, but then flipping the race rules to match the quali/practice ones halfway through the race? That just seems ridiculous.
mmccarthy-
personally I'm still of the opinion that even on a new track, you paint a pair of white lines and you stay within them
Given that even club racers usually manage to stay within track limits, I'm sure F1 drivers would be able to do so if necessary. When I was racing the rules were pretty clear - exceed track limits once and it's noted - anyone can make a mistake. Do it a second time and you get a driving standards flag. Do it a third time and you get a penalty.
It's still open to abuse, as some drivers treat the first and second off-track excursions like jokers you can use twice in a race, like in one race I saw where virtually the entire field used the run-off at Copse as extra race circuit. At least the rules are tolerably clear though.
Brommers
My assumption is that until people really start to use a track properly, you're just guessing how they'll deal with parts of it. Particularly where track limits are often modified at the end of a season.
In a similar way, in a bike park near here there was a sort of bermed chicane section to slow people for a technical section ahead. It became pretty common to use the first berm to gap the whole lot but obviously then you arrived at the tech section with a load more speed; great for racing, maybe not great if you're sharing the trail. The builder put trees in to stop it eventually; until he saw it done, it never occurred to the builder that someone would gap the section he was using to slow riders down.