ive a funny feeling it was more to do with the continued cycling of the server that caused peoples problems, im sure each time the server goes from track to track it disconnects then reconnects the client to the server or at least re logs them, i could be wrong.
I must say I do not think that's the problem. If that was the case i would expect people to lose connection when this happened (before qual), not 20 minutes later (after qual).
What happened with the disconnections was technically far from unique. However, a couple of coincidences made it (seem) much worse:
First of all Reik lost
internet connection at an earlier stage and is an isolated case.
The diconnection chaos
Two people lost connection, Tim and Jim.
Tim was in limbo-land; seemingly on his own screen he was online but not on everybody elses. On the server interface he was gone but somebody had the status "joining game". This status is indistinguishable to somebody acctually joining the server (from password to you are in garage). And when somebody are joining the server, you can not tell who they are until they are in their garage.
Jim had big trouble rejoining because the 24'th spot was taken by Tim in limboland (unknown to me of course, it looked like somebody joining), and the 25th was taken by Anthony Ishak because of a misunderstanding.
So from my side: 2 drivers lost connection, presedence show that we usually in such a situation go around, pick them up and are delayed maybe 2 minutes. So I did. Looking at the server interface to see what happened I see 2 ppl joining and I am thinking great, it goes according to plan. But then I see Anthony I show up, but no Tim or Jim??? I look at the server interface again, I now see 24 ppl online and one car joining... I'm thinking, is that Tim or Jim? nothing happens. Then I kick Anthony (sorry mate) and leave the server myself as I now are thinking that the "joining game" that doesn't turn into a name is a bug.
I ask Jim and Tim to try joining again as there now must be room. Around this time I realise what is going on with tim, ask him to give up and rejoin myself.
As for the practice starts, that is another chapter, but it obviously caused half of the delay, and that was never my intention. I didn't calculate that we would use so much time on 2 extra practice starts, I wrongly thought the 5 minuts lended from the qual would be sufficient. (and i acctually didn't think we would need more than one practice start, but I was as the second last car amazingly rear ended by the last car and didn't have a choice but to do another one).
Bottom line is that I agree that it is unacceptable to go overtime, and I am very sorry to those who were impaired by this. I was caught off guard and it was never my intention, but as a Presto GP guy I will not make the same mistake twice.