[Michael Beard]

After studying the three different videos presented here from different incidents, and the Div. Director comment, it appears that they have added some kind of lockout in the system so that once it thinks the car has left the starting line, it keeps the pre-stage and stage from lighting again. If you look at older videos, you can see the stage bulbs flicker when the rear tires roll through the beams, so presumably they have tried to eliminate this "problem" (possible distraction for the faster car?) by locking them out, as Rice was describing. I stepped through Mason's video like the previous one, and the same thing happened: The red-light comes on instantaneously with the power going off to the pre-stage and stage bulbs (and since they are incandescent, they appear to go off *after* the red-light)

It may be a coincidence, but in these particular videos, it appears that the red-light is activated at about the time that the slower opponent's rear wheels are crossing the starting line.

In troubleshooting, my gut feeling would be to look at something related to this pre-stage/stage lockout as being the culprit.