Gents
Sorry I'm a bit late joining this debate but if I may add my thoughts.
To understand the "S&G in the stalls" rules you have to go back to the days when we did chassis levelling with Pit Stops. In those days drivers who took the faster cars had to make at least one and sometimes two timed stops per race. When you take into account that we also allowed unlimited resets which had to be followed by a S&G, you can imagine the pit plane was very busy. Sometimes drivers would stop outside the stalls and block the pit lane, others would loose a lot of time trying to stop exactly in their own stall. We had lots of complaints about drivers gaining an unfair advantage so we introduced some rules to try to make the Pit Stops consistent and hence fairer. These Pit Stop rules also applied to a pit stop of zero seconds, which is a S&G.
The rules have always been there but I admit they are a bit hard to find. The link to
Pit Stops is under Chassis Levelling on this
page.
To make things easier to find, I've put links to the pit stops page under "Failing to take Stop & Go after Shift-R" and "Incorrect S&G" on the penalty guidelines
page and clarified the guidelines to highlight the fact that a S&G should be considered to be a Pit Stop of zero seconds and hence the rules about how to perform a Pit Stop also apply to a S&G.
This doesn't stop the divisional moderator using a different approach for their divisions. So any moderator can say stop in the pit lane if he chooses to do so provided the rules are clearly stated on the championship page (where the "Drivers and Standings" table is located) or in the race announcement. Having said that, using the "default" rules tends to be less confusing for the drivers, especially for drivers who race in multiple divisions when it can be quite hard to remember what the division specific rules are whilst racing hard with the adrenaline pumping
.
Regards
Phil