BB wrote:
In my opinion the clock should stop as soon as the pilot enters the
cylinder. We shouldn't have pilots in the finish cylinder still
racing.


You haven't met enough contest pilots. If the rules change in this
way, pilots will aim to finish one mile out, 50 feet, 90 knots and
then float in to the landing, european-style.

Applying an appropriate penalty for finishing below the Minimum Finish
Height would eliminate that behavior. I was actually surprised to find
that the SSA competition rules provide no guidelines as to how to
penalize pilots who don't make it into the finish cylinder. Given the
difficulties of knowing precisely how high one is finishing, missing by
50 or so feet shouldn't result in a huge penalty, but it should also
never be beneficial to intentionally finish low...

Marc