In the good old days, there was a simple penalty structure. Finish one
foot low (one foot under the top of the airfiled fence) and you've
landed out for the day, hopefully in the last field before the airport
and not on the fence itself.

It seems a lot simpler to simply move the good old days up 500 feet.
Back then, each pilot set his own safety margin, and didn't expect
anyone except his beer buddies to listen to "but I was only 10 feet
below the finish height".

If we go to fancy altitude-based penalties like JJ wants, or Andy's
carefully figured penalties, then the race goes to guys like me and
Andy who are willing to spend all winter figuring out the scoring
formulas and how to game them. Even the current rolling finish plus x
minutes leads to some fine calculations about thermal strength, chance
of porpoising, and so on to optimally take advantage of the rolling
finish option. Fine with me in a way, I need all the help I can get
and I'm good at math. But simplicity also has its virtues.

John Cochrane