Thanks for the welcome, and the perspective! I stand in awe of all of you.
Actually, according to the interviews, the racers kind of agreed with apskip - there were other, and earlier, flights, and if they'd known the penalty was only 30 minutes for not taking the mandatory flight, they might all have taken an earlier flight; depending on how fast they got to the airport, they probably sat there for hours until the mandatory flight left. Sounds like they were led to believe the penalty for not taking that flight would be much worse.
And that's probably enough about that...