But to me, it seemed they only U-Turned to guarantee first place, and were not thinking into future legs. Maybe it's just me...
U-TURNing Andy and Tommy would not have done anything.
The rest of the teams are not as good as racing as compared to them. The only team Marcus and Amani who have won a leg, stumbled on a NEL and have not been seen by E/C for the entire leg due to the late flight.
So. It's either they use it or don't use it. They probably anticipate that there's only 2 U-TURNs on the entire race. And if they don't use it now... there probably won't be another one. So the most logical reason would be to use it for a win and try to get first place... right?
Joab, I completely agree with you, it's sad that most people don't realize the logic of this U-turn.
It's a plain and easy decision, if Ernie/Cindy wanted to use the U-turn at that time, the most logical choice is Bill/Cathi because:
(1) they wouldn't know what task would be ahead and B/C were like 10 minutes behind them, they might get lost on the way to pit stop (like what happened last leg), so why don't have a longer buffer?
(2) they did not see other teams at that time, so they were only sure B/C were behind them at that point
(3) Andy/Tommy were strong but they were not 100% sure A/T were behind them at that point and they assumed Amani/Marcus were way behind which wouldn't make A/T eliminated even U-turn them
(4) Since they assumed A/M were way behind, it didn't make sense to U-turn other teams like Z/L and J/S
So with all reasons above considered, if they chose to use the U-turn the most sensible choice was on B/C, otherwise there would be no effect at all.