I really enjoyed the heavy damage and cautions we used back in GT5 for some of the Tuna Cup evnets I was a part of, while not completely true to life it was a fairly simple system that seemed to work well and those that took damage often had a chance to catch back up to the rear of the pack after repairs or at least not be ridiculously far behind.
I do agree that for non-points racing light damage is usually the best option, though on the flip side of that sometimes heavy damage may be good too because at least if you break the car you know it'll only be say 5-10 minutes til another race. Maybe I'll have to try that out in a ToC sometime and see how it goes hehe.
Depending on the car / track I'd be quite happy doing points races with heavy damage turned on, whether there's any kind of caution procedure or not I think it would be fun
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On a side note one thing that really kills the general concept of "Heavy Damage" in GT for me is the severe lack of visual accompaniment, I know the lack of heavy visual damage is almost a trademark of the franchise but I'd still like to see some improvements there. The scrapes and dings we have right now are better IMO than what we had in GT5 and they work well enough for Light Damage but seem out of place for Heavy Damage, if I've bent my wheel enough that I have to go to the pits to have it straightened then it should look a bit more obvious that the car is damaged. But that's probably a grumble for another thread
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