I find that “scripted to the minute” hard to believe. The “advertisement detours” (where a village pays them to fly around a castle, church, or mountain top) likely are scripted because they _have_ to be shown for the contracted number of seconds (and they will be shown, even if there’s a significant development in the race that the helicopters miss as a result), but it remains a race, where one cannot know beforehand how fast the riders will ride.

⇒ The route flown may be fairly rigid, but the timing can’t be.