So you are saying that if the one ahead is flying what appears an excessively long DW leg, the correct action is to turn base and then final and, remaining at the circuit height, go around back to DW?
That's exactly what the UK military taught in the 1970s on jet trainers. I doubt it will have changed much.
If a sucession of aircraft extend downwind one after the other, someone is going to end up in the next county (and they do).
And that is a big no-no where I learnt to fly (which was quite the opposite of the military) : "sequence on final should equal sequence of entering downwind" is what I was taught. Makes sense, too.
Well, in this situation it didn't make sense; it was a ridiculous situation. The other aircraft were flying crosswind to a position outside the ATZ boundary before turning downwind and flying the downwind leg completely outside the zone, before re-entering on base leg or finals. We were also in a faster aircraft. If we had followed them we would have been unable to continue because our circuit was a military one which requires certain visual cues, close in. ATC were very happy about it and no-one had a problem because the timings worked out. We didn't cut any one up, we were just flying normal circuits with the other aircraft flying around the local area outside us.
The advantage we had was that if our engine had failed, we could have made the runway, as per our military circuit. The others? No way.