WPH11 01 IAL Edexcel AS/A Level Physics Paper 1 May/June 2024| WPH11/01 May June 2024|IAL Edexcel 

hi. Thank you very much for your detailed question. I really like when people ask questions. so here is the answer. I have seen answers in the marked papers which are way different than mark scheme and they get full marks. if you can see in the mark scheme they mention the word "example of calculation" not "exact method" or "exact correct calculation". So, there can be many ways to get to one answer. Now, I will answer your question. It is absolutely safe to use the time 1.1sec which they are asking you to proof the cars side by side. Because, when first car is not accelerating and second is accelerating then it is very common to understand that, the second car will soon over take the first car. and it is also very common to understand that both cars will remain side by side for very very small piece of time. After that, car first will left behind and car second will go way past car 1. So therefore, I used time to calculate the distance and use the distance to check if they are side by side or not. Therefore, the approach is all perfect dont worry about it. If i choose to proof the time calculation as 1.1 sec then i have to try so many distances in SUVAT to reach to the answer of time for 1.1sec which is of course not the intention of edexcel or exam. So, they just want to test your understanding in that tricky way and for which the solution is already done for you in a short cut way. In Engineering this approach is called, reverse engineering :)