1 How i would like to see respawning handled: for a long race like "long way around" you can set certain checkpoints to be also respawn points. Long Way Around provides for you lots of repair pick-ups, but once you die, its a 10 minute wait. If every 2 minutes or so you passed a checkpoint with spawnign enabled, that becomes your default spawning point. So when you fly over a hill and into the water, you wait 5 seconds then respawn at the last spawn/checkpoint. you probably wont win the race (unless everyone else has to respawn too) but at least its more interesting than watching a couple of guys racing for 10 minutes.
it should be enabled via the map settings in the editor (ie respawn true/false), there should be a "randomize respawn" option (also true/false in the map editor) for free roam style maps or any future "frag" or "wins" competitions.
and i cant think of a situation where getting respawned back where you started would be worse than sitting around. for short maps or for whatever kind of map you dont want people respawning because they'd be too far away, you can just disable it when designing the map. now that you have the platform built i dont think it would take months for this to be put in.
2 another idea i had was that checkpoints or pickups could be fitted with a message tag; when you pass the checkpoint or pickup, it displays a short message, perhaps at the bottom of the screen; this could be useful for things like letting players know that the next checkpoint requires them to fly under a bridge or something like that, or in a laps-style race, let them know what lap they are on.