Hello everyone, the time has come to try something new at AirAttack, something for more advanced demo people looking for good LFS racing. Maybe you know there are regular endurance FBM events already taking place every Saturday evening at the [AA] Demo Racing server. These races are getting some serious attention already, but we can always try to improve the standards, e.g. improve the announcements to limit the ever present confusion about race start times etc.
The idea, brought forward by Mugen (thx!), is to have a kind of more serious race (or races) at the [AA] Demo Racing server every day in the (European) evening, when there are most people online. We think there could be regular and fully automatic events every evening, 3 times a week a FBM race, 3 times a GTI (BL1) race and once a week a rallycross (BL2) endurance race(s). The events should take from 1 to 1.5 hours and should be limited only to drivers with reasonably good lap time and above average safety rating on AirAttack. The events will also be open, no registration - anyone complying with the set limits can join at any time.
Monday : GTI + BL2, short qualification (10-15 mins) followed by two 25 minute races
Tuesday : FBM + BL1, three 15 minute sprint races (with pit required?)
Wednesday : GTI + BL1, same as above
Thursday : FBM + BL1, two 25 minute mid-length races, no pitstop
Friday : GTI + BL1, same as above
Saturday : FBM + BL1, one 55 minute endurance race, one pitstop required with all tyres changed (for realism)
Sunday : GTI + BL1, same as above
This is the original idea, your comments are most welcome. I think 3x15, 2x25 and 1x55 minute races all represent nicely separated almost 1 hour of racing. These races are for set minutes + 1 lap for the leader, so 15 minutes + 1 lap may actually turn out to be 17 or 18 total minutes of race. Every event starts by qualification, first 12 have preferential race joining, which is fair. For 2nd and 3rd race the grid can be completely or partially reversed based on previous race results, to make the racing more enjoyable.
Everything is open to discussion. Particularly I'd like to know your opinions concerning pit stops in the sprint races. They are not necessary, of course, but they always add some tactical options and often make the race more interesting. The proposed 1st race start time is 20:00 WET (London, server) time, which is 21:00 CET (Berlin, Paris, Prague). The qualification would start 15-30 minutes earlier. Thus the whole event should alway finish at about 21:00 WET (22:00 CET), which seems to be reasonable even for weekdays.
Well, I think that's enough as the opening info. Please say what you like and what you don't. There are other options available, such as doing realistic qualification (you may not pit/spec from track, only from the pitlane), allowing one serious mistake (one car reset can be available, for a certain penalty), defining pit window (to prevent making a pitstop in lap 1), etc. Not everything is possible, but many ideas can be implemented. The point is to make these events interesting to advanced drivers.