Master Race car's E-Challenge 2022 wrap-up

After some delay in delivering the official result of the final race of the season (and few other delays...), we can finally conclude the second edition of the Master Race car's E-Challenge championship.

First of all I'd like to thank to everyone involved in this project - The Master Race car team who provided all the necessary infrastructure and who's members were an incredible helping hand; the New Dimension Racing team who was responsible for highly professional direction of all official sessions; the Simbroadcasts.tv team who delivered incredibly exciting broadcasts from all three championship rounds; the Live for Speed developers who's hard work and willingness to experiment made all of this possible in first place; and last but not least to all the competitors who took part in the championship and delivered exciting racing.

We had 3 exciting races at 3 unique layouts across 2 city environments. As the E-Challenge was, is and will be an unique racing competition with many unique features and never-tried-before concepts, we hugely admire all drivers who entered this uncharted territory and bravely faced all the new challenges we put against them.


The defending champion Jimi Virtanen had a tough task to prove he's worth it - over 50 challengers registered in attempt to dethrone him, but in the end it was Jimi who finished all three events on the podium, winning two of them and conquering the driver's championship table with 69 points (haha, nice).
The most active S1DUS driver Niko Puntola tried his best to beat Jimi on the track, but even his three podium places (third, second and first in this order) were not enough to do the job and secured only second place with 58 championship points.
In third place, another S1DUS driver Gábor Gyüre had to skip one of the rounds due to technical difficulties, however his strong results in other two events (two second places) were good enough to earn the third place in the standings with 36 points.
Honorable mentions go to Dawid Góźdź and Jared Meade, who ended up in 4th and 5th place respectively.

A special honorable mention goes to Volfgangas Gudys, who despite being one of the slower guys in the competition was still fully determined to attend all three rounds.

Full results below:


In the teams championship things were much more exciting: entering the final round, Master Race car had 3 points advantage over S1DUS, while SAVAGE SimSports and Last Lap Motorsports were level on points in the fight for the third place.
But it was S1DUS team who thanks to the strong performance in final round took the overall lead in the championship with 113 points.
Master Race car team didn't have the upper hand and had to settle for second place with 97 points, followed by SAVAGE SimSports whose entrants were more successful in the season finale and their 24 points were enough to get the third place ahead of Last Lap Motorsports.
Honorable mention goes to Race Green Autosports team for finishing in top 5, beating the Sim Broadcasts team by a single point.

Full results below:


Monetary driver awards:

The Master Race car's E-Challenge Champion Award goes to Jimi Virtanen, who undeniably won the championship and our hearts. Let's see if he can remain on the top spot after future third edition of E-Challenge with 10€ in his pocket.

The Clean Driver Award will go to one of the following competitors:
Jimi Virtanen
Ramon Hornos
Dawid Góźdź
Jefrin Jacob
Lorenzo Lucidi

The organisation team evaluated the efforts of all competitors and determined the group of 5 drivers with highest driving standards who are equally eligible for this prize. Unfortunately the clean driving cannot be properly measured and therefore it is not possible to pick the one driver without encountering the possibility of bias and favoritism. Therefore (as stated in the rules) the winner of this prize will be determined in a public draw, which will happen on 13th of September during RTFR broadcast, using randomly generated result. Before the draw all eligible drivers will be contacted with further information about the draw process.

Both monetary prize winners will be then contacted in following weeks with payment information; preferred payment method is PayPal.


The future plans:

Despite the cold start in the first edition, the second edition of E-Challenge was a huge success.
This sets a high bar for the third edition, which is already being worked on behind the curtain.

We can't give away everything, but we can tease you with simple facts about what's being prepared:
New competition vehicle, new tracks, new event format, new strategic elements to play with,... and more and more!
We listened to the feedback we got in the post-season driver survey and try to accommodate some of the great ideas and wishes.
Speaking of the survey - follow this link to see all the responses and reflections the drivers and organisers had.

Thank you for being part of the E-Challenge, see you around in few months when the third edition of E-Challenge is unveiled!

Last edited by michal 1279, Tue 6 Sep 2022, 09:56.

There is a limit at around 200 m/s (720 km/h) where the game stops you from going any faster. Don't remember the actual reason for it, something relevant to either safety, hacks (in pre-mod era this speed was simply not possible to achieve naturally) or maybe the physics code stops working properly at so high speeds (after all at that speed you are getting out of the general subsonic aerodynamics territory and the code might not work at all nearing the transsonic speeds).

My biggest issue with hotlaps is that they do not count towards any LFSW statistic. Drive 100 laps in HL mode, but it will be 0km driven today next to your name.

For me as a statistics junkie that is very discouraging.

The survey was sent to every user who did attend at least one round of the 2022 Master Race car's E-Challenge Championship.

We got 23 responses (56% return) and a lot of valuable feedback.
Let's see what did you think about the championship:

In the first question drivers were asked to rate specific individual traits of the championship on a 5-point scale from great to terrible.

We can see most of the mentioned aspects were positively received. The only aspect where opinions are close to neutral is the qualifying success ballast, which didn't meet the expectations on the organisers side as well and is likely to be dropped from future editions. Rest is very likely to remain in some form.

In the next question we asked the drivers if the race was too long or too short.

It is clear drivers were mostly satisfied with the race length, which was a copy of the Formula E concept.


We agree that 3 races were not enough, but we had to be conservative this time. Also the fact only 20 competitors attended the final round (compared to 32 in round 1) suggests the number was "just about right" this time. Let's see if we can keep the drivers more engaged next time.

Next series of questions was aimed at the fake weather system.

The dry/wet weather system was highly experimental part of the series, and therefore we couldn't afford to deploy it in more sessions than we did. However as the system worked well and was well received, we do intend to keep and extend this system for future runnings.


Hard to make any conclusion from this, but despite the cold nature of dry R4 tyres they were the more popular tyre to race on.

Then questions aimed at our partners in crime followed:

Guess SBTV does awesome job!


And so does NDR (sorry Nova)

In the next question we asked the drivers who did not attend all three rounds for the reason of their absence.

Most of the responses are collisions with other real life events, which are indeed a higher priority. Some had technical issues that prevented them from attending or joined the series mid-season.
Some custom answers did leave a scratch on my head though.

Monetary awards feedback followed:

The Clean Driver Award was extremely well received, the Best driver awards a little bit less.
Open answers were available so more than 3 original options appear. We intend to keep some symbolic prize pool as long as resources are there.

Future edition of E-Challenge:


Guess people interested in responding to this survey are also interested in racing here next time. I love sampling bias!


5 is about right, no? We will definitely aim for more than 3 rounds.


Although there were complaints about event timing, most responses would stick to the used weekend slot or run slightly later. Only one response was a mid-week day.

Wishes for next edition with open answers:


The competition vehicle was received rather well, although it had some small flaws that are worth fixing.
The next generation of the E-Challenger vehicle is already being worked on and looks very promising.



General questions:

Looks like we made some positive impact after all

"Anything else?":


TL;DR:
2022 edition of E-Challenge was great, but we will do everything we can to make the 2023 edition even better! These survey results will help a ton! Thanks everyone who left the feedback to help shape the future of E-Challenge

Also the season wrap-up thread coming soon.

So I was randomly browsing LFS World stats when I noticed some strange data in the latest race I attended.

Yesterday we raced for 300 km on very long custom Westhill layout with multiple original LFS cars and even more mod cars. The race went as is usual and everything worked flawlessly including the race finish, but in the LFSW results it shows incorrect gap in one occasion - the gap between 4th and 5th was 0,12 seconds, but the result says there was 1 lap gap. By the completed laps count it looks like a whole one lap was ignored by LFSW somewhere in my run (not sure if the last lap or somewhere in the middle), although I'm classified like if I completed all laps.

https://www.lfsworld.net/?win= ... 01279&raceId=24648669



Any idea what went wrong?

EDIT: can provide mpr if it is any useful.

Quote from versiu :

U seem to be very closed to any development or opening this game to more people

That is a strange statement considering I'm indirectly responsible for existence of mods in LFS in first place. But I'm not here to brag about it...

Quote from versiu :

Worrying about someone who can judge game basing on mod content is a bit silly

It is perfectly valid concern for a game where vast majority of content consists of mods.

Quote from versiu :

Modders in RBR making stages for years now and it really good quality models and ain't riped from other games. Also in Assetto Corsa there's modding teams who scan road themselves, doing photos etc to make map.

Yep, that's why. Modders in RBR and AC are doing great job and put in massive effort. Meanwhile most modders in LFS take random model of their favourite car from sketchfab, load it in editor and export to LFS. Physics is wonky, lights don't work, shadow does not exist,... Feels like with the editor it is easy to make a mod, but hard to make a good mod.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see well made custom tracks in LFS, but what I'm trying to say is - LFS is not ready for community-made tracks. And even less so is the community itself. I've been told how hard to use the track editor is compared to the vehicle editor, we are not ready for it. At least not until LFS modders do the mods at the same quality level like RBR and AC modders do...

Quote from versiu :

If somethig is bad quality u just give it bat rating and never use anymore. Simple.

That's exactly what new players will do with whole game if they encounter such "quality" tracks when they try out the game - rate LFS badly and never use it anymore. Yup, simple...

Entry number : 1
Entry name : FERAT Motors
Car: XRT
Entered driver (Ingame name / LFSW name / Country) : [MRc] Michal / michal 1279 / Czech Republic

Yes, but your AI needs S3 licence as well.

Most importantly, you can drive it with S3 licence.

Quote from SpeedKiller49 :

an empty map which no one plays anyway

That's a weird way to describe hundreds of new community-made vehicles coming with S3.

Quote from UnknownMaster21 :

Question1:

If I read correctly. All you need to do is having minimum of 1 pitstop which lasts 30 seconds. And there is no need to adjust anything ( refueling, tire change, and so on )

Am I correct?

Question2:

Is the register plate free to use of anything you want? Or is it restricted to e.g. Entry number?

Q1: As far as I understand, that is correct. (meeting RTFR XL rules)

Q2: Based on experience from previous two runnings, you should be open to write anything on your licence plate without any issue.

There are very few tracks in the Demo, but if you visit this link:

https://www.lfs.net/shop

you can buy several more tracks and enjoy them for the lifetime.

Little observation from yesterday's RTFR utilising this car - the hitbox (LOD3) is way too big compared to what it should be. That should be adjusted, as cars currently do collide when there is still some visual space between them (this was partially or fully responsble for lap 1 pileup). This is especially noticeable during side-to-side contact and when the car is upside down (it levitates above the ground).

Team name: FERAT Motors
Name and user:

M. Málek (michal 1279)
TBA (TBA)

Car: LMP2

Number (del 2 a 99): 47

Team leader´s discord user: [MRc] Michal#0970

48/michal 1279/Michal Málek/Czechia/Master Race car

50/50 chance I will make the race but hey, let's hope

Quote from Victor :

You bring up an interesting point though - do you want to store the video streams after the event, for each round as well?

Probably individual decision of each organiser, but speaking for myself, I would appreciate to be able to attach the dedicated broadcast link to each of my individual championship rounds.

Quote from Victor :

Question for the streamers:

I'd like to add options to store stream URLs to seasons / rounds. But I was wondering if the stream URL is always the same, in which case I can add it to a season. But if it changes per round (event) it should be stored with each round individually.

I think the Twitch streams are usually the same URL, but I'm not sure how it works with YouTube and others? Are those different urls for each stream?

Both Twitch and YouTube use unique URL for each video/stream replay
(examples: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1440374598; https://youtu.be/951aIsfdLKo)
so I believe individual storage will be necessary to do so.

Last edited by michal 1279, Fri 1 Apr 2022, 13:56.

Quote from Scawen :

Do you not like this 'steerer' thing which is specially designed for that?

To be fair, even I have that curvy bar hidden when mousedriving and have the cursor turned on instead.
I think the main reason is (at least for me), that I can keep the cursor in the middle of the screen at my eye level (wherever I'm looking at most of the time).

Using the bar suggested would force me to pay too much attention to the bottom of the screen instead of following the road ahead.

That bar is however very useful when watching replay, but not so much for live racing.

Quote from Scawen :

And one more question, I think TeamSpeak or Discord was required in an event I saw once. Is this common and if so, should there be an indication about that?

TeamSpeak is usually used during NDR-sanctioned races (so once in a while); Discord is used most often in FragMaster's weekly events (GTi Thursday and FOX Friday). Indication of some sort might be helpful.

Quote from Scawen :

And should there be an indication like beginner / intermediate / expert? That could help people choose an event.

I feel like such indication would do more harm than good, if anything it would be off putting to people who believe they are too unexperienced (or too good) for the level indicated.

I agree the clickable buttons have to be clearly visible/distinguishable. Even better if there are standalone buttons next to the informative text to avoid any doubt:

something like:

[Server] [MRc E-Challenge] [JOIN!]

The issue is, tyres with this mod simply die (overheat) after 3-4 laps of fullspeed driving and nothing can really be done with it (we hit the limitation of the current tyre physics model I guess). Unless we go all intentionally at half pace to keep them alive for a little while.

Quote from Scawen :

Question 2:

I think we have an on-site system for signing up to races, but more often organisers use a forum thread. If an on-site system was used, we could do reminders, or highlight races in the calendar that you have signed up to. What is missing from the website system, that Victor could add so organisers would choose to use it? For example, if entrants had to add name, number, team, etc. Maybe the organiser could export something to load into a spreadsheet.

I believe the main reason on-site signup is not widely used is (as you kinda figured out) the inability to easily work with the data. In forum thread drivers sign up via post in specific format, that allows organisers to just copy the line into their tracking system and they are done. With on-site signup as it is now, they would have to manually write down all entries which would be a lot of tedious work and would cause many unwanted administrative errors.

The ability to export the on-site signup data in desired format (as well as utilising other functions like attendance confirmations for example) would definitely make it a viable (and possibly desired) option.

Quote from Avraham Vandezwin :

Putting the LFS demo on Steam is using Steam to promote LFS.

To be fair, this is something that definitely ha to be considered.
But it has to be DEMO ONLY (so the core LFS is still standalone and independent) and I strongly suggest to do it AFTER the graphical update (unfortunately graphics are the first impression a game can give and LFS graphics as it is right now is not very impressive for general playerbase, so if we don't want to make the reviews flooded with thumbs down, it has to wait until the update is up and running)

Quote from jujek :

Why we can't just convert everything from another games when other games don't have any problems with it

You couldn't be more wrong. Show me a game where officially supported content is clearly ripped off from other games. Good luck with that.

Also feel free to upload a popular movie to a YouTube, you'll discover very quickly why stealing someone else's work is an issue...

Will add my few cents from the E-Challenge perspective.

Soooo, I was facing this exact problem in the E-Challenge too. While not so severe numbers (mainly due to extreme hype), the trend was clear, and thanks to my decision to host only 3 rounds (if it is a shitshow, at least it's soon over) we stayed in reasonable attendance numbers even at season finale.

To put things in perspective:

52 drivers did successfully register for the championship (50 were valid)
41 drivers did attend at least 1 round.
14 drivers did attend all 3 rounds.

R1 had 32 cars on the grid.
R2 had 26 cars on the grid (28 attendants)
R3 had 20 cars on the grid.

The trend was clear - interest was dropping significantly and if we had 5-6 races, the finale would have like 10-12 cars on the grid... (E-Challenge 2020 flashbacks)

I struggle to understand why it is happening - I sent a survey to all drivers who did attend at last one round of E-Challenge (full results will be published soon after E-Challenge is officially over, but will leave few thread-relevant things here anyway)

In one question i was asking, what was the reason for missing out any round (keep in mind these answers are from active drivers, not those who registered but never showed up - I'm fine with no interest from the beginning, but don't understand increasing lack of interest over the series)


* last 3 answers are open answers

The strong majority had real life stuff to take care of (which is understandably a higher priority), guess we cannot do much about it, but it does not answer why the attendance drop is chronological. Rest were technical issues, bans and whateverthe****didtheymean.

I was also wondering if we could pick a better time for the event, however those who voted did pick same or similar timing as what we already have, so no clear evidence we are doing it wrong timing-wise. (There was open answer available as well, but only 1 response was a non-weekend day, rest did stick with the weekend evenings)



TLDR; still don't know what is causing the drop in attendance, or how to effectively combat it.
All the methods I was hopeful with did not work and I'm out of ideas on how to motivate drivers to keep racing.