Sunday,29th October 18:00 UTC / 19:00 CET / 20:00 EET
* note the changed UTC time!
It's that time of the year when the usual activity in the container storage field of Blackwood ceases and the forklifts and trucks make place for the V8 Racing League machines. The track measures 2.5 kilometers of a lap length and features the widest start/finish straight probably in most active leagues - exiting last turn for newcomers might give doubts if they are still on right course. There is practically no elevation in this track,however suspension will have some workout as it is everything else than even,partially even dusty. History shows that some drivers opting to change tyres during the race,some finish on same set - managing your resources is one of the keypoints in this round.
Being a penultimate round this will decide few things in the standings tables - current standings leader in theory can wrap up both individual awards for himself,however with bad luck it can go other way round and open possibility of the championship to be decided in season finale in a head to head battle.
Before this thread derails,here's something on topic - the results of the latest RTFR event. The track,that is practically Kyoto National configuration with alternate oval part to be used to connect the infield course,was run with the small lightweight front wheels driven GTR car based on UF 1000. With the short wheelbase,sticky tyres and high revving engine it is a specific car with it's own specific handling,some could adapt to it right away,some had their problems. When looking at race results,there is something that sticks into eyes straight away - the top10 is inhabitated by only 3 teams and an individual,who was a part of one of these teams in the past.
To celebrate his 6th win in the last 9 races,Gábor led all 25 laps this tuesday as he wasn't challenged much - the competition was not far away,but with exeption of first few turns,the hungarian did not see anyone within striking distance and scored his 27th RTFR race win,while qualifying brought him the 20th pole position - that puts him in sole 2nd position in most pole positions chart. He set the fastest lap also in the race session,which is Gábor's 23rd and the top5 count was increased to 53. As much as A.Valta wanted to challenge for race win,he was more occupied with defence of 2nd position - he succeded and finished as runner up for the 2nd RTFR race in row,scoring his 20th top5 finish. Unite was the one trying hardly for position upgrade,but had to settle for 3rd place finish at the end,which is a repeat of his best finish in this scored season and 74th top5 finish. R.Kardol finished 4th to make his team represented 3 times between best 4 finishers,scoring his 82nd top5 finish,WCL's Arska completed the top5 with his 23rd top5 finish.
VOD at Youtube:
Normally next tuesday it would be RTFR XL,but the event is set to be run only a single race per calendar month,so it will take extra 2 weeks break and will return on 14th november with FZR being run in Aston Historic reversed configuration. So without any of regulary scheduled events there is a chance of RTFR CCCC being revived with some more experimental combo. But RGE will provide some higher difficulty racing already this sunday - the V8 Racing League has it's 8th season near it's end,the penultimate round of the 2023 series will be run on Blackwood's container storage field,where the well known Container Sprint track has been set up for great challenge once again. Full info and signups in the VERL forum section! But the tuesday after next will host another normal RTFR race - you can find clues about the combo if you watch the recording of the latest race.
A reminder - server will be password protected 1 hour before qualifying start to keep not knowing crowded server jumpers out of way,pass will be always the same: green
Some historic stats:
Last race won by: S1DUS*R.Kardol
Last UFR race won by: S1DUS*GáboR (282nd RTFR - BL RGE Container Rush)
Most UFR race wins: S1DUS*Botsi - 3 wins (Finland - 5 wins)
Last Kyoto race won by: S1DUS*GáboR (310th RTFR - MCLARRY_D8M @ KY International RGE)
Most Kyoto roval configs race wins: S1DUS*GáboR - 3 wins (Finland - 4 wins)
Current rating leader: S1DUS*GáboR (+36.5 points)
[MRc] PedroBR - receives a WARNING for unsportsmanlike conduct - not starting from position he qualified in. The driver ignored several asks to join and joined right after the race session was started,therefor assumed to be intentional behaviour. Drivers should start from position according to their pace and not get involved into position battles in lower positions as it is unfair to them. Future infractions might lead to actual penalty.
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Just like 4 weeks ago,21 cars were standing on grid and waiting for green lights on a custom configuration with word "North" in it's name. But there were several differences - drivers had different cars,track was much faster and most noticably - the race was practically twice as long with twice as big championship points award. The latter factor played a big role in championship decisions - 2 of the standings had a leader change after the race,one standings leader barely kept the lead. But about that later,this post is about the round only.
After 1/3 of the race R.Kardol took over the race lead on the tale end of the fast and furious back stretch and pulled a solid gap to closest rival until finish line to score his 2nd RandomCar race win,cracking the 2:29 laptime mark in the final lap,to score also his 3rd fastest lap of the race. This marked the end of season with same trend it started - with a win of URC1,as it was the 5th win with this car. For the 4th time in the season with a 4th different car Mantas set the fastest laptime in qualifying,but once again was unable to convert that into race win finishing 2nd in this week's race repeating Piran Firefly's best finishing result - despite being fast in qualifying,he has scored just a single race win in the season. Firestarter joined the league just in the final round,but got drawn the best car and used it well to finish 3rd in his debuth.
Full season recap and final standings will be posted within couple of weeks.
LFS garage areodynamics tab shows (needs test patch to see it) it has 790N drag at 40m/s - all default LFS road cars have 640N. Since this car is somewhat taller than coupes,I would suggest to aim for 680-700N and test if that matches with real life data.
SGマ MadJester - receives a WARNING for contact entering 1st turn,further incidents will lead to actual penalty. Drivers should be more careful in group,especially when entering race without proper practice!
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Race at the South City gathered up only 7 drivers in qualifying - that triggered the shortened race for half points rule,which happened for the 1st time when running the new car. 8th driver arrived and used the chance to join as he was in standings top 10,so there were at least 8 cars on grid. Despite low attendance,there was plenty of action - a total of 3 drivers led the race,2 of them experienced some drama of their own,one even losing several positions,while most others also had their ups and downs.
Zesty scored the 1st point of the season by taking pole position in 1st round,now in 3rd round he had the 2nd success - starting from 4th position the malaysian climbed up the field to make a pass for lead already in lap 8,that was the last time when he saw direct rival in front of him as he led the remaining 28 laps on the way to his 1st ever VERL race win,which is also his 1st podium finish in this league,but already 4th top5 finish. The winner of first two season rounds saw his streak ended in this race - RD2 finished 2nd,allthough just 5 seconds apart from winner,still scoring valuable points gain over competition. The 2-time VERL vice champion (including last season) Unite joined this season only in 3rd round,but did it by scoring his 2nd pole position in the series,his race however did not went as good as he imagined as due several mistakes he barely saved the 3rd place finish,which is already his 15th top5 finish in VERL.
By finishing ahead of all the closest rivals,RD2 extended his standings lead to 13 points over Thehemuli,who had a bad race this sunday. 3rd is still Rony,who got 2 points closer to 2nd place. Only 12 drivers are now eligible for drivers champion title,just 1/3 of them have in any way realistic chances,while in theory RD2 could secure the title already after 4th round by outscoring Thehemuli by 10 points. RD2's lead in rookie of the year standings is even bigger - 26 points over Madjester.
As Zafiralis had only 1 driver in last race who even had a bad race,the team lost the lead in standings - the defending champions RGA overtook them and now has 8 points advantage with 2 rounds to go,which means nothing is decided yet. MRc is still 3rd,but already with a 27 points gap to lead - their chances are rather low now. With 78 points still available any team has still at least theoretical chances unless it has only a single driver. Finland extended their lead in nations cup by just 2 points and has now 11 points lead over Bulgaria,still with just a single driver to represent 2nd placed nation it's rather unlikelly the defending champions will be challenged here. No brazilians attended 3rd round,so their gap to top of the table is now 29 points. Also in nations cup all the nations still have theoretical chances assumed it has at least 2 drivers.
The penultimate round will be carried out in a track which could be described as the "narrowest of all the wide tracks" - the Blackwood Container Sprint configuration in several parts is extremelly wide,still some sections has just car's width of raceline,which means going off line will cause plenty of time lost and/or even position[s]. The container lot has a very simple pavement,which is everything else than smooth - that will be an additional challenge to the racers - let's hope to see more than just 3 rows filled with cars on the series only 3-wide grid!
This post will be edited after draw to add cars names to drivers!
New signups will receive their cars drawn in 2nd wave (20 minutes before qualifying)!
Last edited by Eclipsed, .
Reason : Added car names to drivers
Cars list and their restrictions is available also in server - type command !opt and select "RandomCar Info"
Server link: Ronys Tuesdays Fun Race
Server will be passworded at least 1 hour before qualifying,server pass: random
Race Green Discord: https://discord.gg/E37R5vD
Cars will be drawn in 2 waves:
1st wave - 24 hours before start of qualifying
2nd wave - 20 minutes before start of qualifying - for late signups
Draw link and results will be posted in this thread!
Sunday,15th October
17:00 UTC / 19:00 CET / 20:00 EET
Even if the track is wider in this round compared to previous one,it is still a concrete canyon with unforgiving walls which will just wait for uncareful racers. The 2.9 kilometers long South City Chicane Route has been used three times in this league,but none of those were run in clockwise direction,which counts as standard for this configuration. If racers were used to relativelly flat course in previous round,the bumpy South City will force them to set up the car significantly softer as one unexpected bounce can send the car in wall and destroy chances for better position.
With 2 rounds out of 5 completed any newcomers are unlikelly to challenge for championship title,however the winner's glory should still be attractive enough to join VERL in the middle of the season. RD2 currently lead the standings after 2 wins in the first 2 rounds,but his advantage over closest rival is not big,so nothing is close to decision yet,but after this round the number of potential championship candidates will be limited.
RTFR has always been quite an allrounder event as it was using all 20 LFS cars right from the start,so the regulars are used to deal with anything that has been thrown to them. This tuesday racers encountered a new type of engine - Wankel's rotary engine,even if not properly simulated (hence the missing apex seals through exhaust pipes),but at least with relativelly similar engine specs. Fern Bay's "green" half alone hasn't been used a lot in RTFR,so after a while we used one of the configurations - pretty much same old Green configuration with added looping. The infamous 1st chicane caused some problems to many,including current standings leader - damage of his standings' lead won't be big however and Gábor managed to secure at least the point for fastest lap of the race (his 22nd).
One who wasn't too affected by new car and tricky track was R.Kardol - even if just by 3 hundreths of a second,the dutchman was fastest in qualifying and scored his 17th pole position tying Excellent15 for 4th most all time. R.Kardol led all 21 laps of the race,early of the race closelly followed by his teammate,but after his retirement solely in safe lead to cross finish line 1st. With this performance R.Kardol scored his 19th RTFR race win and 81st top5 finish. After 11 races break A.Valta returned to RTFR action and despite being just 3rd fastest,he finished 2nd in the race to score his 19th top5 finish. With 25 seconds gap to winner the "best of the rest" was Race Green's newest recruit RD2,who finished in top5 for the 1st time and that in 3rd position right away - his previous best result was halved in his 10th RTFR attendance. His teammate Nosle finished 4th and with it doubled his top5 finishes count,but top5 was closed by somewhat more experienced top5 finisher - Ayoub Maroc scored his 12th of these.
VOD at Youtube:
RTFR will take a break and next week the server will be taken over by a very variating field of cars - the finale of the 1st RandomCar season is set to run in Westhill's custom configuration known under name "North RGE" - one hour long race should be a great challenge. In 2 weeks RTFR server will return to it's original event and that will host a race with one of the slick tyre cars,hints can be seen in broadcast of the latest race,full info as always will be posted on the weekend before it. The winner of last RTFR XL race has submitted his selection for the 83rd RTFR XL and it will be quite a classic - FZR will be run in the Aston Historic configuration in reversed direction,race is set to be 33 laps long.
The cause might be that the psd is outdated - they updated skin mapping of the car and have not updated the attached template kit. You can always get your template in garage directly from the mod - go to colors tab and click on generate skin template.
A reminder - server will be password protected 1 hour before qualifying start to keep not knowing crowded server jumpers out of way,pass will be always the same: green
Some historic stats:
Last race won by: S1DUS*GáboR
Last DORITO FD7 race won by: 1st race using this car
Last Fern Bay race won by: B2マ Mantas (307th RTFR - LX6 @ FE Black Rev.)
Most Fern Bay green configs race wins: 5 races,5 different winners (Finland - 2 wins)
Current rating leader: S1DUS*GáboR (+58 points)
2 drivers go for same track spot,meet each other and cause high speed incident,made worse by Lucas,who run into spinning car without releasing throttle.
* PENALTIES :
[Tマ] Lara - receives a WARNING for causing an incident - at high speeds in a group driver should not focus only ahead and do sudden moves.
「マァ」 Dark - receives a WARNING for causing an incident - at high speeds following closelly 2 drivers driver should be more cautios.
「マァ」 Lucas - receives a WARNING for failing to react on situation ahead,increasing the severity of the incident by causing retirement of other driver,controls show full throttle until impact to a spinning car. Time between obviously visible incident and impact was 2.4 seconds,proving there was plenty of time to react on situation. Future incidents will lead to actual penalty or even race ban.
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2 days after an 8 hour race RTFR XL featured the same car in the relativelly shorter distance. Results showed some advantage for those running in the other race,having still best feeling for the car deffinitelly helped them achieve better result - 8 of top10 qualifyers took part in 8h race and 4 of top5 finishers finished also in top5 in the 8h race. However the race was plagued by several incidents,many of those were 1 car accidents caused by own mistakes,mostly in the very fast chicane leading off the oval section. After the infamous 55th RTFR XL (we could call it also "shortcutgate"),organization made sure to force drivers to stay within track limits by placing soft objects in potential shortcut lines - this had other negative effect,so until the Kyoto track receives the update,RGE will avoid using Kyoto GP long in original direction with cars being rated faster than PL200 (TBO) class without the altering Boothy chicane.
Even if not directly head to head,duel for the race win was carried over from the 8 hour race - representants of top2 teams of it were racing each other for win also on tuesday. True Alpha returned to RTFR XL after a while and did it by celebrating his 5th RTFR XL race win. He won the race by doing a simply shorter pitstop,where he refuelled the car without changing tyres (only driver to finish race with same set he started) - the finn had 11 seconds shorter pitstop and won by just 6 seconds margin,revenging the 2nd place finish on sunday. Additionally True Alpha scored the 30th RTFR XL race win for Finland. One of the sunday's race winners Gábor was the fastest on track as he scored his 9th pole position (tied 2nd most now) and 9th fastest lap of the race,but could not regain the time he lost during pitstop,so he had to settle for 2nd place finish,which is his 17th top5 finish. Igor had also a minor redemption as he finished higher than sunday - the 3rd place finish is his 1st ever RTFR XL race finish from 7 starts. R.Kardol was the highest finisher between those not having the 8h long practice from sunday - after some trouble he had to settle for 4th place finish,43rd top5 finish overall for the dutchman,8th alone this year. Top5 was closed by another top5 finisher on the sunday - Rony scored his 29th top5 finish,1st this year.
* FUN FACT OF THE MONTH :
Prototype 2 is actually the 1st car who did a full cycle of RTFR events. During the early stages it was run in the experimenting RTFR CCCC (in a custom Kyoto configuration) last year,this january it was featured in normal RTFR,running in the Westhill's longest standard config and 4 weeks ago it was selected to be run also in the XL version.
* CLOCK PITTER OF THE RACE :
Being the clock pitter actually put him in the race lead - True Alpha had the shortest pitstop of the day by only refuelling the car (12.87 seconds),all others did even more pitwork.
* FIELD RUSHER OF THE RACE :
P.Koivunen had a weak qualifying by setting 35th fastest time (last of those marked as actually qualified),started from 33rd position he gained 21 positions to finish 12th despite a full minute long pitstop.
VOD at Youtube:
RTFR XL will now make a long 6 weeks break - it was decided that each RTFR XL event will take place on a different month,so for simply calendary reasons it had to be pushed 2 weeks later as it is still october in 4 weeks. The combo for that race has still not been submitted by winner of this race - he has time until the coming tuesday to answer the message. Until next XL there will be a total of 3 normal RTFR races,3 last VERL rounds and the season finale of RandomCar in 2 weeks time. The closest race of all of those is 317th RTFR,which will use one of the user created street legal cars on a Caribbean island. More info will be posted in the weekend.
Wind strength maybe also in km/h - only time this info is actually shown is on start of a session or when entering server. Direction is visible from flags,but maybe would not bad also this info in some way (even if north/south in nowhere really defined).
A reminder - server will be password protected 1 hour before qualifying start to keep not knowing crowded server jumpers out of way,pass will be always the same: green
Pitting rules:
Race requires a minimum time spent in pitstall of 10 seconds. That can be done either with single pitstop or sum of multiple pitstops. Driver who has spent less time will receive penalty time added to his finish time,which will be calculated by tripling the missing time to complete neccesary minimum time and adding additional 5 seconds. Drivers failing to pit at all will receive 1 minute penalty added to finish time (10s*3 + additional 30s).
Some historic stats:
Last race won by: S1DUS*GáboR - 2 wins in row
Last PROTOTYPE 2 race won by: 1st race using this car
Last Kyoto race won by: S1DUS*GáboR (74th RTFR XL - FORMULA AMERICAS 2019 @ KY National Rev)
Most Kyoto race wins: S1DUS*R.Kardol - 5 wins (Netherlands & Finland - 5 wins)
Current rating leader: S1DUS*R.Kardol (+52.5 points)
2023 standings after 9 of 12 races (best 10 scores count):
S1DUS*R.Kardol - 194
S1DUS*GáboR - 137
Iron|Doni - 104 Event rating and other statistics
Even if has traction control,wide grippy tyres and plenty of downforce,LFS's fastest standard car is still a lot of challenge to everyone - the 2006 BMW Sauber formula one car has 720 horsepower coupled with dry weight just over half a ton. That helps it to reach high speeds quickly and go through turns faster than any other car in the cars list,demanding from drivers fast reflexes and mental endurance also for just a 30 minutes race. In the only real world track of our beloved racing simulator formula one cars have been run just for show purposes as none of the configurations is deemed to suit the highest class racecars,this is where the simulator jumps in - to answer some "what if..." questions and this tuesday we answered a question "what if Rockingham's 3.1 kilometer long ISSC configuration would have been part of F1 2006 schedule?"
The distance was just 1/3 of a normal grand prix distance,so we cannot give you a full answer,but the winner of this race would surely describe it as "traffic rich race" - Gábor lapped all but 5 rivals in the short race on his flag to flag ride in the lead to the victory lane. Luckily the damage is not simulated fully realistic,so he could finish with minor damage from few contacts - the hungarian was able to win the 5th race from past 7 races and 26th race overall,scoring also 52nd top5 finish,19th pole position and 21st fastest lap of the race,the latter was also 30th for Hungary. Gábor's only actual rival was his teammate R.Kardol,who was the only other driver to beat the 1 minute mark in qualifying and finished "just" 7 seconds off lead to score his 80th top5 finish. There was another driver to be kind of "on par" with the race winner - Zesty tied Gábor's fastest lap of the race on the final lap to score his 1st ever fastest lap,while also improving his previous best finishing position by one as he finished third,adding 4th top5 finish to his achievements. The winner of previous RTFR race finished 4th this week to take 3rd top5 finish in row and 11th overall,while M.Túlio closed the top5 in his 2nd RTFR attendance,improving finishing position massivelly from his previous attempt,which was 19th place finish 4 weeks ago.
VOD at Youtube:
Next week it is time for the extended RTFR version - 2 days after the 8 hours long warm up with the same car in different track,drivers will be tasked to tackle the longest standard configuration of Kyoto in the way the devs built it - without any additional chicanes. After the negativelly famous 55th RTFR XL,which was run in same track,RGE has learned from experience and will mark the track limits with a lot of objects to avoid drivers misusing the "freedom" - full information of the race will be posted tomorrow. Two weeks from latest race normal RTFR will return with one of the street legal cars being run under the swelming sun - more hints you can get from broadcast of previous race. In 3 weeks the server will be taken over by RandomCar racers,who will find out fate of all possible titles in series' season finale at Westhill's North RGE configuration.