Well, if league racing is your thing, there are plenty going on right now, as well as active rotate track servers and demo servers. Cruise is also a big thing, although not reflected well in the stats.
If you are unable to view the event poster above, here are the event details :
Layout Racing League revisits a classic - the much loved high speed Scawen's Racetrack circuit, situated in the outskirts of the Westhill main track. Experience the draft and the overtaking and possibly the largest grid in Season 2!
Round 4 - Scawen's Racetrack (WE2X Westhill)
20th June 2020, Saturday Free Practise - 14:45 UTC Event Qualifying - 15:15 UTC Event Race - 15:50 UTC
Event Format :
20 Minute Qualifying
5 Minute Break
10 Minute Driver's Briefing, Q&A
22 Lap Race, 1 compulsory Pitstop
Car Class : LX4
BRIEFING HELD AFTER QUALIFYING
NO SIGNUPS REQUIRED
107% QUALIFYING RULE
Points for race : (P1) 20, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 (P10)
1 point for Fastest Lap Server link - Layout Racing League Server Password: lay0uts Rules Season Calendar
LFS's very own brother of the Nordschiefe - The Schwarzwald, is the venue for Round 3 and provided us with action packed racing all round!
Qualifying
Qualifying was an unknown for most of the drivers, with most struggling to get to grips the long and twisting nature of the fierce track. TRR's Trespasser, the round favourite, set the early pace ahead of returning driver Getrag, whilst others like Race Green's Maciek sat in the middle of the field. To the surprise of many, it was not Trespasser on pole, but Getrag; setting the best lap to beat his rival.
Race
The race began with most drivers exiting the normal Blackwood circuit in qualifying format, with some drivers making moves, such as Art2's BRO, whose opportunistic driving saw him leap a few spots. Down into Turn 7's uphill hairpin, Cabezon out braked himself, slamming first into the inside retaining wall, before colliding with PitlaneRacer, both able to continue.
The race up front was tight between the top 5, with the cars split by less than 4 seconds. Further back, TC Racing's Elmo held up the queue, of which LLM's Sobis dropped out after grabbing a bush with his bumper. LCS-R's Onur ran into trouble and fell towards the back of the field with Cabezon. Lap 3 saw two incidents, both flips by (ironically) the same pair who collided on Lap 1 - PitlaneRacer and Cabezon, with the latter retiring out of bounds.
As the race drew on, Trespasser pounced on a mistake by Getrag to snatch the lead, of which he would hold to the end. The battle for P6 took to the pit lane, with Elmo and Maciek locked in battle. Sobis, who was recovering slowly, found himself battling with his team mate to the flag, whilst Elmo slowly slipped backwards into the clutches of the other Race Green machine of Redbot.
Ultimately, it was Trespasser taking 3 straight wins to extend his advantage on the top of the championship standings! Is anyone able to put an end to his winning streak?
This issue all really just stems from the handling model, particularly the rear slip as I've mentioned a few times across several threads.
The way you go fast here is you balance the throttle to let the rear assist the car in pivoting in a slide around the corner to gain laptime. In certain cases especially in quali it's downright dumb when you see an XRR or XRG in a 4 wheel drift and somehow going around the corner quicker just because the tire model promotes rear steer.
This then causes imbalance between the LFS control methods, as with mouse steer, one can make quicker reactions and essentially drive off muscle memory on how the rear pitches in, which am not saying is impossible using wheel, but it is easier on mouse.
Then this is where the "mouse is already quicker, rule out Button Clutch to slow them down" comes in. Yes, mouse is quicker in some cases, but when you don't have brake and throttle axis application it evens everything out already.
This shambles could all be resolved when someone realises cars don't go around corners in a skid to go quicker (yes, in some cases IRL like BTCC, but in lfs its exaggerated way too much). When the handling model promotes more realistic "by the book" handling then the mousers would lose the advantage they have in terms of agility to manipulate the rear, and hence Button Clutch would not be as much of an advantage, perhaps even giving back what the mouse/kb users have now lost.
Yes, I was asking if when set Auto clutch to Yes, would we still be allowed to press a key assigned to the clutch. This would override the autoclutch as you clutch in before you hit the gear.
For the first question earlier about benefits or why one would go around pressing Clutch, I think its a memory thing. I've raced with BC in lfs since I first started out and its something both my fingers, brain and driving style have grown accustomed to, with using BC. If I were to ditch the manual clutch in and just tap the shift up and down keys with auto clutch, I would lose gear sync and the clutch dies in 4 corners (lol)
Also, you cannot really time the throttle blip on downshifts when you have auto clutch. You will need the gear button, clutch and of course throttle. With auto clutch the clutching is instant along with the gear shift (depending on your button rate), which doesnt leave any clutch on-off where you would usually dump the throttle. Also, with keyboard or mouse controls, we already lose the ability to apply throttle and brake in increments, hence each person would have grown accustomed to his or her own button clutch and shift style and button rate speed, which is why when you put Auto clutch as the rule to follow all it really does is screw everyone who has been racing with BC.
Second question about clutching the XRR - similar to the above, the braking with mouse or kb means theres no axis or as gradual of a control of application. With the xrr being a squirmy car on the rear, on certain ocassions when we feel the rears lock on the brakes and cause axle tramping or skipping on the downshifts, we blip the XRR with clutch to eradicate it. Not saying that's faster, its not. Just that I rather not skid off into the gravel.
Yep. In that post I was just using iR and other sims as a comparison since trying to explain everything using words is kind of a .... mouthful in many terms (d'oh!)
Probably one of the greatest showdowns this month on LFS - who will be crowned the champion of the NDR GT2 season? Event live-streamed on race day at https://www.simbroadcasts.tv/ .
You can also find my crusade against the handling model (mainly the rear slip angle and lack of mechanical front grip) and how I've exploited the car characteristics to force cars to behave like their IRL counterparts (or at least how they should be have if you go "by the book").
Martinsville Speedway has been re-released in Version 4, with the correct S/F and back straight width as well as new start zone (unable to drive backwards to grab Checkpoint 1. Have fun!