Shift+p's are a generally good idea to allow considering certain cars can get stuck in the gravel and others can't. And none of the generic penalties I've seen suggested really work. Like ~2/3 through we had a disconnect that lost us about 3 minutes, but we also had engine damage that was losing us ~1 second a lap on average (thought it was 1.5 at the time to the MoE people I was talking to then, average pace over stints says differently). On a track like aston gp where you only make 21 laps an hour, that's 168 seconds gained from not having engine damage over the last 8 hours vs. the ~180 seconds we lost to the disconnect.

My point being that you can't apply a broad penalty to this and call it fair in the least. (What about the people who disconn and have 0 engine damage, which happened to us and many others earlier on in the race?) The gain/loss from disconnecting and repairing engine damage is so variable when you consider race length, engine damage, where the disconnect happened, and lap length. Sure, there is definite potential for abuse, but you can't penalize everyone for what a few a**es are doing.

And on the other hand, this won't even make much of a dent in smaller endurance events. (The uninentional disconnects that is.) Most people had very slight amounts of engine damage, only really showing because the lap's so long in the first place. (Ours comes out to .35 lost per minute due to engine damage.) And you tend to lose about a lap on a normal disconnect once everything pans out, with the slight panic and attempting to get the replacement driver in. And it takes a long time to make up a lap of a normal endurance track at that pace.

Last edited by rcpilot, Tue 22 Jan 2008, 20:01.

Quote from Bawbag :

This isn't a protest, as it's way over the marker anyway, but what will happen to low after 1 driver doing 45.7% of the race?

I know it's under the admins estimate, but it's called estimate for a reason.

AFAIK the estimate is there specifically for this situation. It's impossible to truly know how many laps the race will go, so as long as you're under the 45% estimate you're fine.

Quote from tristancliffe :

The rules state ALL engines must run a restrictor. There is no alternative. It is to reduce speeds and, apparently, increase safety, which is also why the cars look silly.

With the restrictor you want to try and force as much air down it as possible, and so forced induction is the way to go. Most teams run some form of FI, although superchargers remain rare - probably because of their weight.

It's not at all silly - it's basic physics. Even a numpty can see that.

A lot of teams only have people on the team that like cars, but they don't know anything - even the post graduate members! They try to avoid lowering the compression ratio, or if they do they do it by fitting 2 - 5 head gaskets!!!! They seem to think that custom/low compression pistons will be expensive and so avoid them, but are then quite happy to make an entire carbon fibre chassis that saves 1kg over a space frame, and is only about 1% stiffer.

I still have an idea on how to improve most FSAE/Formula Student cars that I wasn't allowed to try when I was at Uni. Could provide in the region of 5% power/torque gains throughout the rev range, and still be perfectly legal. Plus with CNC it would be easy to make.

Yeah, our team basically didn't touch the engine. (Kettering University) Just made our own intake and exhaust system and retuned it. Although there were plans to attempt to get some more powah out of the internals etc. the year that I left.

Yeah, all f/sae cars run with an ~2 cm restrictor on their intake. Means they generate 50-80 hp normally. (Which isn't bad at all considering they weigh 350-500 lbs.)

I think one of the last things I wanna do is review that series, but here goes. *clicks*

Good video, just don't get a real feel for what happened throughout the season. (Not that I'm annoyed about that too much with my first 3 races.)

Last edited by rcpilot, Mon 7 Jan 2008, 18:09.

You'd probably shave off a couple seconds by just making sure that you consistently hit your apexes. Brake earlier, whatever you have to, just make sure you're using all the track under most situations. And think ahead when you're planning your line, like in the chicane you're immediately aiming for the 2nd apex, instead of aiming a little right and then turning into it. In every corner you have to find the best compromise line between cornering speed and exit speed for the situation, and especially in multi-corner sections.

While I don't really hate anything in the new patch, the bl1 changes are the only changes I really like. (Mostly just indifferent.) The changes mean that bl gp now has a few more corners compared to normal considering in the old layout a lot of the corners just duplicated eachother.

Quote from AeroMechanical :

Even very experienced racers screw up from time to time though, so there's no sense in flying off the handle- that always makes things worse.

Screw up? NEVER!

/me starts pruning his replay collection

Gotta drive defensively on public servers. When the league season's going I rarely drive on public servers, and when I go back I'm appalled by what I see even on the cleaner servers. Watch your back and leave if the servers too bad, try to find the nice places to race or join leagues.

Some general rants that probably won't ever do any good:

Think about it, why should you have any rights in a 10-15 minute race when you're a lap down? Get out of the way (not just let them pass) of active races that you have no part in. I have no problems outpacing most people, but I stay well out of the way of an active race when it comes down to it. (Which happens quite often considering pretty much everyone starts out on a server mid-race joined a few seconds or more off the pace.)

DO NOT come out of the pits mid-race around other people, DO NOT come out of the pits around other people in a qualifying session. Alternatively, don't assume that just because someone's coming out of the pits they're mid-race joined, there's a small chance that might be for position.

Pay attention while returning to the track, I see people ignoring this on the CTRA servers even. (Those remind you to use caution when you're off.) Don't just drive back on as soon as you regain your car, and make sure you leave time to get going in the right direction in your estimates of the next person getting there. If you're spun on the track, stay put, especially around a blind corner. Don't attempt to move to another spot on the track unless no one's coming so you don't hit someone who's already committed to going one direction around you. (Feel free to move the rest of the way off the track if you're on the edge, of course.) Also, don't come back on around other people unless you're stuck in a situation where you can't kill your momentum without the aid of a wall. You lost your right to the track when you went off, so just swallow your pride and let those few cars go by.

I'm kinda surprised that I even have to write the above rant/guidebook?, but it seems a lot of people lack some common sense.

Last edited by rcpilot, Sun 30 Dec 2007, 11:38.

Quote from The Very End :

As long as you are sharing a video over internett, you have to be prepared for both positive and negative comments. If you uploaded and honestly belived that there only would be "happy-happy" comment, well then you for sure are no adult, and btw, if you canot take some negative comments, why do even botter registrer on a forum? You are DOOMED to allways end up with people that doesn`t agree with you.

Yeah, but in the end it's all a game and we're all allowed to screw around and have fun. The comments are just stupid for the most part.

Oh gnoes, I installed lfstweak this past weekend and spent a while screwing around seeing what my car would be like with a 350 hp 7m-gte and then just generally screwing around like bigtime. There's no hope for me.

We all league race, a lot (for the most part), and you get burnt out on normal LFS stuff when you spend half your time in LFS practicing mostly in quali/practice sessions without racing for a future event. Helps to just screw around and release some tension with some fun.

Last edited by rcpilot, Tue 4 Dec 2007, 17:48.

Good race everyone, was a nailbiting first 4 hours or so in gt2. And I happily only had one 'wtf' incident with a gt1 with no contact, which was a pleasant surprise considering the nature of this track when it comes to passing. Sorry ORT for that bump at the start, I compensated for you slowing down a little bit, but then shifted my focus as you were braking more. Caught me completely off guard considering I would've probably been flatout in your situation.

Last edited by rcpilot, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 23:14.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Would it be possible for you to make a short video of this incident (after your stint, of course)?

It's not too hard to get to, just two laps into the stint.

Quote from e2mustang :

U wanna know the truth why they hate drifting? coz they cant do what drifters do(most of them) and they are pissed

If any drifter seriously thinks like this, download a replay of a decent lfs rallycross race. You'll see 2-4 guys doing synchronized drifts within a foot or so of eachother corner after corner while attempting to pass eachother and maintain maximum speed on the course. It's not that we can't drift, controlling a car right at the limit is a lot harder to do than bludgeoning the limit. I started as a drifter and also had the opinion that drifting gave me some form of slight magical skillz that none of these 'racers' had, boy was I wrong when I started racing in LFS. It definitely meant I was good at catching a slide, but that was about it.

Last edited by rcpilot, Sun 11 Nov 2007, 21:09.

Quote from Highsider9 :

Mouse.

Seriously with your Mouse you're able so steer much smoother than with a Joystick or a keyboard.
Given the choice between Keybard and Joystick it would go for the Keyboard, driving with a Joystick just feels weird.

Joystick. You just can't steer smoothly with a joystick because you don't have practice with it. And using a mouse you don't have proportional brakes/throttle, which is a huge part of the equation.

Crap.

Quote from Nakkitartsani :

plz rate my driving too

9.5/10

I'm running in the GTC and because of the performance based ballast through trial and error I've worked out a semi-accurate formula for it. (.1 seconds/10 kg)/1 minute Works pretty well for the fzr for me, not so sure about how well it works with the xrr/fxr because I don't drive those cars in the league. (Although it has given me pretty accurate results trying to figure out relative car paces.)

Quote from Humbleridderen :

I just want to mention one thing, which fell into my mind concerning communication between admins and drivers.

I don´t think, this has much influence on a endurance or the result of this race, but I would like it to be sorted out for the future.

If a teammember is in direct communication with an admin under a yellow flag period, he can hear exactly when it´s going to be green and be much more ready than others. This can be misused and I think, it should be hindered somehow. Under yellow flag, there should be no others on the channel the admins are using. Problem is that there can be used parallel voice or text chatting programs.

The admin doesn't mention the green flag on voice chat, besides there being a couple second delay. (No reason to mention it, it's just whenever the admin throws it.) Plus the admins were only in the same channel as the race team for the first hour or something, which was nice when they left considering there was a lot of random banter on the race channel. :P Dunno why it wasn't split up from the start this time, guess just poor organization (first drivers sitting in the main channel when the race started so everyone ended up on the main channel from then on).

You basically had big brother watching you on the track too with how many eyes were on the track. It wasn't just our team that was getting fast reponses by the admins. (3 or 4 eyes spectating the track and then a bunch of people on race spectator/in the race.) If there was an off or a blowout for anyone, someone knew about it pretty damn quick. IMO, the safety car was a weird call too and I kind of expected this discussion to be happening now when it was made, but my team had nothing to do with the call itself.

Quote from R.Kolz :

And as of your point 1): Why did you introduce this rule when you are aware of that you can´t measure it? Never the less - I dont even need my glasses to be able to see what´s going on after about 45 mins. of the race right before the green flag was waved once again. It´s on youtube:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kI5jH4X-w1g

Objection 3 is about PL and 2 car length involving Car #23 and Car #1 at race position 2 and 4 on the youtube video.

The pit limiter creep is going to happen, plus the lead car slowed down at the last second, we as a team were doing some running for multiple laps under our pit limiters in identical cars for some video footage and we were constantly adjusting our pace. And then the FZR is just a faster car on a rolling start, 0 turbo lag and no traction issues like off the line.

The XRR position was locked out before we came to this race and the FZR has an extra lap buffer with no complaints about it. The likelihood of that position being changed is astronomically low. Besides it just being weird to go back and take that pic once all the objections are done.

Quote from srdsprinter :

Its best to make black-and-white rules where ever its possible to do so.

Because there is the potential for advantage to be gained, its best to have a rule to uniformly deal with it. Judgement calls always end up razzing people, black-and-white rules are fair for everone.

This avoids unpleasant situations like the SC instance we had earlier today

Well, you could even do something like divide it up by sectors. IE - first sector over ~50 seconds is where the cutoff for a penalty is.

Quote from R.Kolz :

IGTC No.3:

"In order to avoid a penalty, a driver who loses connection for any reason prior to a driver change must reconnect and re-join the race. If another driver takes over the car before the original driver reconnects, the team will be assessed a LL penalty in the final standings."

After almost 4 hours of racing I just can´t think clear anymore but somehow I understand your point/motivation to do so.

Pls. explain it to me.

It's as Stu explained. I don't completely agree with it, if someone gains an advantage from it they should get a penalty from it, but being near the end of a lap and getting disconnected then getting a penalty is like a slap in the face.

Quote from srdsprinter :

or just use your wheel

That will come with time. It's a big adjustment when you've been using a joystick for yeeeeeeeeeeears. Not too slow on it but when league season rolled around I was still a few tenths per minute off my joystick pace, and it's no fun to drive slower than you really can in a competitive environment. (Plus that's 10 seconds for every half hour you race in league situations.)

Actually semi-looking into a g25, because one of my biggest complaints is the marshmallow pedals of my momo black. I have no problems controlling a real car and keeping it on edge throughout the entire corner, but there's just 0 tension in these pedals. Have problems feeling out how much I'm actually on the pedal without a decent bit of tension in it.

Last edited by rcpilot, Sun 21 Oct 2007, 00:22.

Good race, had one incident with the 15 that I was pretty mad about, but they had a disconnect and I don't really agree completely with the disconnect penalty and figure that's bad enough so not gonna protest our incident. And learned that if I'm going to be in a situation where I need to push I should limit myself to two hours. Was just running at a fast cruise for this race with our main competition of the other CD car dropping out, and basically just because of cramping/soreness in my hands my ability for fine control was lacking in the last 20 minutes or so of my 2 hours and 30 minutes.

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