Announcing the 2014-2015 New Endurance Challenge!

OVERVIEW

After a year's break the New Endurance Challenge returns for another season with plenty of improvements being made since it last ran in July last year. It might not be as new as it once was, but there is more endurance and maybe even a bit more challenge! There are only four races instead of five and they're spread over 3 months, but apart from the last round all races have been significantly increased in length, with the longest race being eight hours long!
Based on the feedback and impressions we got, we simplified some things. On the organisational side, pre-qualifying will be a thing of the past, with entries now being managed through entry and waiting lists as well as race-by-race confirmations instead. The drivers' championship has also been scrapped, which means that only the teams' championship remains. Though clearly the most noticable difference is the lack of a secondary car class, all teams will all be using the same car class in each race.

All teams are welcome to apply for a spot in the series, there is no limit on how many driver may race for a team, but each team must list at least two drivers on it's application with a maximum of four drivers competing in each race.


BALANCE OF PERFORMANCE

Round 1 - GT2
FZR: 19% air restriction
FXR: 21% air restriction
XRR: 23% air restriction

Round 3 - TBO
FXO: 6% air restriction
XRT: 2% air restriction
RB4: n/a

Round 4 - NGT
UFR: 16kg of ballast
XFR: n/a

The FO8 during Round 2 will remain unrestricted.


SERIES SCHEDULE

Round 1: 28.11.2014 - 29.11.2014
6 hours of Fern Bay Black (FE4)*
Cars used: GT2 (FZR, FXR, XRR)

Round 2: 09.01.2015 - 10.01.2015
1000km of Kyoto Ring GP (KY3)*
Cars used: FO8

Round 3: 06.02.2015 - 07.02.2015
8 hours of South City Long (SO4)
Cars used: TBO (FXO, XRT, RB4)

Round 4: 20.03.2015 - 21.03.2015
4 hours of Aston North (AS7)
Cars used: NGT (UFR, XFR)

*Events will be run with a chicane layout

All race distances do include the formation lap.


EVENT TIMETABLE

Friday 18:30 UTC: Qualifying Group 1
Friday 19:00 UTC: Qualifying Group 2
Saturday 16:00 UTC: Round 1 Race Start
Saturday 17:00 UTC: Round 2 Race Start
Saturday 14:00 UTC: Round 3 Race Start
Saturday 18:00 UTC: Round 4 Race Start


The full rulebook, applications and skin kit can be found here in this forum section too. Feel free to sign up! Everyone is welcome!

See you on track!

Nice!
Looking forward to this.
I'm forming a team for this, anyone interested, contact me via pm.

Hopefully I can field a team for this one.

Looking forward to this. Finally a timetable that more or less suits me.

Quote from mbutcher :

Hopefully I can field a team for this one.

I might be able to join you Pete. Dunno. There's still a long way down but we'll keep in touch I guess

Is it possible to change teams/number of cars between races? (For example adding more drivers that previously were not interessted)
Or say for example there are 4 drivers:
Is it possible to the 8h race with one 4-driver-team and the 4h race with two 2-driver-teams?

Yes it is... What I would suggest: Sign-up two cars and for those races you can only compete with one, you unconfirm the other car.

When do we get layouts? ^^

Quote from vitaly_m :

When do we get layouts? ^^

The layout for the first round is already on the server.

Will try to do this then.
Also, if I may ask, what is the idea behind some teams signing up 10+ drivers for one car? Oo clowns car?

They are team line-ups. There is nothing saying the same people will be in a car every race.

Due to the low interest levels, the 2014-2015 season of New Endurance challenge is cancelled. We feel that in the current state of LFS, it is no longer viable to run a team-based endurance championship, even one that only has four rounds. We seemingly were way too optimistic when we relaunched the series it as it appears. We are sad to have to take this step, but see it as unavoidable. We would like to thank the teams that did file entries, but ultimately there weren't ever going to be enough to run a whole season with a decent size field.

A further announcement concerning future events will follow within the next week.

DAmn ;/

we had not signed up yet because it was too uncertain. but might have been interessted.
Atm focus is on DOP
What would be cool for a series is imo races that are not quite as super-long but can be done with 2 drivers. Like four hours or so. That does not require a whole day but still has team aspect.

Yes,indeed - cut the races in half and let's go! Why everyone is too good to organize something for less then full grid?

because racecar.
There are 15 signed teams, some with 2 cars.
The three largest teams alone signed up with 50+ drivers.
Even if not all can make all races, surely it must be possible to do something with so many interessted people.

It does not have anything to do with being "too good" for it, but when you end up with 5 cars going in circles, all seperated by 20% of the track, speaking for myself, you end up asking yourself why you even organised this. We never expected a full grid but we wanted to organise a series with some level of competition and a statisfying number of participants but these goals were too ambitious.
Also the number of signed up drivers in this system does not represent the number of drivers who are really going to do this series. Teams simply put all their drivers on the roster, some of them are even inactive. You still put them on that list, even when they are, simply to not forget them, so incase they return under the season and want to compete in a race, you simply can put them into a car (and the confirmation list) without caring about the fact if they are signed up.

Even if Dom decided to run these series, I personally think that there's not a big chance to actually enjoy running / organizing / hosting these sort of series. In the current state of LFS, not that many people are that enthusiastic about any sort of events. Sure, there are still some people who are rather enthusiastic about hosting / running / competing in events (e.g. Rony, I personally think that Rony is a rather dedicated racer ), but still, it's not something that you could...enjoy? The golden years are somewhat done.. for now. People surely want something fresh and Dom clearly has come up with something rather refreshing, but LFS [content wise] simply doesn't offer that anymore, sadly
But hey, let's just hope the future holds something bright for us.

Quote :

Also the number of signed up drivers in this system does not represent the number of drivers who are really going to do this series. Teams simply put all their drivers on the roster, some of them are even inactive.

That sounds like a stupid thing to do..
How can one organize event like that if sign-ups are so treated so non-serious by teams? (and as result by organizers too it seems) "Not forget them" is no valid reason in my opinion, editing is easy.
Think sign-ups should be made only with realistic chance to attend, otherwise it is useless and planning impossible..

Since it is a team-based series, the number of drivers does not matter, but the number of cars does. If you look through the recent years in team based LFS leagues, you will see it is a conventional approach to this kind of leagues.