To celebrate Sport Racing Team Finland's return in organizing races in LFS for first time really in almost 5 years, we will organize a Single Event called: The Blackwood Licence Upgrade Race (BLUR). This event, which will be driven on that classic demo combo, is open to everyone!

In this race, any (non-S3 licenced) user can win a free licence upgrade!

Basic information:
When? January 19th, 2024 (Friday)
Where? Server is Sport Racing Team DEMO.
How to join? You can join in that server by clicking this link.

Track? Blackwood GP Track (BL1)
Car? Formula BMW FB02 (FBM)
Race length? 50 laps
Pit stops? 1 mandatory stop
Wind? Low wind (4-24km/h)

Schedule:
(All times are in Finnish time, UTC+2)
Practice 1: 15:45 - 17:00 (no wind)
Practice 2: 17:05 - 18:05 (with wind)
Warm Up: 18:10 - 18:40 (with wind, wind here determines wind being used in Qualifying and Race)
Qualifying: 18:45 - 19:45
Race Preparation: 19:45 - 20:00
Race: 20:00

Prize Structure:
In Qualifying:
Pole Position: £6 voucher
Best non-S3 licenced user: £6 voucher

In the Race:
1st Place: £12 voucher (free licence upgrade)
2nd Place: £6 voucher
3rd Place: £3 voucher
Best non-S3 licenced user: £12 voucher (free licence upgrade)

You can also stack these prizes! In other words, if you don't have an S3-licence and get a pole position, you have already won a £12 voucher (because you get £6 from pole position AND £6 from being a best non-S3 licenced user in qualifying) meaning you have already won a free licence upgrade!

So, if you are a non-S3 licenced user and you get a pole position and win this race, you will win a £36 voucher, meaning if you are a demo user, you win a free licence upgrade straight to S3!

And of course, this event is also open to S3-licenced users because they can still win those vouchers that they can use on this site. But because there are prizes for non-S3 licenced users as well, no matter what, at least one non-S3 licenced user wins a free licence upgrade! (And if a non-S3 licenced user gets a pole position, there is a possibility two different users win that free licence upgrade!)

Even though this event is open for everyone, remember that Rules of Clean Racing do apply! (https://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/Rules_of_Clean_Racing)

Questions:
Question: During Warm Up, it's mentioned that wind used in that session determines the wind used in Qualifying and Race. What does that mean?
Answer: It means that if wind during Warm Up is 17km/h for example, wind in both Qualifying and Race will be 15-19km/h. We will restart those sessions as many times it's necessary (i.e. until the wind speed is correct one).

Because wind used here will be Low Wind, possible wind speeds being used are:
- 4-9km/h
- 10-14km/h
- 15-19km/h
- 20-24km/h

Question: Do I need to make sure anything else?
Answer: Yes, you need to make sure I can contact you privately here in LFS Forum in case you do win a prize. To do that, go to: https://www.lfs.net/account/settings and check "Allow people to send you messages on this website". With that, I can send you that Voucher code you can use here! In case I'm unable to contact you because of that, I will instead send those codes to the next placed user!

You also need to drive at least 80% of the race length and have that mandatory pit stop completed in order to be classified in the race. Because of that, mid-race joining is allowed for first 20% of the race, but after race leader starts lap 11, it will be disallowed.

Question: So I am a non-S3 licenced user, what licence upgrade possibilities I can have in this event?
Answer:

If you are a demo user and want to ensure you can get a...

...free upgrade to S1-licence, you need at least to:
1) Get a pole position in Qualifying OR
2) Be a best placed non-S3 licenced user in Race OR
3) Be a best placed non-S3 licenced user in Qualifying AND finish second in the race while non-S3 licenced user wins

...free upgrade straight to S2-licence, you need at least to:
1) Get a pole position in Qualifying AND be a best placed non-S3 licenced user in the race (position doesn't matter)

...free upgrade straight to S3-licence, you need to:
1) Get a pole position in Qualifying AND win that race

If you already have S1-licence and want to ensure you can get a...

...free upgrade to S2-licence, you need at least to:
1) Get a pole position in Qualifying OR
2) Be a best placed non-S3 licenced user in Race OR
3) Be a best placed non-S3 licenced user in Qualifying AND finish second in the race while a non-S3-licenced user wins

...free upgrade straight to S3-licence, you need at least to:
1) Get a pole position in Qualifying AND be a best placed non-S3 licenced user in the race (position doesn't matter)

If you already have S2-licence and want to ensure you can get a free upgrade to S3-licence, you need at least to:

1) Get a pole position in Qualifying OR
2) Be a best placed non-S3 licenced user in Race OR
3) Be a best placed non-S3 licenced user in Qualifying AND finish second in the race while a non-S3 licenced user wins

Question: After this event, what happens in this league subsection?
Answer: This is a one-off event. After this, Sport Racing Team Finland starts organizing races in its primary server, Sport Racing Team Finland, every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. (You can join that server by clicking this link.)

First public race there will be held on January 20, 2024!
Qualifying for that begins at 15:45 UTC+2 and lasts 4 hours. Race begins at 20:00 UTC+2!

that is rather generous! welcome back and good luck to everyone who races!

ggs

Awesome! Reminds me of the giveaway back in 2017 by Kristoff and Sully... and in 2018 with a few more nice guys. Cool!

Free S3?

Quote from ghassen202 :

Free S3?

If you, as a demo user, get both a pole position and a win in this race, then yes

I will clarify one thing about schedule this event has. You may have seen and even participated in a lot of practice sessions on different league races in LFS. However, separate Warm-Up session has been used very rarely. Here I am clarifying why we also have Warm-Up:

Question: What is the difference between Practice 2 and Warm-Up? Why we need additional practice session? Why it's called Warm-Up and not Practice 3?
Answer: There are three differences between these two:
1) Practice 2 lasts 60 minutes, Warm-Up just 30 minutes

2) Warm-Up determines wind speed that will be used both in qualifying and race. Practice 2 wind does not determine that (even though it will also have wind)

3) And here's the main reason why this is called Warm-Up and not Practice 3: in a scenario, where there are two or more drivers on the grid who didn't set time in qualifying and we need to determine their start positions for the race. We will determine their start order by first taking a look, who was faster in Practice 2. If either or both of them did not participate in Practice 2, we will look their Practice 1 times. Warm-Up session (and by that, lap times set in that session) is not used as a tiebreaker at all, that's why it's called Warm-Up!

Reason why we have an additional 30-minute warm-up session is because it is possible some drivers (especially since this event is open for demo racers as well) are not familiar with windy conditions in LFS, so Warm-Up - where wind speed is similar to qualifying and race - gives drivers a session to get familiar with wind that could possibly be significantly different from Practice 2. Imagine if wind speed in Practice 2 is only 4km/h but in Warm-Up it's 24km/h! (Or vice-versa.)

Question: But in IndyCar, Warm-Up is between qualifying and race. Why in here it's before qualifying?
Answer: you are correct that it's between those two in IndyCar. There are two reasons why it's before qualifying here:
1) Warm-Up here determines wind speed also for qualifying, not only for race. This is because qualifying and race will be held on a same day. If qualifying and race would have been on different dates, then sure, Warm-Up would have been held between those two sessions on a race day.

2) With that, we don't need to go back to the lobby between qualifying and race (aka during race preparation). So we don't need to manually adjust the starting order in the lobby unless it's absolutely necessary. Instead we can use qualifying results which makes this job way simpler.

PS: And yes, you remember correctly, Warm-Up was also used in Formula 1, but it got scrapped just before 2003 season started, due to Parc fermé conditions being introduced then.

While I previously mentioned that this event is open for everyone, I also mentioned that Rules of Clean Racing do apply.

Unfortunately, during free practice sessions, when the server has been open for practicing, there have been few cases, where someone has been deliberately crashed to others.

In order to prevent this happening in the event itself, I have done a three strike system: "Three strikes and you're out". This means that if someone deliberately crashes to someone during free practice:
1) They first get a warning.
2) If they continue doing that, I kick them out of the server.
3) And if they still continue it, I give them a small ban. It's a small ban, lasting 5 days, which is small, but makes sure they will miss this event!

Remember that this server (and SRT's main server Sport Racing Team Finland) save every multiplayer replay, so I can always download any replay afterwards.

And of course, this pretty much only applies to deliberately crashing. Considering these are free practice sessions, speeding in the pitlane, (clear) racing incidents etc. of course don't really matter in these type of sessions.

Exception to this are speed hackers, which I ban immediately for 999 days. I already encountered one cheater, whose PB is 1:09 this combo and their personal best on Blackwood Historic with FBM is 0:55.68. Needless to say, I've already banned that driver.

But, what I also want to tell about is this: LFS 0.7E has given us an opportunity to give a brand new type of penalty. Let's call it:

Restriction penalty

What exactly is restriction penalty?

If someone causes big incident during race or has to give a position back, and does not comply, I can give them this type of penalty by doing this: as an admin, I can update their restriction/handicaps of their car by using commands /h_tres and /h_mass. Using those commands I can make their car go slower in various ways.

If they need to give a position back but don't comply, I can simply add restrictions to their FBM until the other driver passes them. Then I just remove those handicaps I added!

One possible variation where I can use this penalty is a "Lap with restrictions". I tested with AIs, and turns out, if I put maximum restrictions (50% intake and 90kg added mass) to AI for exactly one lap, they lose almost 20 seconds (about 17 seconds per lap + about 2 seconds to that lost speed at the start/finish line) compared to other AIs. For this you have to remember that I assigned those restrictions when they crossed the finish line, so of course they saved about 3 seconds because they already had that normal speed at the start/finish line. If you drive the whole lap with restrictions (meaning you have already those restrictions before last corner), you lose about 22 seconds.

So how severe that penalty is? Well, for drive-through, driver loses about 10 seconds (about 7 seconds for drive through + about 3 seconds to that lost speed at the start/finish line). While on stop-go penalty, that loss is more than 20 seconds, close to 25. So "Lap with restriction" is between drive-through and stop-go penalties on its severity on this track/car combo.

And of course, in case I need to assign those restrictions, I warn other drivers before I assign them to that driver so they can be aware of one car will suddenly not accelerate normally.

Why Lap 50?

Welcome to the Live for Speed S3, Santatrinidad!

Getting a pole position and a win resulted you getting a licence upgrade from demo straight to S3!

Also congratulations to both Aab and Jh89 for finishinng 2nd and 3rd in the race, earning £6 and £3 vouchers respectively.

And who knows, we may see two other drivers getting a licence upgrade, if they are from country, where licence costs less. Santatrinidad and Aab both have an opportunity to use (remainder of) their voucher to make sure another user (their friend or teammmate for example) gets a licence upgrade.

And finally, thank you so much to all who participated in this event!

free s3 is gone :'(