Quote from thisnameistaken :

I think it's more fun to race people than to "get rid" of them. I suppose in a league race you might want to have a clear track, but on a public server I'm there for the racing, not the winning.

If there is a slow driver in front of me who
a) has a bad connection = lag + warps
b) drives like a madman (no pun intended )
c) lots of slow traffic in front of you, maybe some lapped people too

In these cases it is strategically wiser to take the pitstop, because there is no good racing in front of you. These events are defenately rare events, so these are more of positive sides what a mandatory pitstop can do. One thing that is a better point is that mandatory pitstop allows more room for errors. You can overcook your tires or even damage your car and fix it without losing too much time, because everyone else has to make a pitstop too.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Well yeah, any long-ish race needs a lot of cars to stay interesting. Maybe that's why most servers run shorter races? It's rare to find a full server unless it's running one of that handful of over-used combos.

It depends two equal things. One id defenately the player amount and the other is the track length. On Nürburgring we could have 100 cars and no one would see anyone else, or we could have 8 people on So1 with MRT and it could be a tigh fight.

All in all, I think the 5 lapper has become a norm, and as such most races are set to 5 laps even if the majority wants slightly longer races. Everytime I get my hands on some server, I set the total laps nearer to 10 than 5. 5 laps are just too short on most combos.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I suppose in a league race you might want to have a clear track, but on a public server I'm there for the racing, not the winning.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

So I'd have to pass an average of three cars per lap while travelling a second a lap quicker than the leader to win.

in my message i said "20th to get to the front" meaning 2nd or 3rd. normally i can win from the back in a 5 lap race, unless im against some really quick drivers and they start at the front, even then im sure most regular LFSers could come 3rd or 4th.

I prefer servers that are running 10 or more laps for several reasons. One, there is more time to make up for small mistakes. Two, there is more time the the other racers to make mistakes. The quality of racing also seems to be higher when the race is longer, there seem to be less people willing to try some crazy stunt to gain a position.

5 laps is right for a pick-up race.

imo, shorter races tend to encourage people to drive too hard on tires that are too cold, meaning more crashes and less fun.

as for the people who find longer races boring... i just don't get it (and i wonder what your girlfriends think...)

Quote from duke_toaster :

5 laps is right for a pick-up race.

I would only race a 5 lapper with descent lfs racers that i know wont punt me off at T1, going onto public servers to pick up and play a 5 lapper is totaly pointless as there is always some idiot who doesnt know how to brake for the first corner on cold tires. This takes the fun out of it. 10-15 laps is about resonable if you want to have a descent race where you can get into a rythm and actually push the car and set some fast laps.

But then, T1 is still the same even with 10 or 15 laps but instead you gotta wait a lot longer for a restart I'd do 10-15 lappers when there aren't idiots around

Fair enough, though.

I prefer a longer race too. Coming from GPL, each race was generally 15 to 20 laps and I much preferred that to 3 to 5 lap 'sprint' races.

I thought you'd be waiting for kev is teh sexeh to catch up...

Quote from NotAnIllusion :

But then, T1 is still the same even with 10 or 15 laps but instead you gotta wait a lot longer for a restart I'd do 10-15 lappers when there aren't idiots around

Fair enough, though.

Well 10 laps would be enough to make up the time you lost at T1... With 3 or 5 laps, you'll have to do them perfectly, as you can throw the whole race after one mistake...

Hopefully there'll be a few more servers running 10 lap races now that this thread has appeared.