Servers arent an issue, if we need 8, I can provide all 8 myself, thats far from being a problem.
We've already been through reasons why we dont want to do qualifying rounds, if we were limiting the season to 16 teams because thats how we wanted to run the series, then its fair enough there needs to be a suitable way to come to a conclusion as to who the best 16 are, however that isnt the case here, we dont plan to limit the number of countries in the future, but for this first season we just want to start small with 16 teams who have enough drivers to ensure even when half of them arent able to compete, there are still plenty who can, they have reasonable experience and suitable driving ability, and we also include a mixture of countries from around the world to ensure we get results similar to how it would be in future seasons.
Running qual rounds would just further delay the start of the first season, and still wouldnt ensure the better/more suitable team went through. If the dates clashed with other events or top drivers were unable to race, then its hardly any fairer than being told by the organisers we feel there are others more suitable we've decided to go for this season only.
As for comparisons to the Nations Cup, that had problems for a number of reasons, and one of the reasons we're keeping things small to start with is because we dont want to fall into any of the traps that series did, IMO it tried to do too much too quickly and was too stop-start-stop-start from the initial idea of the series to the completion of the first and only season. You have to look at it from more than 1 perspective, and we're trying to look at it from whats in the best interest of the series in the long term and short term, as well as for the people taking part in the series in exactly the same way.
Do you initially please everyone and just bow to pressure of not wanting to upset people and if something becomes a glaringly obvious issue, say lag/server instability, you end up with 30+ countries worth of drivers complaining about everything they disagree on, or do you start small and build upon it, if problems arrise its kept to reasonable proportions instead of p*ssing of half the LFS community. We're actually trying to plan things out to ensure something this complicated can actually succeed, we know similar attempts havent been successful, and thats why were not diving head first into some overly ambitous project thinking it'll work perfectly first time.
Deciding that a team isnt qualified enough to remove one of the other teams isnt an matter of questionable organisation, its an matter of having differing opinions on who should race and who shouldnt, and it was our opinion that there were 16 other countries with a more suitable line-up of drivers signed up to take part in this season, if there werent, then you'd have been in there, its that simple. The reasons behind our decision making was made 10+ days ago, as well as being suggested in part much earlier, it isnt like we've decided based upon some secret reason, that its actually the 16 teams that bunged us $20 to let them in. If you cant respect our decision, then thats your call, but we've been straight with our what our aims are as soon as we've come to decisions, we feel these were made in the best interest of the series in the long run and despite the fact that some people wont like this in the short term, we're confident in these actions. Its one season, its not the end of the world.
If we could please everyone without compromising the series in the long term, we'd be more than happy to do this, we certainly dont want to start alienate the very people we hope will be taking part in future seasons, but we felt that having a few people unhappy because of this was better than ignoring what history has shown us isnt an easy thing to acheive, and focus on the making of a successful series and hope people forgive these decisions, rather than starting something we cant easily manage and it flops just as it has in the past.
Taking an unsuccessful series with people who've already experienced the series problems first hand and convincing them that things have changed is a damn sight harder than convincing people who were turned down due to limited numbers, that its worth taking part in a series which is working successfully.