Hello drivers,

First of all, I'd like to thank you all for coming to the test race. While it might not have been the full success we would have liked it to have been, it illustrated several very important lessons.

The odds against this race going smoothly were sort of stacked from the get-go. In addition to a LOT of new teams in general, we asked all teams to bring new and inexperienced drivers for a baptism-by-fire. Which is, I guess, what they got. Furthermore, Blackwood is a very tight and twisty track for big cars like these, which added to the potential for chaos.

Personally, I felt the start went very well. There was a bit too much of a gap between some segments of the field coming to the green, but on the whole it produced a very clean and incident-free first lap. The rest of the first half of the race was also quite good. Some incidents, but nothing too serious. It was the second half of the race (from the second SC period onward) where things really started to go off the rails.

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There's a saying that TV racing commentators like to use over here in the US: cautions (SCs) breed cautions. They bunch the field, cool/dirty people's tires, and generally put a lot of cars in close proximity to one another. But the truth is that cautions don't HAVE to breed cautions like we saw them do today. There are several things that you as drivers can do to reduce the number of SC periods--note that every one of the five SC periods thrown in this race was thrown as the result of some kind of driving error that contributed to a car landing on its roof.

1. Behavior AS the SC period begins.

When the "SC Deployed" message is displayed, you should immediately back off. This doesn't mean that you need to drop to SC speed... it just means that you shouldn't be riding the ragged edge as you are under green flag conditions. There is nothing to be gained since there is no passing under yellow. You should cruise around and use the minimap to locate the position of the SC and the pack following it and slow down well in advance. There's NO excuse for running over the back of the pack.

2. Behavior under the SC period.

There was far too much contact under the SC period during this race. If you are close enough to run over someone when they hit the brakes, you are TOO CLOSE. These are very long races, and a few meters lost while running under SC conditions are easily made up. Drivers need to avoid erratic acceleration and braking. You should pretty much never have your foot all the way to the floor once you've caught the queue.

Furthermore, for future races the use of weaving to heat the tires will be banned. We saw several accidents during SC periods in this race caused by excessive weaving. The truth is that this sort of behavior does very little to maintain tire temperature and in fact does more to cause problems (accidents). Which of course leads us to...

3. Behavior during the restart.

On a restart following a SC period your tires will be VERY COLD, especially since patch Y forced many of us to switch to R3 or R4 rubber. Very cold tires mean that you have to consciously drive slower than you normally would in order to maintain control. YOU CANNOT DRIVE ON COLD TIRES AS IF YOU WERE ON WARM TIRES. Any incidents that are blamed on cold tires should in fact be blamed on the driver who over-drove those cold tires.

Moreover, though a restart is a great time to make up positions, it's also one of the easiest times to cause an accident and ruin someone's race. There were a great deal of needless incidents in the chicane in this race due to drivers being overaggressive and overoptimistic on cold tires.

Adding to this is the fact that lapped cars are in the mix on restarts. Faster cars should be aware of this and tread carefully.

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There were several teams running somewhat awkward looking setups today. I saw at least one FXR running a R4/R2 combination, which led to some interesting drifting, damage, and finally a flip. There was also at least one FZR running R4s all around. Some of this may be inexperience and some may be poor judgment, but I suggest that everyone work very hard on their setups for the real race.

It is not the admins' place to regulate setups, but please bear in mind that bringing a bad/unstable setup to a race can hurt other people's races too, not just your own.

One final issue is that of driving with damage. At several points during this race we had to ask drivers to pit after watching them drive around rather recklessly with heavily damaged cars. Some drivers pitted and didn't fix damage, which I put down to the new yes/no option for damage repair--so be vigilant of that as well.

If you are a danger to others, you will be asked to come in and fix your damage--think of this as a black flag in real life racing.

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In spite of all of this, I saw some very good driving out there as well. I believe that this series (and this field of teams) has some very good potential, and I think that with more collective experience these races will go quite smoothly.

I would like to congratulate CD, AR, FLP, and LFSLA on very clean, quick races. This is by no means a complete list, just a few that stuck out to my eye.

Many of the new and pending teams did quite well as well. We will have a full report and a revised list of accepted teams up soon, after which signups will be opened to multi-car entries. (We do however reserve the right to deny a team a second car and will justify our reasoning to the teams in question should this occur.)

Thanks again for attending the test race, and good luck in your preparations for the first round.

Full race replay:

http://www.mediafire.com/?1mxxr4jmkth

Thanks for having us DWB

I would like to say something if i may.

The end of the first SC period, I was 16th 2 laps later I was 8th and way out of position.

Reason??

The SC period was weird, it seemed to get the leaders quite quickly and they all must have had cold tires for a few laps following. I was 50 seconds behind and was going hell for leather to catch up. I finally caught up half was around the lap before restart, my tires were effectively at race temperature still, thereofre i had a massive advantage at the restart.

A question/proposal (i know BL1 is a short track) but should the safety car literally driver around at 60kph to bunch the field quickly? that way everyones tires will cool at a similar rate, therefore at the restart, everyone will have a similar level of grip??

Cheers,


Dru.

We'll definitely be looking at adjusting the SC's pace for the season. I think it needs to be calibrated to the length of the track, honestly. Maybe should have been a bit slower for BL1, would need to be a bit faster for a track like AS GP.

There are several things that Benji and I will be going over in the course of the next two weeks, and this is one of them.

Thanks for having us too, AR are pretty happy with the way things went, apart from a few obvious issues under SC period.

We are now fully fired up and looking forward to the race proper.

Thanks for organising such a well run and well attended test race, and Northstar R4R were very impressed
We didn't have the fastest run (Joe Mudrak was your FZR on R4s... but he actually didn't have any issue with that, he just wanted to make sure he didn't get a puncture), but we stayed out of trouble and it got us home in the top half of the field. I perhaps could have done more in the 2nd half if it wasn't for all the SCs, but I had good fun anyway. If you'll let us stay, we will surely have lots of fun this season!

First I want to say thanks for this testrace.
Was a good chance to sort out problems and to get a feeling for this, and in the end it was great fun.

But now I have a question about this rule:
2.4) Drivers ahead of the leader at the time of the full-course yellow may pass the SC and re-join the tail of the field...

Situation:
When the SC came out in lap 64 our driver (car #15) was leading the race and just passing the 2nd split. All drivers in front of #15 were allowed to pass the SC. At the end of lap 65 when the SC passes the pit entry and #15 comes in for pit, the car right behind is #10 which is one lap down on position 5. Thats all ok and clear to me.

But then during the pitstop as the SC enters the backstraight all drivers in front of #24 (including #10) are ordered to pass the SC again. How can this be? It doesn't make any sense to me, as everyone in the leading lap loses a whole lap.

Now my question:
Was this order a mistake or is this how the rules really are?
IMO it makes far more sense if the SC catches the leader and the drivers behind follow in track running order (like it is now), but once the leader has catched up to SC no one is allowed to pass the SC anymore, not even if the leader pits.

Maybe you check the replay if you don't know what I mean.
Sorry for my bad english.

Looking foreward to the first race.

Yeah, we had no ruling for that situation so we did what was more obvious by the rule book.

We already are having talks about that situation and proposed what you have already suggested.

Some more notes after watching the entire replay:

1. The first Safety Car period, and even the second one to a lesser degree, went very well. I encourage all of you to watch the replay at least up to that point to take a look at how a SC period should be handled (with the obvious exception of our error in sending the SC out before the lead car was approaching. The driving under this SC was levelheaded and clean, and that's what we expect from the drivers in this series.

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2. As previously mentioned, our decision under the lap 64 SC period to let the entire field by after the leader pitted was in error. It greatly affected the results of the race and there's nothing we can do to correct it now, but rest assured that it will not happen again in the future. From now on, once the SC has collected the leader, no cars may pass the SC, regardless of what the leader does.

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3. There was some incorrect overtaking done as the SC periods came out. One in particular that has been raised was Adaptive Racing #03's pass on TDRT #104 and LFSLA #22 as the next to last SC period came out. In reviewing the replay I watched this incident closely and, yes, the passes were clearly after the SC period was shown. However, #03 had a blue flag at the time and thus the RCM (center-screen) message was not displayed. The upper left admin message still should have appeared, however. #03 gave the #22 its position back, but not the #104. In a real race, this would have led to a penalty, so I reiterate my statement from the other thread: if you have made a pass as the SC period comes out and have any doubt as to its legality, it would be wise to give it back.

This particular incident is simply a useful case in point--I don't think it was intentional on the #03's part.

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4. There were several spins under SC conditions. Another useful case in point:

In re-watching the race I saw LFSLA spin twice under SC conditions... once very early in the race and once toward the end. In the former case the driver assumed the position in which he recovered, losing a spot to the Concept Racing #06. In the latter the field slowed to allow him to maintain the spot he had prior to the spin. In both cases, according to the letter of the rules, the action was incorrect. The rules state:

Quote from Rule J2.6 :

2.6) A driver who spins during a SC period must rejoin the field at the end of the line. Any such incident will be investigated by the marshals. If the spin was not self-inflicted, it will result in a SG penalty for the offending car once racing resumes.

However, "spin" is a fairly nebulous term. It could be argued that the #22's second under-SC spin was not a spin at all, as he simply went off-course, banged the wall, and returned to the course without ever spinning around. In the future, I suggest that a "spin" in this situation consist of a full lack of control and forward progress.

In any case, however, with better driving all around this rule should never have to come into play.

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I'd like to suggest that everyone--even those who feel they have read them fairly closely already--re-read the rules from top to bottom. Make sure your teammates have done so as well. The more familiar everyone is with them, the easier things will go.

Thanks!

Im just wondering why #16 got 2 Drive Through penalties on laps 80 and 83.

Im not sure, but the first one may have been speeding in the pits, but I dont know what happened about the second one, if you would explain, it would be appreciated

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

2. As previously mentioned, our decision under the lap 64 SC period to let the entire field by after the leader pitted was in error. It greatly affected the results of the race and there's nothing we can do to correct it now

One thing you could do is not to post non sense results as being the official results :rolleyes:

Quote from Lotesdelere :

One thing you could do is not to post non sense results as being the official results :rolleyes:

The results as posted are official based on what occurred on the server. We can't go back and speculate on what would have happened were it called the other way.

Everyone is aware that you were the quickest team and at one point had all but a few cars a lap down. There is little doubt that everyone has their work cut out to catch you for the real race.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

The results as posted are official based on what occurred on the server. We can't go back and speculate on what would have happened were it called the other way.

Hm, may I note that I did race for 40 minutes ( DR/team 106, first stint) on the server without appearing in the stats then?

Quote from TysCaargh :

Hm, may I note that I did race for 40 minutes ( DR/team 106, first stint) on the server without appearing in the stats then?

The results aren't derived from the stats

Quote from TysCaargh :

Hm, may I note that I did race for 40 minutes ( DR/team 106, first stint) on the server without appearing in the stats then?

Yes, when there's a disconnect the stats lose the information that occurred prior to the disconnect. As you can see in the results, your team has the correct number of laps completed. Stats != results.

OK, makes sense, thanks for the info

Drivers, I got this PM a little earlier and thought it might be helpful to post it here as a reminder of what the test race process was for:

Quote from Franke :

On another note: I was very displeased with having to do the shakedown, but now i realize that, that was a very good move on your part, and here is why: I have walked through the replay, with my rookie IGTC driver of his stint, and I have talked to him on all his incidents, and I realized, that I have to school my drivers before putting them in IGTC race/car. They need to be schooled in race conduct, SC, and that the race is very competitive and loads more, I have already started, and all drivers will be fully up to spec, that is a promise. So thanks for the Shakedown race, it was more helpfull for me, than i had expected. To realize my schooling errors. Though I had an error free stint, my rookie did not. And THAT was my fault, but we agreed thats his stint, will be a study for other rookie drivers, for our IGTC car(s) on how NOT to drive, and my stint on how to drive.

Regards
Franke... Click

I don't post this to puff myself up, but to say that I think it might indeed be a good idea for all team leaders to review the replay and take a look at how their drivers were driving. There are doubtlessly lessons to be found for all teams--god knows I found plenty of lessons to teach myself and my fellow admins/marshals.

Anyway, good luck in your ongoing preparations for round 1!

-Ben

Although we didn't make the test race we did practice SC situations a couple of days before. It's not rocket science, but it is difficult and confusing if you don't know the rules. Hopefully the test race has helped that and we'll definitely be doing another SC training session before Round 1.

Here's the winners render.

Well done chaps

Excellent, thanks

Quote from BenjiMC :

Here's the winners render.

Well done chaps

VERY nice render.

It is truely a nice render, shame 2nd place get obscured by the pace car, wierd that

Quote from danowat :

It is truely a nice render, shame 2nd place get obscured by the pace car, wierd that

Agreed and the Saftey car seems streched and overlly big in the reflections as well. Mabye just removing and redoing the render would be a good idea.

Just a thought though either way its good.

The problem was just the camera angle. Next shots will be an angle similar to the one on the banner.