First of all a reminder for the people who are interested to take part in LFS Pro Series first season in 2009: The sign-up deadline is approaching and all the interested should have applied for their place by 24th January. To apply for a place in the series you can visit the LFS Pro Series website, log in (or register), and fill in a basic entry form to compete as an individual or as part of a team.

So far we have received 7 team entries including Renesis, XFusion Racing, Conquest Racing, Fluid Racing, Mercury #1 & #2 and Core Racing. Also several people have applied a place without a team.

The reason for sign-ups closing three weeks before first round is simple. We will spend couple of days going through the entries and pick up the drivers/teams that we consider capable of providing the level of commitment and racing required from the participants. The drivers and teams involved in test season 2008 will be placed on the top of this list. After the succesful applicants have been notified, they will have two weeks to submit their racing skins for each round containing the LFS Pro Series logos and race plates.

The important dates in coming weeks for LFS Pro Series:

1st January, Season 1 sign-ups open
24th January, Season 1 sign-up deadline
26th January, Succesful applicants will be notified
5th February, Booking-in for the first round opens, Deadline for submitting the skins for each round
12th February, Season 1 first round at 19.00UTC


For those who are unfamiliar with LFS Pro Series. The series is organized and run by Paulc2k and me(Sracer). However people can apply for an official/admin place if they want to get involved in helping and improving the series. We organized an private test season in 2008 where several drivers from teams like #low, F1rst(Vince was crowned as the winner of the season), Mercury, My3id, SK Gaming & Spdo took part. After the test season Paulc2k has spent hundreds of hours coding the features for the series to assure everything should work like we want when the season opening race kicks in. Also after the season post-feedback we received, we have come up with several improvements here and there, biggest of them being more effective communication between participants and the admins.

For more information head to www.lfsproseries.net, also some bits of information can be found from LFSPS section in Leagues&Events area.


Sracer, LFS Pro Series Organizer

Should be a fun series! Unfortunate scheduling for non-Europeans, but it's tough to please everyone.

didnt see this.

The only way it could be scheduled better for outside typical EU timezones is if it was switched to a weekend, and IMO people wont give up their limited weekend time doing tasks they cant do midweek, and instead justify spending it on playing 'computer games'. Series like MoE & possibly IGTC can get away with it better, there justification for taking place on weekends is valid, it cant be done midweek because there isnt the time. Likewise for series such as LFSWS, which requires a worldwide userbase, rather than having that as an added luxury.

After that, i feel if theres no real reason why it needs to be a weekend, when it could be done midweek when people are more willing to give up a couple of hours, then thats best for everyone - racers because its usually more convenient, and organisers because your not asking for time which is more precious (i'd say most people spend their weekend doing things they cant do midweek, so its a limited timeframe they have for those tasks).

Maybe if the demand gets to a point where it can realisticly justify taking place on a weekend, where people are willing to spend that time racing in our series, and allowing a wider audience to compete too... maybe then we'd make a switch.
I had wondered about running multiple EU tiers and even seperate divisions (EU & 'The Americas' etc) but certainly not to begin with. Im more in line with a US timezone than any EU one, and when SimDTM was around i did both EU league and a couple of US races a few hours later that night because it was still at a convenient time for me (but sadly vastly under-populated). Its not something we've discussed, but maybe if there was interest it could run parallel to the EU side, i'd have no quarms about being there to oversee it and the beauty of the website is that it kinda runs itself so its not twice the workload to do it. All that would be required is the ability for the site to switch between the seasons running (so the active data your seeing is based on the season the user wants to see, so EU or US in this case) and thats something i'll be starting once the season is underway anyway so people can look back at past seasons.

Nice to hear that you're flexible about future scheduling. I think a EU-centric first season will be a fine start anyhow.

Quote from PaulC2K :

didnt see this.

The only way it could be scheduled better for outside typical EU timezones is if it was switched to a weekend, and IMO people wont give up their limited weekend time doing tasks they cant do midweek, and instead justify spending it on playing 'computer games'. Series like MoE & possibly IGTC can get away with it better, there justification for taking place on weekends is valid, it cant be done midweek because there isnt the time. Likewise for series such as LFSWS, which requires a worldwide userbase, rather than having that as an added luxury.

After that, i feel if theres no real reason why it needs to be a weekend, when it could be done midweek when people are more willing to give up a couple of hours, then thats best for everyone - racers because its usually more convenient, and organisers because your not asking for time which is more precious (i'd say most people spend their weekend doing things they cant do midweek, so its a limited timeframe they have for those tasks).

Maybe if the demand gets to a point where it can realisticly justify taking place on a weekend, where people are willing to spend that time racing in our series, and allowing a wider audience to compete too... maybe then we'd make a switch.
I had wondered about running multiple EU tiers and even seperate divisions (EU & 'The Americas' etc) but certainly not to begin with. Im more in line with a US timezone than any EU one, and when SimDTM was around i did both EU league and a couple of US races a few hours later that night because it was still at a convenient time for me (but sadly vastly under-populated). Its not something we've discussed, but maybe if there was interest it could run parallel to the EU side, i'd have no quarms about being there to oversee it and the beauty of the website is that it kinda runs itself so its not twice the workload to do it. All that would be required is the ability for the site to switch between the seasons running (so the active data your seeing is based on the season the user wants to see, so EU or US in this case) and thats something i'll be starting once the season is underway anyway so people can look back at past seasons.