@James Andrew: That would be mad if you won´t race anymore. There were some nice fights between us. I hope you and your team change your mind and we see us on track at the 12h race. @Jon Uyan: I agree. Livestewards are a good idea i think. I hope that I wasn´t one of the rookies that had made to much mistakes. On that point i have an other Idea. Maybe there should be some like an license. E.g. you have to raced 2h in a lower class befor you are allowed to get into an p2 or GT3. Also we have to think about the carchoice and the classes. But also I have to say: It was my first ever Endurancerace and on my mind there were also many good things on this event. Thank to the admins for organized such a fun event,.
I think that would be a very positive step. It's only when lets call them "inconsiderate, low %, " moves that are very likely to hurt or compromise another cars race start to cost much more than they might gain we will see wiser driving from certain individuals. If a driver knows that an at fault contact will cost him 60 sec stop-go and that same move maybe win him 3 sec the decision is easy. There were some very risky moves made especially in the first hour. My GT3 team having taken pole by 1.1 sec was leading by 5 sec. A driver (who I won't name, but the incident is very clear at around 1hr35m into the stream) was in p10 in LMP2 when he hit our car from behind and cost us a really good chance of victory. We have had no communication or apology from driver or team. We need simply a much higher level of awareness of the GT3 event by the drivers in the faster cars. It needs to be (a mentality of) " ok I am lapping the GT3 podium places right now, or OK these 2 GT cars are fighting for position". I hasten to add that I found several LMP2 drivers to be great and respectful. Problem was that in the GT3 one needed to take a line where you were safe from the lowest denominator. EG fearful of being hit from the inside in Dunlop you hug the inside kerb to force the lmp2 to go outside, or same in S-Curves you take a line with mega early Apex which is slow but removes temptation to dive in there. Random points: -Suzuka is a hard one as S1 is just so damn twisty. There is not really a safe spot to pass without GT3"co-operation" until exit of Degna 2. No coincidence that S1 saw most of the incidents. So as a multiclass event Suzuka is a difficult one IMO. -Practice race of 1 hr, would give valuable experience to faster classes in lapping GT cars. -Yep, live stewards. I volunteer to do a couple of hours. Having said all that Its my view that all journeys start with 1 small step# and this league has many great assets. #it seems I am not the first to use this phrase. PS Can we please have at least a 1000km of Bathurst.
A idea that have one from our Team was that we change the Qualifying system. So that we have 1h of Qualifying, but the first 30 mins are only allowed to drive GT3 cars, and the last 30 mins all GT3 cars have to wait in the Pit of the End and the P2 Cars are driving for the Pole. Thats maybe a fair idea for a Qualifying, cause non P2 or GT3 car are blocking from each other, and for the Stream maybe this is fair too. Just such an idea...
Admin Post Many good approaches I have read here. We need to discuss how to make the best of all to make it a great event for everyone. Surely we need help and come back to you.
Livestewards are really necessary - without at least 3 all the time avaible (fair vote balance), its just bs Also the damage was pretty much not punishing if you crashed ... its like a tank ... damage that is sensitive also gives you a learn effect, people suddenly don't drive that risky anymore and are more careful. Very important is also that layed-out rules are refined and improved on and especially that livestewards follow them and penalize people according to the rules - examples in Suzuka: Some teams were not on Teamspeak or came waaay to late into Teamspeak People set laptimes in Warmup Some people clearly did not read the rules (enough) or don't really care about them There were drivers getting more than 1 Lap in a row Blue Flags and ignored them ... (we talk about same class being lapped) Some drivers would let you unlap, even you clearly were faster and in my case that with unfair maneuvers There was at least 1 clear incident which was intentional ramming Also important is that there must be a way to be able to point out a collision to the Stewards, so they can investigate - I had no other choice but to write in the chat that someone clearly intentionally rammed me during the race (alt+tab = gamecrash for me, and my teammate had to go to a party and I was totally alone driving 5h at once). Ie. Whisper would be nice option here, so you could whisper to 1 Livesteward to tell them to come to your teamspeak channel so you could tell them about the incident. Here the Stewards could (and imo should) have deployed the safety car (1h33min & also 1h35)) Thats why I wont participate at Bathurst - imo its ridiculous to do this in a LMP1 car ... especially multiclass --- I fear its gonna be a wreckfest Great idea On the other hand, Qualifying isnt that important for races longer than 2h. Now for me the deciding question: How many incidents were during qualifying? -> If many, then I really recommend splitting the qualifying - also I think 15min Qualifying per class is totally enough, especially for <15 cars / class
Sadly it seems Bathurst # is not in the voting for the next event so you dont have to worry. Shame as its a favourite track of mine but..totally agree it would be a hazard in multi-class. There was however one multiclass event that worked perfectly at Bathurst. It was the onwheels TV 12 hours. classes were apex GT3 and the ISI Megane. The Megane was really nice over the mountain so did not hold up the GT3 cars and when you got to the long straights the GT3 had 30kph. So you passed them on Conrod or on Mtn str8 and if not no problem he would not slow you but would drop you by 1 sec over the mountain. But yes LMP2 and GT3 there and that mountain which has only one line-agreed. Stewarding: Asking for 3 stewards for 12 or 24 hours is a big call. Consider for a moment how many ppl are required to have just one driver at all times in a car. A roster could be constructed with each team offering one person for 2 hours and maybe a head steward they can approach if not sure. Maybe a system to avoid bias is that if the "On Call Steward" gets an appeal and his team is involved there is a "Reserve Steward" or the head steward, (could even be a commentator). He whispers him and recuses himself from that decision. However I would suggest that most incidents of contact that we saw were not needing much deliberation or interpretation. IE it was very clear who caused it. So a farly simple schedule of advisory penalties can be applied to an at fault driver. Just an example.......... 1) Minor contact no loss of time (verbal warning) 2) Contact with small loss of time (drive through) 3) Contact with significant loss of time and or damage (60 sec stop-go) 4) Deliberate contact resulting in loss of time and or damage (3 minute stop go). a second offence escalates penalty to the next one in the table. Communication logistics with Steward/s. Hopefully no-one will be totally alone in their car and a team mate can deal with the appeal? But yes certainly a whisper key could be used if a driver needs to make an appeal. Does anyone know if the whisper target can be a room instead of a person? That way there could be a steward room. #Bathurst # I was wondering if it would be possible to consider say a 1000km of Bathurst. (appr 6 hours). A special GT3 only event????
Yes it can You could even whisper to a specific channel on a different teamspeak The car is also not really suited for Bathurst ... probably alot of bottoming out and in rain it is probably not drivable. This would be less of a problem for GT3, GT4 etc. as you mentioned About Live Stewards: (imo) You would need people that know the rules very well You would need to expand the rules a LOT - see SRC rules as a very good example You would need people that really can stay objective I really recommend using 3 Stewards so you have majority decision - if you look into today's Stewarding (irl and virtual) you see that Stewards can judge very differently, maybe overlooking something deciding etc. Those 3 ofc would discuss the incident (exchange of knowledge and things they noticed) Best would also be to question the drivers involved, providing additional evidence or clarifying stuff, this is imo possible - ie. like requesting a statement from the team on what from their POV happend Another problem is, if Stewards are part of the team involved - I believe some humans can even then stay objective but most can't, even if they won't admit it or its only in the subconscious At least we all agree, it is absolutely necessary for endurance racing.
Hey! I wrote a message to Markus about some things we need for live stewards. I would like to make a test race. 2 hours should be enough. If it's OK for you it would be a race with me as steward. It's necessary to stay objective and I promise I will be. But we need as much cars as possible. And maybe some "planned" incidents where I don't know about it before. That's the way it could work. For a bigger race there are more guys needed. When it's OK for you I will be the head and will ask some people myself if they help me for the bigger ones. The plan is to do some trainings and meetings for the stewards to be sure that we're deciding in the same way and that all drivers are treated in the same way. But what we need is acceptance. When we decide to penalize a car you need to take it and go on. Today I will think about some rules we can add or change. There's a need of a rule how to work with a penalty. I think there should be a way to talk about a penalty. One time. No big discussions. One chance to explain the incident from your view and that's it. Otherwise it would be too much work to handle it. To write down all the details now on my smartphone is too much sorry. I will wait for Markus decision. If it's positive, one of us will open a thread for more details and discussion. The race goes on... Robert
@Robert Engel I like your idea very much. I think to get a field of enough cars should not be a problem if we use the next Track and only a 2h race. so everybody of a team could drive the whole race on his own and it would be a nice test for the race as well
Promise is one thing, if you really are a different one. And Imo there should be a test if you judge correctly ... For that though the rules must be much more precise - see SRC as an example You can manually give drive through / stop go / dsq in game as an admin You have to do then or you get DSQ and instantly set into the pits and cant drive anymore
Hi guys, i would like to consider, that we could take nearly more people for administrate the race, -some commentators + stewards, as for racing! I´m not a friend of stewards, not because i do not find them necessary. But i don´t think that we need them sooo much, that we risk the events themselves. First aspect: we can´t avoid discussions about crashes with stewards. It could be, that some driver or team isn´t only confused because of other drivers, but about the steward too. If you don´t agree with an situation, maybe you also disagree with the decision of penalty. The result could be the same. "Driver could not drive, steward don´t now what he do, didn´t now the rules or didn´t apply them correct." Second aspect: maybe we find all the people for 8h, maybe we wind enough people as commentators and stewards for next race, -but would we find it for 24h??? What happens, if not, what happens, if someone canceled his participation??? Should we cancel the event? For me there are more risks for the future, as we could win. We all drivers are the problem for the issues! WE should learn more sportsmanlike driving, WE all should respect each other and realize, that it could be our failure causing an collision. AND we should realize, that we all not more than amateurs. We should drive as good as we can, but we should accept, that other drivers not at the same skill, and we should think twice, if it´s safe to overtake, or wait a little. Yes, it could give dump failures, and we could talk about it after race, but i don´t think it´s a good idea to make the effort bigger, than we could do for more than one race. Next year we sit here and discuss about steward failures, missing people who want to do and so on. For me, risk is to high for future races. My suggestion is, we should do official test sessions. We did in 2014 @ SRD, 24h Nordschleife with rF1. I think about maybe two or three test sessions about 4 hours. No race, only test. Every driver which decides to participate at race has to drive two stints without pitstop. We know how much laps are going with full tank, maybe we said 90% has to complete without crashing causing repairstop, also in an acceptable (lap-)time. Drivers which could do this, should be able to participate on race. I think a lot of drivers use the time to drive more than the required and we had also traffic on track, where drivers could make experience for lapping, overtaking and rules. Even there we would have issues, but we can discuss them between the test sessions and the race. Every driver has maybe eight hours for doing stints from about 2x one hour. The stints could be driven at SRD in single modus, means youd could drive one stint in first 4h on one date, the other on the other day. It is possible to do! For sure every driver of one car could drive same time, no driver swaps here. Okay, could be closely on the track, but maybe it´s good to learn to handle traffic and avoid trouble or accidents. After the session, someone watch the log files and look and count the laps for the single drivers, if they had complete the laps without empty files. For me we could lift the skill for each driver with that measure. That´s my idea for future races. Over that we should consider, how to win more drivers to participate, to generate an full grid... Best regards, Dobbie @Markus: ich hoffe ich muss es Dir nicht übersetzen, ist eigentlich das, was ich Dir auch schon so mitgeteilt habe
It's been a few days since the end of the race and here I am writing my comment on the fantastic performance of my pilots Daniele and Franco who championed champions making no mistakes and keeping the strategy we had decided but above all I really did headed. We waited a bit for this victory we came close to many times but something prevented us from enjoying Saturday night was very nice and I have to say that Marco and Francesco also with the second car are doing well and their eighth place is the result of some small Mistake but surely they will soon be close to the podium as a great team result. Now we wait for the third test and then the big final 24 hours where our goal is .................... Thanks P1 Gaming
I think mandatory test sessions are a good idea. That gets people used to the traffic and what can or can't be attempted in terms of overtaking. It also focuses people on actually turning up for a race. There should certainly be a requirement for drivers who are new to the series to do more time in the car during the test sessions than a regular driver is required to.
Test race can kill two birds with one stone. It can offer valuable experience and can also form part of the qualifying process like it did when @Frederic Schornstein and friends organised the Nords 24 hr. In that case you needed a top # position with a driver change to advance to "Q2". @Jan Studenski The concerns about objectivity are real but in my experience these contacts we wish to prevent are very clear cut. Eg "Lmp2 contacted my car in Dunlop Curve spinning me off and cost 3 mins. My lap 8". Steward checks and says "correct I give 60 sec stop go" Job done. The number of times where it was ambiguous were very few. So there is little room for debate. Its a case of "who caused the contact?, what was the time loss to the victim? " In my view a single steward is ample. If there is a bad error of judgement by a steward it can be appealed after the event and reviewed. One live steward can be rostered by the orgainisation. Eg Hrs 0-2 Race organiser 2-4 Team A 4-6 Team B Etc. If there is a live steward the attitude of drivers will change and there will probably be less work as a result. It will also IMO increase attendences because its preferable to spend many hours preparing , knowing your efforts won't be ruined by a bad move.
I think, if every driver have to do two stints without incident, it should no one overtax. We have done some 1h testraces last year, but without any liabilities to participate, so we had less participation. After that, there were no more test races. But experience can not replaced by anything, here i´m by your side! @David: I don´t think it´s an good idea to make it mandatory to drivers to be the Steward. Not everybody want it, and i think it´s not good for the race, because there could be guys they really cant judge right or objective, also could handle the replay system. But maybe i have misunderstood you?
Okay I give you straight an example of which it is difficult to judge: youtu.be / 1MXUiU8vov4?t=7806 What do you think? Did the Porsche just not leave enough space, forcing the LMP to the edge which he had to avoid then? Did the LMP just did not leave enough space on the inside and caused the collision? Or is it just an unfortunate racing incident?
Re: example Having tested both categories before the race and not beeing involved in that or any other serious incident during qualy or race, I'd like to state the following. I saw it live that day and thought "wtf, what a..." Now watching it again three times, I caught a glimpse of understanding what happened. GT driver's fault? Not at all, didn't move much, left plenty of room. LMP driver's fault? Yes. With the excuse of having a very twitchy thing to handle, still there was no need to wiggle and ram the GT. So what looked deliberate at first seemed more like the result of combined error in judgement and execution. Unfortunate? Obviously in several ways. Re: rules I think there are plenty. Just enough to read, understand and follow without big chance of forgetting half of them or needing an interpreter. The penalty system doesn't make sense though. Losing points that you never earn...copied from championship. Not a fan of overregulation. Some inforced testing should get rid of most problems and someone watching with fair penalties most of the rest. The rest shall be lore to tell your grandchildren In other words: Thank you for the race, happy to come again
Thanks Simon. I'll watch it tonight, I know I have to apologize to one of the Camaro drivers for tapping him behind during a 4-car traffic jam at Spoon Curve.
