My suggestion would be to replace the trump cards with some sort of repair status for the cars in the pits.
Overall tire wear might be another mechanic to look into, where there is no loss of performance for a certain part of the beginnings of wear (let’s pretend the first 15 percent) and then after that a ever increasing decline in performance and increase in tire failure (punctures, heat separation etc).
Put in a process that scrapes the log file and sends it to a google document or some other form of online availability. Nothing fancy, just something that would allow us to import it into a spreadsheet to look through how the cars preformed and what happened when.
Something similar is already implemented, but until ~5% is optimum performance and degradation starts.
That’s already implemented - just the program crashed during the generation of that log file. I attached an example from the British Rivals Challenge here: 4_Oulton Park International_R2_Log.txt (1.3 KB)
An amazing ride. Thank you @Der_Bayer, I can only imagine how much work it is to bring these to us.
I couldn’t be there for the whole race, but I had it going on the computer and checked in when able. I will admit there was a grown man jumping around the room when the checkered flag flew. Going to dig around for more retrospect when there’s time
The liveries really helped make it lifelike. There were some stunning looking cars going around. The Vudu came out more eighties than seventies (using the Countach as a style reference for the lights may have been a little forward thinking) but thankfully you couldn’t see that from the side.
I guess the conservative approach paid off. Gained a few seconds on fuel, a few seconds per lap on worn tires, a few seconds in the rain. Gained minutes on reliability, although I know there were sturdier cars around than mine that still had problems. I’ll take luck where I can get it . There was quite a lot of crashing, but thankfully it ironed out well enough.
Wanting to beat the Adenine on time again, without relying on better drivability or reliability (rng), I would propose running the 6 hour race in the city of Atlantis. Watkins Glen would also be cool and easier in terms of logistics, but might be a little short?
The amount of misfortunes has been mentioned - I will say it kept the racing tense until the last minute, because a large lead could easily evaporate. Perhaps having a greater proportion of “minor” breakdowns (5-10 minutes total between problem and pit exit, sort of like the punctures in terms of time) would still promote healthy car design and shake up the leaderboard, but leave more chances to get back in the game.
See you all at the 6hr spin! (Woo!)
[spoiler]I might have to bring an FF next time.[/spoiler]
Edit: Yeah, this is important. @phale, thanks for the great battle.
This was an exhilarating race to watch! @HowlerAutomotive and I were pretty much evenly matched for the entire first third of the race (which is INSANE when you think about how many variables were involved). Even 8 hours in we were just seconds apart, with the lead being randomly determined by who could swap tires faster. At one point (end of lap 48) we entered the pits at the exact same time and left at the exact same time. Then the Adenine had some tire and brake issues, but as fate would have it, the RNG gods brought us back together for a 1-2 finish. A perfectly written sports drama that emerged from many different people spending countless hours tweaking numbers on a screen
Although the Adenine had very fast individual lap times and spent a lot of time fixing issues, my second place finish was not the result of bad luck - it stemmed from a simple miscalculation in the design phase! I was under the assumption that less excess brake force would result in less wear (because you’d be less likely to lock up the tires). So I went -15 brakes to try to get the brake force as close to grip as possible. Turns out it was the opposite That brake wear hampered my lap times in the entire second half of the race, such that I probably would not have won even without the mechanical issues. I can only say that I was lucky enough to pull into second place!
Anyway, lessons learned and in the next BRC I’ll be sure that RNG will be the only thing between me and first place
Thank you for hosting! You definitely had me on the edge of my seat, and it was a pleasure to compete in Group 4 3000. Congratulations on your class victory and 7th overall, AirJordan, as well as to the overall victors!
I never got to post my car before the race, so I think now is a good time to do that…
This Zacspeed ONE may not look as you remember. When we heard the Nürburgring’s call for race cars, it was clear we needed our best outfits. The car was no exception. Out are the curves and in come the edges. Its large eyes are gone in favor of a firm face. It even pinched some bits from its prototype brethren - the 875 and 408. Take off the suit, and aside from the familiar, all-aluminum flat-six sitting forward of the rear axle, many of the components present are borrowed and adapted from the usual ONE.
These alone would not help. Even within its class, some cars brought an additional 50 horsepower, leading to times 20 seconds faster than ours. Through the combined efforts of Dan Miles, Nelson Barbosa, and Carl Schubert, we clawed our way from fifth in class to second in class, leaving the second smallest gap between first and second in class: 7:16. Starting 21st overall, we progressed 12 positions to 9th overall - a top 10 finish dominated by cars packing 100 more horsepower.
Hopefully we can clean it up in time for the bonus race.
And for the car, a solid second position at his class and 23 overall is pretty good for a first attemp. Maybe a more conservative aproach to fuel consumption and tire wear would have benefitted us, but that´s for the next challenge. And well, better luck would be nice two, two serious collisions with other cars that slowed us down, although being able to finish after that says a lot about the building quality of the car.
TBH I think that witnessing Clarkson using hammer to replace fuel system for over 2 hours was more interesting XD. Sadly car left the pit before Quotex’s pizza arrived…
The Nagase Horizon a fairly shallow increase in time gap throughout the entire race, which was hampered sharply in many locations due to punctures early in the lap and critical malfunctions near the ends of laps (meaning at least 70% of the lap had to be repeated) cost the Horizon dearly, in spite of decent numbers in engine and trim reliability (48.5 and 60.2 respectively). In spite of these issues, Ace Racing almost managed to climb out of the lower 50%!
Brake wear was unexpectedly high, which leads me to wonder if brake airflow (aerodynamics) was taken into account.
It was also interesting to see that there did not seem to be much correlation between the difficulty of the car and the number of mistakes made by the drivers.
Speaking of early lap punctures, it’s somewhat unreasonable a car would traverse an entire lap with a puncture. If the puncture is early enough in a lap, I would recommend they pull off onto the service roads and return to the pits, as that would be much faster than taking 70%+ of a lap at half speed (much safer, too).
All in all, this was a wonderful event, and the perils of racing is that things can go wrong even when you’ve done almost everything you can to prevent that! I’m very interested to see how things progress with the bonus event.
Team AZS-Scagliati Deutschland had what can only be described as a dramatic race; qualifying 18th overall, the #61 Falco proved early on that it was a very quick car, clawing its way into the top ten, and running as high as 8th overall.
Everything was looking good until the 9th hour, when a clutch failure just past Hohe Acht sidelined the car for over an hour of repairs. Rejoining in 54th place, the driver team of Baghetti, Sabbatini and Pirozzi fought their way back through the field, helped along by the highly variable weather in the last eight hours of the race; at times, the #61 Falco was among the fastest of any of the cars on track, helping the team recover lost ground. A thrilling battle in the final laps ensued with the #77 Quezon Laguna for position, with the Falco overtaking the Laguna in the final few corners to finish in P17 overall, a very respectable result considering the misfortune the team faced!
Well done to @HowlerAutomotive for their well-deserved victory, and thank you to @Der_Bayer for organising this challenge!
Kaizen Corporation and their partners at Arion Automotive and Racing Company (@Aruna) are pleased to report a good 5th place overall finish at the 1970 BRC 24 Hours of Nurburgring. Kaizen wanted to trial their new fuel-efficiency oriented SOHC 3v valvetrain for their longstanding luxury car Impetu V8 engine in a durability test, while Arion wanted a new mid-engine for their supercar that could rise to the challenge. Both requests were fulfilled admirably. Qualifying in a comfortable 12th, the Arion P48 RLST eb Kaizen showed the power of international collaboration, thundering around the track as one of the fastest cars in the whole race. It proved not only fast but extraordinary dependable, given that besides two punctures, there was no mechanical error at all. This is an excellent testimony to the “Spirit of Progress” of the engineers from both Kaizen and Arion, along with the entire #66 Mikon race team.
(Particularly exciting was the intense battle with @S31’s MAHG Prisma, in which places were swapped several times in nail-biting intervals, with mistake this and puncture that, along with the near equal pace adding to the drama.)
Thank you for your track recommendations! I have chosen something a bit different (mostly cause of required track length to run 80+ cars without causing complete mayhem). I couldn’t decide between two gems of their time, so we’re racing both of them.
The tow truck feature introduced on the Nordschleife will not be available for those two races.
mini-Nordschleife: very twisty, big elevation changes
used in a few F1 races in the 60s and 70s
Masaryk-Ring
track length 13.9 km
more of a power track on public roads
with a twisty section going through a few villages
used for touring cars and motorcycle races
I built the tracks yesterday and will start to prepare the practice results now. To bridge the time, here’s an excellent video about the opening race of the Circuit de Charade from 1958 (in French, but it is worth watching anyway) and a video with scenes from the old Masaryk Ring.
Samuel Godhap and Martin Whent would like to thank the organisers, sponsors and participants of this years 24hr endurance race at the Nürburgring.
Despite never being in contention for outright honours, we walk away with our heads held high. Our finishing position of 2nd in group and 22nd overall from a qualifying postion of 56th, even being 15 laps behind the race winner, was very satisfying, knowing that a Seax is a car that can be driven at its limit for hours. Congratulations to all of the winning teams, and a well deserved salute to all of the others.
OOC:
My favourite bit (yeah, I know only one of us was actually racing at the time) was when I was ahead of The Green Mamba. Don’t believe it? Neither did I.
I made some very poor mock-ups of a handful of competitors, and they all smashed my time. So, I set the unrealistic goal of finishing ahead of 2 cars; The Coromell (EnduRing) and the Revello (Vri404). Apparently, dreams do come true. PRAISE THE RNG!!
. There was quite a lot of crashing, but thankfully it ironed out well enough.
That brake wear hampered my lap times in the entire second half of the race, such that I probably would not have won even without the mechanical issues. I can only say that I was lucky enough to pull into second place!
Dan Miles - Trans-Am and Sportscar driver
Nelson Barbosa - BTCC 1968 champion
Carl Schubert - Karting and Formula 3 driver
