The results are in! After a tough race with many issues (both for the cars and the processing by Youtube) the winners have been determined. Congratulations to them and condolences to everybody who had more than average issues.
Unfortunately the export of the race log is not available, as the program crashed during the export. To check what happened in the race, there is a version of the race on YouTube which only takes 2.4 hours. It can be further sped up by a factor of 2 using the Youtube speed controls.
Feedback
Please give feedback about the challenge here - I know many might be a bit frustrated as one or more issues hit their car, while others survived. But this is the pain of endurance racing and this is what makes everybody return for the next race in real life: The next race can only be better.
How was the race from your perspective? What happened to you and your opponents?
References about car performance and retirements in the real 1970s race:
99 starters, 54 made it to the finish
winner’s distance: 123 laps in a BMW 2002 ti (less than our Gr. 1 1000 winner)
I have learned a few things about:
the time I should give Youtube to process the videos. The low quality like in Part 2 won’t happen again.
overall number of failures should be reduced bit
number of punctures should be reduced a bit
found a few smaller, mostly cosmetical bugs
Bonus Race
As a compensation for the issues, I'll run a 6h bonus race on a track yet to be determined. Recommendations welcome! The only requirements I have are, that the track layout should be existing in the 1970s, shouldn't be mostly all flatout for the cars we have here (so no 1970s Spa or Le Mans) and should be significantly longer than the average race track. My current favourites: Masaryk ring (now Brno circuit), Nürburgring Südschleife, maybe Bathurst. What do you think?
The battered, abused Acheron Supervisor SRE limps its way to the pits at the end of the race. This truly has been a devastating race for the team. After such an amazing qualifying round, coming dead last was a shock. It is likely that Acheron and Naruto will fix this car and use it again in future races, taking what they have learned from this and using the data they have collected to improve it drastically.
Had a look at the results and peeked in on the race while it was going. Always a massive undertaking. Well done to the usual suspects up front
As with many things Automation I have precious little time to do such a complex tournament as this justice. So I will reveal now that I just did whatever optimisation I could for @NormanVauxhall’s entry, the Znopresk. Some of the forum veterans may have noticed that one of the drivers was a young Matteo Miglia, an enthusiast and also engineer with the ZA group who broke away in 1982 to form his own motorsport outfit…
WIth just 88hp on tap (5th least of the entire competition) I honestly did not have much to work with except faith in Mr Znopresk’s direction that sensibility and reliability was key. So it was that the Znopresk, with the 5th least power, 2nd lowest top speed, and the 7th slowest lap time, was able to finish 50th: 3rd least driver errors, 3rd least tyre wear, and the least amount of time spent in the pit. Fantastically consistent drives to produce a result that was really punching above the capabilities of the car. A good result!
Many thanks to Der_Bayer for hosting such a fun challenge! I’ll be looking forward to the bonus race where hopefully, I’ll try to enter a car that’s gonna perform much better!
EDIT:
Oh…fuck…
Merciel-Alberetti Post Race Press Conference
While unfortunate that our car was forced into Group 4 2000 due to a misreading of the homologation rules, the Merciel Alberetti Team performed admirably in its class, albeit the 2nd place podium feels somewhat undeserved.
What the team has learned through the many, many times the car blew up is that reliability is actually pretty important in an endurance race.
Hopefully next time, Merciel-Alberetti will place higher on the leaderboard.
Thank you for hosting this challenge, it was very fun building and the race was definitely fun to follow along live.
That said gaining second then losing it via an unplanned pitstop (which my competitor skipped on even though they had even more pace loss) in the last 30 minutes was a bittersweet rollercoaster. Still, 3rd was what I aimed for and 3rd was achieved
I went in with very limited (time) resources, test 3 bodies and decided to go with wedge. There was no layout and capacity experimentation, just one take. Previous BRC experience (and other older more min max challenges) helped a lot to played it safe and efficient but still keep some speed.
Only 22nd in qually, 2 punctures, some minor errors =>>> super proud of 1st in class and 7th overall.
Top 3 guys, you are maniacs, different category all together, Congrats!
DerBayer, I’m so glad you took your (free) time once again to bring back BRC. Cheers!
I would say less misfortunes for next races (already noted), if we are staying with endurance, maybe stress and night could have some impact on drivers sleepiness and errors more to tyre damage.
going for reliability didn’t work, like, at all. even with just 8% total damage I racked up twice the pit time and got like ten laps behind from the direct competing car, which had 170% damage
Darn. I finally found out how my car fared, and ouch. With 3:30 left in the race it broke down with fuel system problems! I was doing extremely well before that, at 1st in class and 14th overall. Blame it on the Six Pack carbs lol.
It took 3 hours to get back and fix it. Ouch. That one little problem was all it took. LOL
For me reliability must have won the category. I made car for group 1 within all regulations but it was homologated in group 2. My car objectively was worse in every possible way. It used more fuel, had lower top speed, had worse acceleration, had less cornering ability…But sth must have happened because my car finished ahead. A surprise to be sure but the welcome one.
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
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!